Want Your Marketing to be More Engaging? Invest in Your Brand.
Hey, Friends!
A slight deviation this week as having a 4-month-old put a bit of a twist on my schedule. That said, Happy Friday you lovely people.
So last week I was sitting in a meeting and the topic of branding as a marketing tactic came up, which got me thinking…
Is branding a function of marketing? Or does it stand on its own and help to inform marketing?
We know from past posts that your brand is foundational and that properly understanding your strategy will inform many key aspects of your business, but is it only reserved for marketing outputs?
My school of thought lends itself to a HARD NO as an answer to that question.
Branding informs your marketing. It allows your marketing to do its job as it is a foundational investment meant to help you win over the long term.
As we’ve said in the past, there’s no shortage of tactics or channels to engage your audience with, but for many organizations, there is a shortage of strategic insights and guardrails to make those tactics win.
4 ways having a strong brand can increase the ROI of your marketing
👉 Higher probability of getting your audience targeting right, the first time
A core aspect of branding is understanding your audience. We want to know more than just their age, sex, and location. We want to know what makes them tick. What type of content they want to consume and on which channels. We want information to help our marketing efforts.
Knowing all this information gives you an upper hand when it comes to marketing and advertising targeting. Your audience is your tribe, and engaging them on their terms the first time will hopefully keep your CPC or advertising cost down because we’re taking the guesswork out of reaching them.
By having a sound brand strategy, we’ll also understand the changes to expect and how new platforms and algorithms impact our marketing efforts.
👉 Tells you the channels to invest in and the toolkit to engage your audience with
When done right, your brand strategy will give you the insights and toolkit needed to engage with your audience. Taking the guesswork out of this is paramount in keeping your advertising costs down (as we discussed above) in addition to keeping your morale high.
There’s nothing worse than blindly engaging in a tactic (like social media or email) only to realize your audience doesn’t resonate or respond to what you’re putting out there. It’s one of the fastest ways to alienate your audience.
Knowing which channels to invest in and which to let go of may seem counterintuitive (past strategy = we need to mass market our audience and bombard them with messaging), but the harsh reality of 2022 is that being selective and knowing where your audience hangs out has quickly become textbook.
👉 Constant insights to give the upper hand in outmaneuvering the competition
We mentioned in an earlier post about how leveraging surveys and insight generation can help you stay proactive, but another benefit to your brand strategy is how you’ll constantly keep the competition top of mind.
Knowing what they’re doing and ways we can ZAG when they ZIG gives us the opportunity to continuously outmaneuver them.
I’ve worked with too many organizations that want to take a blind eye to their competition only to be blindsided by their moves. In this instance, ignorance is NOT bliss and unfortunately can be extremely costly.
In order to stay ahead of your competition, include them in your strategy and keep their moves close.
Like Don Corleone said…
👉 Proven messaging, creative, and design meant to resonate and convert
When you understand your brand and have a strategy that is aligned to your audience, you essentially take a great deal of the guesswork out. This is particularly true when it comes to your creative, design, and messaging.
Remember, a brand is not what you say it is, it’s what THEY say it is.
Design and creative for design and creative sake does nothing to connect to your audience and convert them. Too often brands lead with design or creative they are fond of and like and don’t stop to think about the implications it has on your audience.
By talking with your audience and consistently working on course-correcting your brand, you’ll always know the right messaging and creative to lead with. This resonates in their heart & mind and is paramount to reaching your strategic goals.
From a messaging perspective, we never want to come off as tone-deaf or not aligning to what really matters to your audience. Shoving features and benefits down everyone’s throat gets lost and is not seen as authentic. Instead, be human. Think about what really matters to your audience and craft messaging that makes them the hero to your brand story (another post for a later time).
This is where your brand strategy comes in. It’s the information superhighway to engaging and connecting with your audience and ensuring you’re always pushing out the right creative, design, and messaging.
Do this, and your cost of marketing and advertising won’t be so bloated and wasteful. In fact, it’ll most like be optimized and purposeful.
So how does having a solid brand strategy help you optimize your marketing and achieve a better ROI?
Simply put, it gives you a robust outlook on your overarching marketing ecosystem through the eyes of your customer and helps you to understand the triggers, creative, messaging, and design to put in place to engage your tribe in the most cost-effective manner.
It’s isn’t a fad or trend and it isn’t something you do once and forget about. It’s organic, fluid, and living, and when all the pieces are put in the right place, it’ll help lower marketing costs because most brands don’t have endless pockets or a Scrooge McDuck backing them.
Hope this week’s post was insightful and full of value. Do you have any questions or curiosities you want to explore with me? Reply to this email or TWEET me.
As always, I’m all 👂’s.
- Steven
My Current Reading List
👉 Deep Work by Cal Newport (I finished this and I highly recommend you get it and start reading it. It’s profoundly changed my perspective on how I work)
👉 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene (More of a coffee-table book that should be looked at often as it’s brilliantly written and 100% applicable to today’s culture)