Close Look at Marketing and Branding

Many companies build a marketing campaign via a standalone approach. They might have a Facebook campaign that takes prospects to a product page, a search campaign to drive traffic to their content site, and/or a social media campaign designed to create a following of fans. While this approach does work, it can be even more effective with a strategy that makes branding work synergistically with marketing.

Imagine a social media campaign that a mid-size company would typically be running. It would consist of sharing content, connecting with other influencers for exposure and cross-promotion, announcing promotions, and even interacting with followers. All of these actions would contribute to the success of the social media campaign but the results would be magnified by making the brand a big focal point.

For example, a company can share quality content that lets people know that it’s associated with their brand; the company can build a strong brand reputation for easier networking opportunities; branded events like contests can be launched on the social platforms; the promotions can also position as exclusive to the brand. In other words, the brand is seen as one of the primary sources of value. Normally, the value would be tied only to the individual messages.

This can apply to various mediums from pay per click, search engine optimization, to Facebook ads. And because running retargeting campaigns is so commonplace now, not making the brand a big part of the picture is a big loss in opportunity. The more consumers come across your brand, the more likely they’ll be familiar with your name and thus, the more likely they will start trusting you enough to give your company a chance.

There’s no single way to do it either. It’s not just about sticking your logo into all your ads, nor is it about talking about your brand in all your points of contact. You can promote branded content that’s split into multiple parts so that the reader would have to subscribe to your newsletter or follow you on social media to get the other parts. If the reader enjoyed the content, they’d be more than happy to sign up. That’s one of the most valuable and authentic ways to start a relationship with prospects who don’t know anything about you.

With that said, web design is a big part of what many call visual branding. You must have a website that has a unique identity with all the competition that’s out there on the web. You want prospects to get the message that you are trying to convey simply by looking at the visuals of your website. You also want to create a picture that people will remember so that they start to become familiar with your identity.

In summary, making your brand a big focal point of your marketing campaigns will yield better results while helping to build up your brand as an asset. You’ll also start to see many other benefits of making your brand a prominent figure in all your campaigns. For one, you’ll start to see people search for your brand’s reputation/reviews in the search engines before they make a purchase decision. If you’ve done a great job with your products/services and your customer support, it’ll serve as a vehicle to speed up the process of turning a suspect into a prospect into a customer.