Mastering Brand Marketing: Strategies for Creating Unforgettable Brands

With the growing trend of consumer-focused marketing, brand marketing has become a critical determinant of every brand's success. Consumers focus on the value they gain from your brand rather than your brand offering.

Gone are the days when consumers based their buying decisions solely on brand popularity. Today, they will check online for your brand presence, consider your values, mission, and vision, and even check for any reviews of your brand.

Consumer demands, tastes, and preferences are changing. And so are the brand marketing trends and strategies. 

New brands and marketing strategies are emerging, calling for more creative brand positioning. These creative strategies include personalized experiences, user-generated content, and brand authenticity.

A well-crafted brand marketing strategy sets you apart, communicates value, creates an emotional connection and remains sustainable even during uncertain times.

So, in such a competitive and demanding branding landscape, how do you communicate your brand identity in a way that wins consumer trust and loyalty?

This article discusses the components of a brand marketing strategy and how to create an effective one.

What is a Brand Marketing Strategy?

A branding strategy is a series of planned actions designed to create awareness of a unique identity. 

An effective branding strategy entails six components: consistency, purpose, flexibility, competitive awareness, loyalty, and emotional connection.

Components of an effective branding strategy

Here are the six components of an effective brand marketing strategy.

• Consistency: The content, color, voice, and tone of your brand should be consistent across platforms to gain recognition and customer loyalty. Otherwise, customers will lose confidence in the brand and its offerings.
• Purpose: Customers would want to understand the difference you are making. Why should we consider your brand? What benefit is there for us that we are not getting from other companies? 

The why behind that brand should be well-identified and understood by your team. Remember, making sales could be one of your goals, but that is not what your customers want to hear. The value you are offering is what will drive those sales home.

• Flexibility: Technology is changing. Times and seasons are changing. Regulations and your customers’ feelings and tastes are changing, too! There is, therefore, a need to be creative with all considerable changes.
• Competitive awareness: You have done so much already, but have you considered what your competitors are doing? To gain a competitive advantage, why not invest the difference between what your competitors offer and what you want to offer?

You are in the business of offering value to your audience in the most creative way possible. So, you don’t want to miss out on what your competitors are doing that may win the loyalty of your customers and potential customers.

• Rewarding loyalty: Your unique identity attracts loyalty from your customers, but do you have a way of rewarding them? The loyalty of your customers deserves a reward as it’s one way of retaining customers and attracting new ones. 

Besides, you must strive to keep your customers hooked on your brand by rewarding their loyalty as your competitors.

Rewards like discounted prices, gifts, and special offers are a good deal. You can also consider creating brand ambassadors out of your customer’s loyalty.

• Emotional connection: Finally, your customers will appreciate an emotional connection in how you offer your products and services. A good relationship with your customers will strengthen your brand and customer retention.

How to create a brand marketing strategy[+Examples]

You want a realistic brand strategy. A strategy that emotionally connects with your target audience is authentic and has a solid social media presence.

Here is a 10-step quick guide on how to create a brand strategy:

1. Conduct your research and competitor analysis

Have an in-depth understanding of your industry, competitors, and target audience. Identify gaps in the market and opportunities to bridge the gaps. 

Creating a buyer persona outlining the characteristics of your ideal audience helps you gain insights into the solution and marketing strategies.

For instance, Nike studied other athletic brands and identified a gap in performance-oriented, fashion-forward athletic wear. This led to the creation of Nike’s famous “Just Do It” campaign, resonating with athletes and other customers.

2. Define your brand identity

Have a clear and compelling brand identity that sets you apart from the competition. The brand identity encompasses your mission, vision, core values, and unique selling proposition.

Apple’s brand identity is outstanding in its innovation, simplicity, and design excellence. This identity is consistent in all their marketing materials, from their online store to their products, making it instantly recognizable.

3. Create an emotional connection

Successful brands emotionally connect with their customers, relating to their problems and how your brand helps alleviate them. Start by identifying the emotions you want your brand to evoke and build a strategy around it.

Coca-Cola has consistently used emotional advertising to connect with consumers. Their unique polar campaigns, for instance, “Share a Coke,” aimed to evoke joy and happiness. 

This emotional connection explains the continually growing customer base for Coca-Cola.

4. Build your social media presence

The 2023 State of Social Media Report by Sproutsocial reveals that social media presence is invaluable. 

From the report, 90% of leaders agree that the success of any brand depends on how well the brand can utilize social data and insights to devise informed strategies.

Also, before buying any product, most consumers check on social media for brand reputation, including reviews and customer feedback.

So, identify the social media platforms that align with your target audience and brand goals. Establish your presence with quality and consistent social content.

Starbucks’s social media presence has helped them connect with customers globally. 

They engage their audience with visually appealing images of their coffee on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. They also run campaigns, such as the Starbucks Red Cap, for customers buying seasonal drinks, communicating a unique brand culture.

5. Maintain brand consistency

Brand consistency includes brand logo, messaging, design, and customer experience. Maintaining consistency from your website to your social media, even offline, instils confidence and trust in your target audience. 

It also helps your customers and potential customers to remember your brand easily.

Mcdonald's packaging, from burger wrappers to drink cups, features the same branding colors. The branding elements remain consistent throughout their website, social media, and offline, including their interior and exterior design for the restaurants.

6. Incorporate user-generated content (UGC)

User-generated content invites team leaders and customers to share their views and experiences with a brand. It includes brand history stories, user reviews, testimonials, and interviews featuring employee experience.

It’s a more authentic way than any other marketing strategy to communicate brand identity. Also, consumers feel involved and valued when given a chance to contribute to the brand’s success through UGC.

Airbnb is an excellent example of utilizing UGC. They encourage their customers to share photos and reviews for their stays in Airbnb accommodations. 

These authentic testimonials and images from guests help potential customers visualize their experience and build trust.

7. Develop an effective content marketing plan

Developing a content marketing plan is the basis for implementing effective content marketing. The plan entails your content marketing goals, target audience, type of content, distribution channels, posting schedule, and key performance indicators.

An effective content marketing plan provides a clear picture of educating your target audience about your brand while promoting your offering. Tracking the performance provides insights to improve and cater to the target audience's needs.

Backlinko provides free content marketing plan templates you can quickly populate and customize.

8. Utilize influencer marketing

Influencer marketing leverages individuals with a significant and engaged social media following or a broad audience on a platform that aligns with your brand. These influencers are often experts or enthusiasts in a given niche. 

By using influencers to promote your products, services, or culture, you reach a wider audience due to their following. 

Also, expert influencers attract customers’ trust and the desire to buy because they’re believed to have vast knowledge of the products they promote.

Here’s an example of a successful influencer marketing strategy.

Gymshark is a fitness apparel brand. It has partnered with fitness and athlete influencers like Whitney Simmons to showcase their products. 

The influencers create engaging content featuring Gymshark outfits during workouts. They also do reviews and share personal experiences concerning the outfit, promoting Gymshark’s credibility and visibility. 

9. Generously reward customer loyalty

Loyalty programs and incentives help retain and motivate potential customers to partner with your brand. It includes offering rewards and value-added packages tailored to the needs of various customer segments.

Here’s an example of a customer loyalty program.

Sephora’s Beauty Insider program rewards customers with points for every purchase. These points can be redeemed for additional products and discounts, encouraging customer loyalty.

10. Measure and adapt

Continuously tracking your brand marketing efforts helps evaluate areas of improvement to adjust and improve and personalize your marketing efforts. 

It’s a way of establishing how close you are to your set goals and any gaps in your strategy that you can bridge.

One of the ways to measure your brand marketing efforts is by evaluating customer feedback and reviews. Tracking metrics such as conversion rate, click-through rate, follower growth and website traffic.

Amazon is an excellent example of data-driven decision-making in marketing. They use customer behaviour data such as recent searches and viewed items to recommend products, personalize marketing emails and optimize their website.

9 Types of Branding Strategies [+Examples]

There are a dozen types of branding, each focused on a particular aspect of the brand. 

Here are the nine most significant types of branding strategies:

Personal branding

Personal branding entails establishing a unique and consistent pattern of yourself or your business. Establishing a personal brand can be daunting. 

You should read more on the 10 Golden Rules for Personal Branding, including telling your story and establishing yourself on social media. 

Product branding

Product branding involves setting apart a specific product or item by attaching to it an uncommon message, design, and user experience. 

A perfect example of product branding is Google and Apple products. It’s impossible not to notice a Google or Apple product, even from a distance.

Corporate branding

Corporate branding entails communicating a company’s image to its customers through its unique name, mission, vision, logo, etc. 

Cultural branding

Cultural branding involves building lasting connections with the target audience through a unique lifestyle. 

Coca-Cola’s marketing strategy is an excellent example of cultural branding. Every person who sees the “refreshing” nature of Coca-Cola would want to “taste the feeling.”

Seasonal branding

Seasonal branding involves promoting your identity on designated days or special days such as holidays. 

Starbucks is known to change its cups to festively branded ones during holidays, contrary to their all-time white cups with their logo branded. Such a seasonal change is an example of seasonal branding.

Service branding

Service branding presents a unique way of providing services focused on emotional value addition. 

Best Buy is an example of service branding, with their “Geek Squad” and “Blue Shirts” employee branding signaling their unique expertise.

Retail branding

Arrangements focused on boosting customer experience whenever they buy from your store. Bombas is well known for its retail branding, which is such that for every item purchased, the retailer donates an item to the homeless communities.

Online Branding

Creating a memorable image through the World Wide Web and social media platforms to build the loyalty and trust of your audience. 

Most brands already realise the need for a logo in brand marketing and related aspects such as brand voice, tone and style consistent on websites and social media.

Offline branding

Event banners, billboards, and posters identifying an organization. Most organizations have demonstrated offline branding through branded shirts, caps, notebooks, and other products.

Over to you

Effective brand marketing leverages various brand marketing strategies. The future of business is digital marketing, which poses significant competition to business owners.

Combining various marketing strategies while observing trends such as personalization, user-generated content, and customer inclusion is critical. It helps your brand remain unforgettable amid the changing trends.

Consider working with a brand strategy specialist when crafting your brand marketing strategy to leverage the strategies that align with your brand goals.