There are a plethora of ways to define marketing and a whole host of “buzzwords” that come to mind when you think about brand strategy in marketing. You may immediately think of advertising, sales, pitching, social media, blogs, emails, etc. etc.
At Catalyst Brand Group, we define effective marketing as maintaining and promoting a balance between brand story, brand position, and brand journey.
Brand story is about who you are. It involves sharing your mission, vision, and values to potential customers. Your story is what separates you from your competition.
Brand position is about what you do and how you do it. It involves shedding light on a potential customer’s problem. By identifying their problem, you can showcase how your solution can solve everything. Then, you convince them to take action.
Brand journey is about how you deliver those solutions and keep customers coming back. It involves displaying how you have helped and demonstrated value to current and potential customers. Once you have served customers well, it is the process of moving them into recurring customers and possibly a raving fan.
With this definition in mind, here are nine ways you can use brand strategy in marketing to grow your business that fits any budget. These can be scaled up or down as needed based on the situation of your business.
1. Branding
To begin utilizing brand strategy in marketing for your business, you need to answer a few questions that we have already talked about.
Brand Story
Ask yourself and your team, if applicable, these questions. If you or your team members can’t answer them, then there is no chance your customer can either. By defining these questions you can begin to communicate your brand story more efficiently.
Who are we?
Who is our team?
Why do we do what we do?
What is our mission?
Our vision?
Our values?
Brand Position
You need to be able to break down, in the simplest of terms, what you do and how you do it. This means understanding the problems you are trying to solve, why your solution is the best, and who your ideal customer may be.
What do we do?
How do we do it?
What problem are we trying to solve?
Why is our solution the best?
Who needs our solution the most?
Brand Journey
Understanding the process a customer goes through from first finding your business to becoming a recurring customer is critical. If your first impression was jarring and potential customers are leaving because of a website, a bad customer service experience, etc. then you need to know why. You need to be able to see exactly where customers are stepping in and out of their journey with your brand.
How are customers finding our business?
What is their first point of contact with us?
How do we evaluate their problems?
How do we communicate the value behind our solution?
What is our follow up like when the job is done?
What are we asking of customers after they have been provided service?
Why should they become a raving fan of our business?
When it comes to brand strategy in marketing for your business, it is important to remember that clearly defined branding makes it easier for you to share your business, deliver value, and build a strong connection with customers. Make your branding work for you, not against you.
2. Ideal Customer Engagement
If you have been operating your own business for any amount of time someone has asked you something like this before: what is your ideal customer/client?
These are called demographics. As you work on your brand strategy in marketing your business, demographics will begin to form naturally. Demographics help define who your ideal customer is so you don’t waste your time, or the time of potential customers, by seeking out those who have no interest in what you are offering.
Typical demographics include:
Age
Gender
Marital Status
Yearly Income
Geographic Location
Occupation
Hobbies
If your average customer is a homeowner in their 60s and you are spending your time marketing to renters in their 20s, then that doesn’t make a lot of sense, does it? Doing plenty of research on customers and your specific market is critical to increase your marketing ROI.
You need to know, and customers want to feel that you know, their pains, problems, and fears. They want you to offer the best solution possible to get the results they want. Being honest about roadblocks and obstacles can go a long way to helping them further see the value you are offering to them.
The toughest part is knowing where to find all the info you need to help answer these questions.
Where to Find Market Research
While it may seem intimidating to do market research and track down the information you need to get a full picture of your ideal client, it is actually fairly obvious.
Start by asking yourself where you go when you are looking for a solution?
Online forums?
Social media platforms?
Talk to someone at a local business?
Fill out surveys?
Look at reviews online?
Bogs or articles?
Chances are you do at least one of these. It is likely you do more than one of these, as most people do.
Finding the information to do marketing research is as simple as going where your potential customers are already and asking questions. Find out what some of their problems might be. Ask about solutions.
3. Value Ladder
We like to call it The Value Ladder, but many call it a “funnel.” The term “funnel” conveys little information or intent about your brand journey, though. If you are using your brand strategy in marketing to grow your business, though, then everything needs to convey intentional meaning that relates to your brand. Referring to it as The Value Ladder instead communicates that you have intentionally chosen your ideal customer and are adding value to them throughout a designated process.
If nothing else, switching to The Value Ladder causes a mindset shift that focuses on the customer rather than the sale.
The concept of The Value Ladder is simple. Think through the different levels you interact with customers and add value along the way, increasing price as appropriate along with increased value. The “bait” or “continuity program” are what you might call lead magnets that bring a lot of value to potential customers at no cost to them.
Keep in mind that, as Steve Jobs once said, “A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show them.” They may have a problem and not even realize how much it is affecting or costing them. It then becomes your responsibility to educate and equip your customers with the knowledge to come up with their own solutions while making it known that the process can go much faster with you rather than going it alone.
Jason Fleagle, of Catalyst Brand Group, worked closely with Russell Brunson of Click Funnels, one of the most successful digital marketing companies in the world, who shared this Value Ladder and its concepts with Jason. This combined with your brand journey creates a fluid concept to attract more customers, satisfy their problems and needs, and create raving fans.
4. Website and Digital Platform
Research in 2017 revealed that 97% of customers looked up a local business online before doing any business with them. That is a big number. That’s a good reason to have your website done well.
It has been described that your website is your handshake to the world. Others have said that your website, and other digital platforms, are your hardest-working employees. An effective website that generates a ROI is essential.
Your website will do the best marketing for you when it accurately reflects your brand (brand story, brand position, and brand journey). This includes having a logo that conveys as much of your brand as possible. You can call it your logo, but it is really your brand’s visual identity. So your website is a huge part of your brand strategy in marketing if you want to grow your business.
Your website also needs to be secure and optimized for mobile. Optimization for mobile means having plenty of relevant images and videos, reviews, case studies, and easy-to-find content about their problems and your solution. Mobile users are likely to quickly scroll through, taking in as much information as possible about as quickly as they can scroll.
Even if you aren’t convinced a good website is a worthwhile investment, something to keep in mind is that the opposite is true. Having a bad website is guaranteed to hurt your ROI in a major way.
5. Social Media Engagement
Defining and maintaining a brand voice and stream of content on social media may be one of the most important ways to use your brand strategy in marketing to grow your business. You need to have a voice and message that is consistent with your brand story, brand position, and brand journey.
Once you have defined your brand voice on social media, then you start connecting with individuals and businesses, building trust along the way. The important thing to remember when connecting and building trust is that social media is meant to be social. Interacting with other content is just as, if not more, important than posting your own.
You can maximize your brand strategy in marketing for social media by:
Posting on a regular and consistent basis
Interacting with users, especially to those who reach out to you
Sharing reviews, case studies, and deliverables you have done for customers
Offer and share discounts
As you begin to consistently work on these strategies for your social media marketing, you will begin to see an uptick in customer retention and a new opportunity for lead generation.
6. Reputation and Reviews
According to Pew Research Center, 91% of people trust what they see and read in search engine results. This means that organic content marketing is huge, but it also means that, for your brand strategy in marketing your business, reviews will represent a lion’s share of your online reputation.
To drive this point home, according to BrightLocal in 2017, 73% of consumers trust a business more after reading positive reviews. To grow your business, you are going to need to implement some level of influence over your reputation. Here are a few ways to help you go about doing just that:
Testimonials
Facts & Statistics
Expert Or Institution Quotes
Demonstrations
By putting these into practice, you can begin to have a little more control over your reviews and a lot more control over your reputation. While it is true that a series of bad reviews can seriously damage your business, it is also true that staying true to your brand and reputation will help guide you in those situations – and hopefully keep you from them altogether.
7. Data Collection & Analysis
Collecting data and using those analytics to improve your business strategy is a major part of the work involved in using brand strategy in marketing to grow your business. Google Analytics is one of the most powerful tools for this research.
As you are able to gather new information and insights you will be able to make new decisions about the direction of your business. Sometimes, this may mean making a simple change. Other times, though, it can mean you need to make a major shift in your business.
Thankfully, Google Analytics can help you make the most informed decisions possible by offering:
Automatically collect data
View customized reports for in-depth insights
Understand how visitors interact with your website
Collect customer demographic data
Visualize where website traffic is coming from
Discover what content resonates
Armed with data-backed insights, you can make the best decisions to grow your business.
8. Visual Identity and Branded Materials
As we have mentioned above, creating a visual identity is critical to taking advantage of your brand strategy in marketing to grow your business. Your brand needs to have a unique, visual identity that reflects your brand story, brand position, and brand journey.
A logo is an obvious part of your visual identity, but that doesn’t mean you just slap a logo on everything and walk away. It is important to create a constant and consistent identity across all of your visual materials, logo or not.
Here are some examples of branded materials we are talking about and that we recommend a business to have:
Leave-Behind Materials
Vehicle Decals
Yard Signs
Brochures
Sales Sheets
Mailers
Other Swag
When you incorporate all of these materials into your brand strategy in marketing for your business, you will be able to create an immediate response around the themes, colors, designs, and, of course, logo that make up your visual identity.
9. Online Advertising
When it comes to online advertising, we believe that Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising is one of the secret weapons of your brand strategy in marketing for your business.
Research shows that Google owns 71% of the search market share. Right off the bat, Google Ads seems to make the most sense. When you consider that PPC traffic converts 50% higher than organic traffic, then that settles the decision for online advertising.
Paid Google Ads also help capture your mobile audience because research displays about 53% of PPC traffic comes from mobile devices. Attracting mobile traffic is massively valuable to your business.
All of this points to PPC advertising results in an average ROI of 200%! For every $1 you spend, you can bank on getting $2 back. So, the question at this point is, “why am I not already investing in online advertising?”
Here are a few tips to maximize conversions from your online advertising efforts:
Build a campaign using the search network
Take time to build geographical targeting with zip code, city, county, and radius
Excluding areas you do not want to advertise to
Building your ad extensions:
Sitelinks, Snippets, Callouts, Phone Number
On the call extension, set the phone number to appear on mobile during business hours only
As you begin to use your brand strategy in marketing to grow your business, you will want to follow some of these recommendations to get the best bang for your buck out of your online advertising.
Looking For Extra Help With Your Brand Strategy in Marketing For Your Business?
Which of these marketing tips do you think work the best for your brand strategy? Is there something you think we missed, overlooked, or need to explain in more depth? We would love to hear your thoughts and offer any tips or advice as we are able. At Catalyst Brand Group we focus on implementing proven growth strategies in brand, platform, and growth that will help your business grow by 2x-3x per year. If you are looking for help with brand strategy or marketing, then Contact Us to start a conversation about how we can help.