Every company wants its target audience to recognize them at first glance. Luckily, it only takes 5 to 7 impressions for consumers to remember a brand.

However, that means those impressions have to count, which means you need to build a memorable brand identity to align with your marketing strategy. Fortunately, we can help with that. Let’s talk about the connection between a brand strategy and marketing strategy.

What Is a Brand Strategy?

Your brand strategy is the strategy you use to help your company stand out as a unique, stand-alone force within your industry. It’s an essential aspect of a business plan that outlines how the company will build recognition and rapport with its target audience.

Let’s clear one common misconception before we go any further; your brand is not your logo. While a logo is a clear identifier of a brand, it is nowhere near a representation of the brand as a whole. A clear brand identity is marked by several key factors including:

• Tone of voice
• Color scheme
• Font
• Brand messaging
• Customer relations
• Quality assurance
• Vision and long-term perspective
• Personalized elements

The list goes on. Your brand identity can truly represent any core values you want and add any personal flair that you want.

Think of your brand as a persona and how you want it to be portrayed. Don’t ask “what is my brand” but rather who it is. Your brand should have clear values, a clear mission, and a clear message.

Why Is Branding So Important?

To start off, let’s give a real-world example of a brand with strong recognition. If we were to paint you a word picture of a blue square with a white “F” in the center, a white page with four colors on it (red, yellow, blue, and green), or a cardboard box with an arrow on it, you’d likely know the exact brands we’re talking about.

While we are discussing the “logos” of these brands, they’ve simply been so consistent with their branding efforts that we don’t even need to show you a picture for you to know which brands we’re talking about. You may be thinking: “Those are tech giants. My business can’t compete with them.”

You don’t have to. There are thousands of niche brands that have the same level of recognition as Google or Amazon but within their target audience. Anything from rock climbing gear manufacturers to cosmetic brands can have the same level of recognition with the right strategy.

Once you develop this level of recognition and build a positive association with your brand, the benefits are endless. That level of recognition will help facilitate repeat business, brand loyalty, and word-of-mouth marketing. This is the best form of marketing, as 92% of consumers trust their friends over traditional media.

The Connection Between Branding and Marketing

Branding and marketing go hand-in-hand, benefiting each other on nearly every front. This is true on your physical marketing, product labels, social media, email campaigns, and most importantly, on your website.

The reason we say that your website is most important is that, first, it’s a blank slate. Second, it acts as the center of your entire digital marketing strategy. Your website is where your ads, emails, social media, and most other campaigns will attempt to drive traffic. For these reasons, your website should be the perfect embodiment of your brand persona.

Also, your content marketing strategy is bound to take place primarily on your website. Whether that’s with infographics, videos, or a blog, your branding and content need to run parallel.

Beyond that, think of marketing as a way to communicate with the most customers possible at once. If you want every customer service call to align with your brand’s values and quality assurance, then why wouldn’t you want these values embodied at a larger scale? That’s one of the key reasons why branding and marketing are so intertwined.

Differences Between Branding and Marketing

There are some notable differences between the two strategies. Most importantly, marketing changes from campaign to campaign, whereas branding needs to stay as uniform as possible. Every marketing strategy should revolve around and reflect your brand, but there is still plenty of room to adapt within these parameters.

Beyond that, think of branding as a memorable persona that will live on through any company/industry changes or evolutions over time. Essentially, these two strategies are meant to work together, but they are not the same.

How to Build a Brand Strategy

Now that you know the importance of a brand strategy and how it affects your marketing campaigns, it’s time to talk about implementing your strategy. Of course, every brand identity is unique, so there will be some qualifiers. However, here are some of the most important factors to consider when building a brand.

Consider Your Target Audience

Your brand should reflect your audience, first and foremost. Most importantly, the values of your brand should reflect those of your target audience, especially for younger generations. More than half of Gen Zers actively choose to shop with brands that align with their values.

For example, values like environmental sustainability or social justice will go a long way with certain demographics. While this may involve some initial market research, the long-term payoff of aligning with your target audience’s values is well worth it.

Choose a Message

Once you develop the personality behind your brand, consider what type of message you want to portray. Do you want to be associated with fun, professionalism, or quality? How about something completely different?

Whatever you choose, this should be reflected in your content marketing strategy across every platform.

Choose a Look

With this, you can get as creative as you want, as long as it isn’t too unnatural. For example, a tech company may want to use a sleek, easy-to-read font. Calligraphy may look good for a wedding planner, but it may look out of place for other brands.

Of course, that’s one example. Think about your color schemes and how you want them to represent your brand. Pastel colors would look great for a flower shop but may look strange for a B2B software company.

Beyond these minor restrictions, you can choose whatever themes you want. You may want to choose colors based on mood, your personal preferences, or a number of other reasons. Regardless, once you have a look, keep it consistent.

Stay Consistent

On social media, in email campaigns, and everywhere else, you should keep your brand image and persona as consistent as possible. Any interactions with customers and the quality of your products should reflect the brand’s identity, which brings us to our next point.

This comes down to every operation of your business that your customers will see. The quality of your products, customer service, packaging, and everything else will be representing your brand, so make it count!

Train Staff

Any staff that handles quality assurance, customer service, or any type of marketing will need to be trained on the brand persona. Again, the more consistent your company is, the more you will solidify the brand identity and messaging strategy.

If something were to slip through on a larger scale, it could create confusion over your brand identity, which could completely destroy your branding strategy. Keep that in mind and have clear guidelines in place for staff to follow.

Find the Right Services

One of the best things you can do to build both a strong branding and marketing strategy that works cohesively is to find the right services for your needs. With the right professional help, you can build a memorable brand identity and showcase it with a killer marketing campaign. With the right services, you can showcase your brand across your website, social media presence, email campaigns, and much more.

The best part about branding services is that it’s a “buy once, cry once” type of purchase. This means you’ll be able to benefit from these services for years to come without the need for additional expenses. Over time, the right services will even help you save money on future marketing campaigns.

Build Your Brand Today

Now that you know the importance of a brand strategy, how it connects to your marketing strategy, and how to get started, why wait? Building a unique, recognizable, and memorable brand takes time, so get started right away. The sooner you do, the sooner you can benefit from unique, high-quality marketing campaigns.

Stay up to date with our latest brand and marketing news and feel free to check out our services for more details!