Take Your Marketing To The Next Level With Great Branding
Every small business owner should understand the power a strong brand has in helping them to elevate their online presence. Developing a strong brand becomes something that you cannot copy from your competitors as well as your competitors cannot copy from you because it is what makes you unique. As small business owners working to grow our businesses online, emphasizing your brand quality can help you not only stand out in a sea of sameness online, but it can also help you enhance your marketing in a way that helps you create more business for yourself in a sustainable and long lasting way. Within this article we are going to discuss how branding helps your marketing, specifically touching on ways you can take your marketing to the next level by improving the quality of your brand.
Branding and marketing are not one and the same
Branding is all about developing identifiable features that people associate your business with. This could be anything from the colors, design elements, fonts, or aesthetic direction you take when showing up online…to the tone you embody, styles of content you create, and overall personality you radiate online. Your brand helps you increase recognition for your business. Quite simply: Your brand is the first thing people interact with and thus it is what leaves the greatest impression on folks. Without a strong brand, your marketing can wind up being drab at best, leaving little to no memorable mark on people. Your brand is how you establish an edge in the industry you work within. Your brand, when developed well, will help you create an experience that is unforgettable. This should be a goal of all small business owners wanting to grow their presence online: To not just reach people, but leave a mark that makes them wanting more.
Your brand is what people interact with, see, and experience. Its the ‘Being’ part of your business, where it often takes on a life all of its own. Consider for a moment some of your most favorite brands and why you love them. When I think about the brands I love, it is typically because of a mixture of things, from the aesthetic direction they take with the designs and content they share to the bigger mission and vision they stand for. I fall in love with brands not just because they are pretty to look at, but because they also have something deeper and more meaningful to become a part of. People connect with brands that have something for them to feel like they are a part of. When a brand is developed well, it will give folks an experience that they want to keep coming back to because they feel like being involved in the brand enhances their quality of life, their sense of meaning, or their satisfaction that they are a part of something important.
Why marketing matters
Differently from branding, marketing is how we communicate our brand and business to the public in a way that turns into clients and customers (hopefully!). Marketing is how we execute our brand in order to build engagement and drive sales. If branding is the ‘being’ part of our business, then marketing is the ‘doing’ part. Quite frankly, marketing is what secures business for you. Yet, branding is what establishes business for you. You can look at branding as the first step to driving business and sales, and marketing as the final part that locks business and sales in. Branding is what will help you create mental short cuts for folks, where they remember you and your business simply because of the impression your brand left on them. The marketing aspect therefore helps people who have become interested in your brand to take next steps into your business, eventually inquiring about your products or services. Marketing consists of the tactics you put into place to help you drive leads and sales. This becomes the cause to people purchasing!
Why branding matters
Branding is what helps your business stand out and gain recognition. It will differentiate you within your industry, creating an edge and advantage. Great branding is unforgettable because it creates a culture of shared connection, values, beliefs, personality, style and insights. Memorable brands withstand the test of time and have more sustainability. They also help to generate more word of mouth referrals because people love to share great brands with others! Your branding will help you increase the value of the products or services you offer in your business, because it adds a level of emotional dedication and loyalty. Your business’ reputation is derived from your brand.
As you can see, branding and marketing work hand in hand, and yet they are not the same at all. They depend on each other in many ways in order to drive business, yet each of these components require their own unique approaches and strategies in order to effectively be executed.
How to take your marketing to the next level with your branding
Since we now know that branding is the heart of your business, representing what you stand for as well as the personality, style, and inner ‘being’ aspects of your business, when we go to bring our brand into our marketing it starts with bringing the essence of our business into the way we promote and sell our products or services.
When we visually tell the story of our brand, we can increase our marketing efficacy by telling clear stories about the following aspects of our brand:
Your brand story: Your brand story differs from your personal story. It is the story of how your brand became a thing, what you went through to establish and come up with your brand, and how you worked through obstacles to get to where you are today. Your brand story should encompass many of the components that represent what your brand stands for. It should also have a way for your target audience to relate and connect with your brand more deeply.
Your brand values: By sharing your brand values in your marketing, you give your target audience something to not only relate to but feel like they are a part of. Sharing your brand values also helps people understand what drives your brand and what the north stars of your brand are.
Your brand mission: Your brand’s mission should relate to what your brand actively does to fulfill its greater purpose. By sharing your brand mission, you give your target audience the chance to understand what your brand practices and what your business does to help uphold its values as well as move toward its desired outcomes.
Your brand vision: If you share your brand mission, you can also share your brand vision within your marketing. This will help you enforce why you are doing what you do within your brand’s mission, for your vision is the direction your brand is trying to head. This vision should relate to your target audience in a way that they feel included in the vision itself and will be positively impacted if the vision is accomplished.
Another way to take your marketing to the next level with your branding is to create value based and educational content
Education based content will help you position your brand as a go to resource for support. This helps you establish brand trust and can support your marketing in that you are already helping your target audience gain something valuable, leaving them wanting more.
Content ideas for education based marketing:
Infographics, charts, step-by-step trainings and lists
Signature Formula
Easy to implement tips
demos, tutorials or how to’s
Value based content will help you clearly communicate what your brand stands for, including some of the main tips shared above. When you create value based content, you validate your brand by providing examples of how you actively practice what your brand stands for. As well, value based content helps you create content that is specifically related to what your target audience needs to see in order to make an informed decision as to whether your business is aligned with them.
Content ideas for value based marketing:
Inspiring messaging that clearly communicates what your brand values.
Strong visual storytelling that supports the narrative you're brand is building.
User-generated content
case studies
By incorporating the above types of content and content topics into your marketing strategy, you will not only more clearly express what your brand stands for, but you will also give a clear and transparent picture to your target audience as to what they are saying yes to by supporting your brand. This gives your target audience something to feel like they are a part of and creates a more emotional connection to your brand. Your marketing will become much stronger because you are centering your marketing around what makes your brand different and unique. The final point I want to make regarding how you can take your marketing to the next level with great branding is to focus on enhancing your target audience’s experience with great brand design.
The importance of authentic brand design
When we create authentic brand design, we create an aesthetic representation of our brand’s that cannot be duplicated. I am personally not a fan of using cookie-cutter templates and one size fits all frameworks when it comes to branding or marketing because every business is different, every brand is different, and the more we lean into what makes us different the more our brand will stand out and thus the better our marketing will perform.
To improve your brand design, consider how you can break the mold of what’s typical or traditional for your industry. This means, coming up with signature and customized brand design that is unique and personal to your brand. Your brand design has the ability to attract people to your business solely because of the strong visual aesthetic. Your brand design is typically the first thing that brings folks into your business, therefore the more customized and unique it is, the better! Steer away from doing things like everyone else when it comes to your brand design.
As you can see, your branding plays a large role in the efficacy of your marketing. I hope these tips helps generate some ideas about ways you can take your marketing to the next level by starting with weaving your brand’s essence and unique visual style more strongly into your marketing campaigns. Looking for a bit more support to help you do so? Explore our brand and marketing direction services here.
Until next time…
Natalie Brite
