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Brand Marketing
Brand Awareness
Marketing Strategy
Business Branding
Brand Identity
ARTICLE #131
What is brand marketing and why is it important for businesses?
Brand Marketing
Brand Awareness
Marketing Strategy
Business Branding
Brand Identity
Written by:
10 min read
Updated on: October 29, 2024
Toni Hukkanen
Head of Design
Creative Direction, Brand Direction
Toni Hukkanen
Head of Design
Creative Direction, Brand Direction
Toni Hukkanen
Head of Design
Creative Direction, Brand Direction
Marketing strategies that present product information in simple, clear messages help customers remember your promises and understand their significance. Most businesses use these strategies to help consumers form lasting, positive impressions of their products and brands.
In simple words, brand marketing is an approach to communications, advertisements, and promotion that builds long-term relationships between the brand and its customers. While brands like Apple, Nike, and Redbull have long been established, many more are still striving to achieve the same level of consumer recognition.
In this detailed guide, we have elaborated on brand marketing, its importance, and how you can create your own strategy to inspire loyalty and drive lifetime value.
Marketing strategies that present product information in simple, clear messages help customers remember your promises and understand their significance. Most businesses use these strategies to help consumers form lasting, positive impressions of their products and brands.
In simple words, brand marketing is an approach to communications, advertisements, and promotion that builds long-term relationships between the brand and its customers. While brands like Apple, Nike, and Redbull have long been established, many more are still striving to achieve the same level of consumer recognition.
In this detailed guide, we have elaborated on brand marketing, its importance, and how you can create your own strategy to inspire loyalty and drive lifetime value.
Marketing strategies that present product information in simple, clear messages help customers remember your promises and understand their significance. Most businesses use these strategies to help consumers form lasting, positive impressions of their products and brands.
In simple words, brand marketing is an approach to communications, advertisements, and promotion that builds long-term relationships between the brand and its customers. While brands like Apple, Nike, and Redbull have long been established, many more are still striving to achieve the same level of consumer recognition.
In this detailed guide, we have elaborated on brand marketing, its importance, and how you can create your own strategy to inspire loyalty and drive lifetime value.
What is brand marketing?
What is brand marketing?
What is brand marketing?
Brand marketing involves establishing and maintaining a relationship between a brand and consumers. Instead of highlighting an individual product/service, it promotes the entirety of the brand with the help of its products and services as proof points that support the brand's promise. Brand marketing also builds the value of a company because it is an investment in making future business more profitable. This value is also known as brand equity.
Product marketing, on the other hand, is different and talks about the features and benefits of the product instead of the brand. Direct response marketing focuses on getting customers to make a purchase or take action immediately.
Brand marketing vs performance marketing
Brand marketing is a long-term, qualitative process. Its results are hard to measure and can't be manifested overnight. It also strives to build trust through sustained engagement and create an emotional connection that inspires loyalty, encouraging customers to become brand advocates.
On the other hand, performance marketing is a form of advertising that focuses on specific, measurable outcomes such as cost per click, return on ad spend, or cost per conversion. Performance marketers take immediate actions from their campaigns to determine their KPIs based on the objective of their campaigns. It is more associated with data-driven mediums.
Brand marketing is the foundation of all your marketing efforts, and it works hand-in-hand with performance marketing to get the best results.
Brand marketing involves establishing and maintaining a relationship between a brand and consumers. Instead of highlighting an individual product/service, it promotes the entirety of the brand with the help of its products and services as proof points that support the brand's promise. Brand marketing also builds the value of a company because it is an investment in making future business more profitable. This value is also known as brand equity.
Product marketing, on the other hand, is different and talks about the features and benefits of the product instead of the brand. Direct response marketing focuses on getting customers to make a purchase or take action immediately.
Brand marketing vs performance marketing
Brand marketing is a long-term, qualitative process. Its results are hard to measure and can't be manifested overnight. It also strives to build trust through sustained engagement and create an emotional connection that inspires loyalty, encouraging customers to become brand advocates.
On the other hand, performance marketing is a form of advertising that focuses on specific, measurable outcomes such as cost per click, return on ad spend, or cost per conversion. Performance marketers take immediate actions from their campaigns to determine their KPIs based on the objective of their campaigns. It is more associated with data-driven mediums.
Brand marketing is the foundation of all your marketing efforts, and it works hand-in-hand with performance marketing to get the best results.
Brand marketing involves establishing and maintaining a relationship between a brand and consumers. Instead of highlighting an individual product/service, it promotes the entirety of the brand with the help of its products and services as proof points that support the brand's promise. Brand marketing also builds the value of a company because it is an investment in making future business more profitable. This value is also known as brand equity.
Product marketing, on the other hand, is different and talks about the features and benefits of the product instead of the brand. Direct response marketing focuses on getting customers to make a purchase or take action immediately.
Brand marketing vs performance marketing
Brand marketing is a long-term, qualitative process. Its results are hard to measure and can't be manifested overnight. It also strives to build trust through sustained engagement and create an emotional connection that inspires loyalty, encouraging customers to become brand advocates.
On the other hand, performance marketing is a form of advertising that focuses on specific, measurable outcomes such as cost per click, return on ad spend, or cost per conversion. Performance marketers take immediate actions from their campaigns to determine their KPIs based on the objective of their campaigns. It is more associated with data-driven mediums.
Brand marketing is the foundation of all your marketing efforts, and it works hand-in-hand with performance marketing to get the best results.
Why is brand marketing important?
Many small to medium-sized business owners and first-time entrepreneurs view marketing spending as an expense. While money spent on building and maintaining all the assets is considered a capital investment, they often neglect the fact that a brand is no different from any other business asset.
Brand marketing revolves around marketing, so it is an investment in building an asset we know as brand equity, which is the portion of a company's value attributable to its brand. Here are some other reasons why brand marketing is important for your business.
It sets you apart
Your brand marketing is what people think of you, and when it is done well, it can make customers perceive you more favourably than your competitors. Customers are loyal to brands instead of products; therefore, creating that emotional connection is key.
It motivates people
Defining your values is essential for successful marketing as it helps staff and customers connect to something meaningful.
Whether your focus is on sustainability, high performance, or great value, building brand awareness around these ideals can motivate everyone, internally and externally.
Drives value
Think about the world's biggest brands. Is their market value just the total of their physical assets? Probably not because their worth also includes their brand identity, awareness, and value perception among the public.
All business assets have value because they generate revenue and profits in future. A strong brand makes future sales possible because customers won't buy from a company or care about a product if it doesn't come from a reputable brand.
Many small to medium-sized business owners and first-time entrepreneurs view marketing spending as an expense. While money spent on building and maintaining all the assets is considered a capital investment, they often neglect the fact that a brand is no different from any other business asset.
Brand marketing revolves around marketing, so it is an investment in building an asset we know as brand equity, which is the portion of a company's value attributable to its brand. Here are some other reasons why brand marketing is important for your business.
It sets you apart
Your brand marketing is what people think of you, and when it is done well, it can make customers perceive you more favourably than your competitors. Customers are loyal to brands instead of products; therefore, creating that emotional connection is key.
It motivates people
Defining your values is essential for successful marketing as it helps staff and customers connect to something meaningful.
Whether your focus is on sustainability, high performance, or great value, building brand awareness around these ideals can motivate everyone, internally and externally.
Drives value
Think about the world's biggest brands. Is their market value just the total of their physical assets? Probably not because their worth also includes their brand identity, awareness, and value perception among the public.
All business assets have value because they generate revenue and profits in future. A strong brand makes future sales possible because customers won't buy from a company or care about a product if it doesn't come from a reputable brand.
Many small to medium-sized business owners and first-time entrepreneurs view marketing spending as an expense. While money spent on building and maintaining all the assets is considered a capital investment, they often neglect the fact that a brand is no different from any other business asset.
Brand marketing revolves around marketing, so it is an investment in building an asset we know as brand equity, which is the portion of a company's value attributable to its brand. Here are some other reasons why brand marketing is important for your business.
It sets you apart
Your brand marketing is what people think of you, and when it is done well, it can make customers perceive you more favourably than your competitors. Customers are loyal to brands instead of products; therefore, creating that emotional connection is key.
It motivates people
Defining your values is essential for successful marketing as it helps staff and customers connect to something meaningful.
Whether your focus is on sustainability, high performance, or great value, building brand awareness around these ideals can motivate everyone, internally and externally.
Drives value
Think about the world's biggest brands. Is their market value just the total of their physical assets? Probably not because their worth also includes their brand identity, awareness, and value perception among the public.
All business assets have value because they generate revenue and profits in future. A strong brand makes future sales possible because customers won't buy from a company or care about a product if it doesn't come from a reputable brand.
How to build your brand marketing strategy?
A brand marketing strategy plays a major role in improving your brand's position in the marketplace and helping organise efforts to educate consumers about your brand. To create a strong strategy, gather your brand assets and marketing collateral, including social media content, design elements, ad campaign creatives, and buyer personas, and follow the steps below.
Find your brand purpose
The first thing you need to do is understand the purpose of your brand's existence. Ask yourself the following questions: Who is your target audience? Why would they put trust in you? What feelings are linked with your brand? What problems can your brand solve? Who are your competitors, what is your brand's story, and why was it created? If your brand were a person, who would it be and why?
Start with defining your brand's look and feel, meaning you will choose your brand imagery, colour palette, and typography.
Set brand marketing goals
Establish clear and measurable marketing goals that align with your business goals and provide a roadmap for your branding efforts. Identify the key performance indicators (KPIs) to monitor the success of your brand marketing initiatives. These metrics can be related to website traffic, lead generation, brand awareness, customer loyalty, or acquisition.
Note: When setting goals, consider your available budget, resources, and timeline. You must be realistic while prioritising your efforts based on what will have the maximum influence on your business.
Research your target audience
Through market research, create detailed buyer personas that represent your ideal customers. The personas should include demographic information, such as industry, job title, and company size. They should also include psychographic details like goals, pain points, and decision-making criteria.
After establishing the buyer personas, use them to guide every aspect of your brand marketing strategy and align everything with the buyer, from language and tone of messaging to the formats and channels you use to reach the target audience.
To put it simply, if your audience primarily includes Gen Z, it won't be wise to use millennial language in your messaging.
Define your brand story
You can define and sell your brand story by creating the right message. Your story will connect your brand with your audience, promote loyalty, and help brand recall. Therefore, you should invest enough time to develop an engaging story that includes all the same elements as your favourite movie or novel.
Instead of being dramatic, your brand story should properly communicate your values to build an emotional connection and allow your target audience to associate with your brand on a deeper level.
To create a brand story, address the following questions: What inspired you to start this business? What challenges have you faced along the way? What are your core values? How have you evolved and grown over time? What problems can you solve for your customers? How do you make their lives better or easier?
With these insights, you can build a narrative that clarifies your brand's purpose and impact. You can add this story to your blogs, paid ad campaigns, email newsletters, and more.
Create brand guidelines and collaterals
After clearly understanding your brand and audience, you need to think about how to connect them in your marketing. Brand guidelines (or brand style guide) are where you will cover logo design, fonts, colours, tone, voice and more.
These guidelines will provide a roadmap for applying your branding across different mediums and marketing campaigns. Everything will be covered, from your website to business cards, social media profiles, and marketing collateral.
Along with brand guidelines, you should develop a branded collateral suite to reflect your brand identity and messaging, including sales decks, email marketing, presentation templates, and product sheets.
These elements will ensure that everyone in your company is on the same page regarding representing your brand. This overall consistency will build trust and credibility with your audience, making your brand more recognisable over time.
Diversify channels and tactics
You can easily maximise reach and optimise results by diversifying your channels and tactics. It is possible to benefit from both organic marketing and paid advertising.
Let's simplify it with an example: you may create multiple organic social media posts to tell a story about the production of your products and use social media advertising to increase reach and brand engagement.
If you are a brand targeting C-suite executives, you might want to post thought leader articles on LinkedIn, while being a humorous media brand targeting Gen Z, TikTok might be the right pick.
After deciding on the content types, you need to make a calendar to map out the publishing schedule for the content. That calendar will cover the publishing date and time, content format, topic of the content, written copy, and visuals to add to the copy.
Don’t forget your products
Your products/services are the evidence of claims made by your brand marketing strategy. You need to choose claims that are well-supported by your products.
If a company sells stuffed animals and baby blankets, it will struggle to support the statement, “We can help you dominate the global power market.” Similarly, a management consulting company isn't well positioned to claim that it can improve bedtime.
It is wise to continually evaluate your product to ensure it is high-quality and works as intended without bugs or glitches. Consider testing your product with a UX team and offering a Beta version before launch. You can also send a sample to friends and family before large-scale production.
Measure your success
To measure the success of your marketing strategy, you need to understand what is working, what is not, and where you should focus your efforts for maximum impact. Without that information, all your efforts will be wasted.
You can set clear goals and track KPIs, continuously optimise your branding efforts, and demonstrate the value of your marketing investments.
Take the initiative to identify the metrics that matter most for your business, considering your marketing goals. Benefit from tools like Google Analytics, customer surveys, and social media analytics to track progress against these metrics.
You need to track quantitative metrics as well as qualitative feedback from your customers and prospects. Use surveys, social media listening, and interviews to analyse sentiment and perceptions about your brand and identify areas for improvement.
A brand marketing strategy plays a major role in improving your brand's position in the marketplace and helping organise efforts to educate consumers about your brand. To create a strong strategy, gather your brand assets and marketing collateral, including social media content, design elements, ad campaign creatives, and buyer personas, and follow the steps below.
Find your brand purpose
The first thing you need to do is understand the purpose of your brand's existence. Ask yourself the following questions: Who is your target audience? Why would they put trust in you? What feelings are linked with your brand? What problems can your brand solve? Who are your competitors, what is your brand's story, and why was it created? If your brand were a person, who would it be and why?
Start with defining your brand's look and feel, meaning you will choose your brand imagery, colour palette, and typography.
Set brand marketing goals
Establish clear and measurable marketing goals that align with your business goals and provide a roadmap for your branding efforts. Identify the key performance indicators (KPIs) to monitor the success of your brand marketing initiatives. These metrics can be related to website traffic, lead generation, brand awareness, customer loyalty, or acquisition.
Note: When setting goals, consider your available budget, resources, and timeline. You must be realistic while prioritising your efforts based on what will have the maximum influence on your business.
Research your target audience
Through market research, create detailed buyer personas that represent your ideal customers. The personas should include demographic information, such as industry, job title, and company size. They should also include psychographic details like goals, pain points, and decision-making criteria.
After establishing the buyer personas, use them to guide every aspect of your brand marketing strategy and align everything with the buyer, from language and tone of messaging to the formats and channels you use to reach the target audience.
To put it simply, if your audience primarily includes Gen Z, it won't be wise to use millennial language in your messaging.
Define your brand story
You can define and sell your brand story by creating the right message. Your story will connect your brand with your audience, promote loyalty, and help brand recall. Therefore, you should invest enough time to develop an engaging story that includes all the same elements as your favourite movie or novel.
Instead of being dramatic, your brand story should properly communicate your values to build an emotional connection and allow your target audience to associate with your brand on a deeper level.
To create a brand story, address the following questions: What inspired you to start this business? What challenges have you faced along the way? What are your core values? How have you evolved and grown over time? What problems can you solve for your customers? How do you make their lives better or easier?
With these insights, you can build a narrative that clarifies your brand's purpose and impact. You can add this story to your blogs, paid ad campaigns, email newsletters, and more.
Create brand guidelines and collaterals
After clearly understanding your brand and audience, you need to think about how to connect them in your marketing. Brand guidelines (or brand style guide) are where you will cover logo design, fonts, colours, tone, voice and more.
These guidelines will provide a roadmap for applying your branding across different mediums and marketing campaigns. Everything will be covered, from your website to business cards, social media profiles, and marketing collateral.
Along with brand guidelines, you should develop a branded collateral suite to reflect your brand identity and messaging, including sales decks, email marketing, presentation templates, and product sheets.
These elements will ensure that everyone in your company is on the same page regarding representing your brand. This overall consistency will build trust and credibility with your audience, making your brand more recognisable over time.
Diversify channels and tactics
You can easily maximise reach and optimise results by diversifying your channels and tactics. It is possible to benefit from both organic marketing and paid advertising.
Let's simplify it with an example: you may create multiple organic social media posts to tell a story about the production of your products and use social media advertising to increase reach and brand engagement.
If you are a brand targeting C-suite executives, you might want to post thought leader articles on LinkedIn, while being a humorous media brand targeting Gen Z, TikTok might be the right pick.
After deciding on the content types, you need to make a calendar to map out the publishing schedule for the content. That calendar will cover the publishing date and time, content format, topic of the content, written copy, and visuals to add to the copy.
Don’t forget your products
Your products/services are the evidence of claims made by your brand marketing strategy. You need to choose claims that are well-supported by your products.
If a company sells stuffed animals and baby blankets, it will struggle to support the statement, “We can help you dominate the global power market.” Similarly, a management consulting company isn't well positioned to claim that it can improve bedtime.
It is wise to continually evaluate your product to ensure it is high-quality and works as intended without bugs or glitches. Consider testing your product with a UX team and offering a Beta version before launch. You can also send a sample to friends and family before large-scale production.
Measure your success
To measure the success of your marketing strategy, you need to understand what is working, what is not, and where you should focus your efforts for maximum impact. Without that information, all your efforts will be wasted.
You can set clear goals and track KPIs, continuously optimise your branding efforts, and demonstrate the value of your marketing investments.
Take the initiative to identify the metrics that matter most for your business, considering your marketing goals. Benefit from tools like Google Analytics, customer surveys, and social media analytics to track progress against these metrics.
You need to track quantitative metrics as well as qualitative feedback from your customers and prospects. Use surveys, social media listening, and interviews to analyse sentiment and perceptions about your brand and identify areas for improvement.
A brand marketing strategy plays a major role in improving your brand's position in the marketplace and helping organise efforts to educate consumers about your brand. To create a strong strategy, gather your brand assets and marketing collateral, including social media content, design elements, ad campaign creatives, and buyer personas, and follow the steps below.
Find your brand purpose
The first thing you need to do is understand the purpose of your brand's existence. Ask yourself the following questions: Who is your target audience? Why would they put trust in you? What feelings are linked with your brand? What problems can your brand solve? Who are your competitors, what is your brand's story, and why was it created? If your brand were a person, who would it be and why?
Start with defining your brand's look and feel, meaning you will choose your brand imagery, colour palette, and typography.
Set brand marketing goals
Establish clear and measurable marketing goals that align with your business goals and provide a roadmap for your branding efforts. Identify the key performance indicators (KPIs) to monitor the success of your brand marketing initiatives. These metrics can be related to website traffic, lead generation, brand awareness, customer loyalty, or acquisition.
Note: When setting goals, consider your available budget, resources, and timeline. You must be realistic while prioritising your efforts based on what will have the maximum influence on your business.
Research your target audience
Through market research, create detailed buyer personas that represent your ideal customers. The personas should include demographic information, such as industry, job title, and company size. They should also include psychographic details like goals, pain points, and decision-making criteria.
After establishing the buyer personas, use them to guide every aspect of your brand marketing strategy and align everything with the buyer, from language and tone of messaging to the formats and channels you use to reach the target audience.
To put it simply, if your audience primarily includes Gen Z, it won't be wise to use millennial language in your messaging.
Define your brand story
You can define and sell your brand story by creating the right message. Your story will connect your brand with your audience, promote loyalty, and help brand recall. Therefore, you should invest enough time to develop an engaging story that includes all the same elements as your favourite movie or novel.
Instead of being dramatic, your brand story should properly communicate your values to build an emotional connection and allow your target audience to associate with your brand on a deeper level.
To create a brand story, address the following questions: What inspired you to start this business? What challenges have you faced along the way? What are your core values? How have you evolved and grown over time? What problems can you solve for your customers? How do you make their lives better or easier?
With these insights, you can build a narrative that clarifies your brand's purpose and impact. You can add this story to your blogs, paid ad campaigns, email newsletters, and more.
Create brand guidelines and collaterals
After clearly understanding your brand and audience, you need to think about how to connect them in your marketing. Brand guidelines (or brand style guide) are where you will cover logo design, fonts, colours, tone, voice and more.
These guidelines will provide a roadmap for applying your branding across different mediums and marketing campaigns. Everything will be covered, from your website to business cards, social media profiles, and marketing collateral.
Along with brand guidelines, you should develop a branded collateral suite to reflect your brand identity and messaging, including sales decks, email marketing, presentation templates, and product sheets.
These elements will ensure that everyone in your company is on the same page regarding representing your brand. This overall consistency will build trust and credibility with your audience, making your brand more recognisable over time.
Diversify channels and tactics
You can easily maximise reach and optimise results by diversifying your channels and tactics. It is possible to benefit from both organic marketing and paid advertising.
Let's simplify it with an example: you may create multiple organic social media posts to tell a story about the production of your products and use social media advertising to increase reach and brand engagement.
If you are a brand targeting C-suite executives, you might want to post thought leader articles on LinkedIn, while being a humorous media brand targeting Gen Z, TikTok might be the right pick.
After deciding on the content types, you need to make a calendar to map out the publishing schedule for the content. That calendar will cover the publishing date and time, content format, topic of the content, written copy, and visuals to add to the copy.
Don’t forget your products
Your products/services are the evidence of claims made by your brand marketing strategy. You need to choose claims that are well-supported by your products.
If a company sells stuffed animals and baby blankets, it will struggle to support the statement, “We can help you dominate the global power market.” Similarly, a management consulting company isn't well positioned to claim that it can improve bedtime.
It is wise to continually evaluate your product to ensure it is high-quality and works as intended without bugs or glitches. Consider testing your product with a UX team and offering a Beta version before launch. You can also send a sample to friends and family before large-scale production.
Measure your success
To measure the success of your marketing strategy, you need to understand what is working, what is not, and where you should focus your efforts for maximum impact. Without that information, all your efforts will be wasted.
You can set clear goals and track KPIs, continuously optimise your branding efforts, and demonstrate the value of your marketing investments.
Take the initiative to identify the metrics that matter most for your business, considering your marketing goals. Benefit from tools like Google Analytics, customer surveys, and social media analytics to track progress against these metrics.
You need to track quantitative metrics as well as qualitative feedback from your customers and prospects. Use surveys, social media listening, and interviews to analyse sentiment and perceptions about your brand and identify areas for improvement.
Examples of brand marketing campaigns
Over the years, a few exceptionally famous brand marketing campaigns have won the hearts of consumers, increased sales, and left a lasting impact, such as Apple's ‘Think Different’ and Nike's ‘Just Do It.’ You can take inspiration from the following companies to build your own strategy.
Zendesk
Zendesk, a customer service SaaS company, gained popularity right after its launch with its bright green colour palette. The company's mascot, a Buddha, is featured wearing a headset to symbolise the novelty of combining mindfulness with technology.
Its mission is to help businesses deliver exceptional customer service. However, in 2016, Zendesk rebranded to a simpler geometric brand design with mini logos representing each of its different services. Throughout the rebrand, the brand voice remained the same. This example clearly shows how brand identities can evolve over time to better appeal to users without offending them while striving to differentiate themselves from traditionally stuffy B2B branding.
Redbull
One of Red Bull's strategies is its ownership and creation of Red Bull Media House, which produces a variety of content, including extreme sports events, feature films, and documentaries. Red Bull controls the media that promotes its brand to ensure the perfect alignment of content with its high-energy brand image.
The brand also sponsors extreme sports events and athletes, including the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series and Red Bull Air Race (now discontinued). It also collaborates with athletes across extreme sports such as motocross, skateboarding, and snowboarding. These athletes serve as brand ambassadors and help improve Red Bull's image as a supporter of extreme support.
Slack
Another great example of brand marketing is Slack, which combines simplicity and functionality to create a unique and influential brand identity. Slack's mission is to facilitate connections between individuals and ideas.
Slack ads highlight its speed and convenience to appeal to users. During marketing campaigns, it did many great things in the right way, such as responding to every email and resolving every ticket, keeping an eye on all social media channels for brand mentions, either good or bad, and improving and adding new product features based on user experience and feedback, and amplifying what makes its product/company special.
Zappos
Zappos has also become well-loved for its customer service and trustworthiness. The company has built an image that centres strongly around its vision statement: "To inspire the world by showing it is possible to deliver happiness to customers, vendors, shareholders, employees, and the community at the same time in a sustainable way.”
Zappos’ “Keep what you love” commercial emphasises an effortless shopping experience and a generous return policy. The company also surprises shoppers by letting them know how much they are valued, such as sending flowers to customers or overnighting a free pair of shoes to a man at a wedding. This not only builds their brand identity but also increases their reputation by going above and beyond their promises.
Over the years, a few exceptionally famous brand marketing campaigns have won the hearts of consumers, increased sales, and left a lasting impact, such as Apple's ‘Think Different’ and Nike's ‘Just Do It.’ You can take inspiration from the following companies to build your own strategy.
Zendesk
Zendesk, a customer service SaaS company, gained popularity right after its launch with its bright green colour palette. The company's mascot, a Buddha, is featured wearing a headset to symbolise the novelty of combining mindfulness with technology.
Its mission is to help businesses deliver exceptional customer service. However, in 2016, Zendesk rebranded to a simpler geometric brand design with mini logos representing each of its different services. Throughout the rebrand, the brand voice remained the same. This example clearly shows how brand identities can evolve over time to better appeal to users without offending them while striving to differentiate themselves from traditionally stuffy B2B branding.
Redbull
One of Red Bull's strategies is its ownership and creation of Red Bull Media House, which produces a variety of content, including extreme sports events, feature films, and documentaries. Red Bull controls the media that promotes its brand to ensure the perfect alignment of content with its high-energy brand image.
The brand also sponsors extreme sports events and athletes, including the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series and Red Bull Air Race (now discontinued). It also collaborates with athletes across extreme sports such as motocross, skateboarding, and snowboarding. These athletes serve as brand ambassadors and help improve Red Bull's image as a supporter of extreme support.
Slack
Another great example of brand marketing is Slack, which combines simplicity and functionality to create a unique and influential brand identity. Slack's mission is to facilitate connections between individuals and ideas.
Slack ads highlight its speed and convenience to appeal to users. During marketing campaigns, it did many great things in the right way, such as responding to every email and resolving every ticket, keeping an eye on all social media channels for brand mentions, either good or bad, and improving and adding new product features based on user experience and feedback, and amplifying what makes its product/company special.
Zappos
Zappos has also become well-loved for its customer service and trustworthiness. The company has built an image that centres strongly around its vision statement: "To inspire the world by showing it is possible to deliver happiness to customers, vendors, shareholders, employees, and the community at the same time in a sustainable way.”
Zappos’ “Keep what you love” commercial emphasises an effortless shopping experience and a generous return policy. The company also surprises shoppers by letting them know how much they are valued, such as sending flowers to customers or overnighting a free pair of shoes to a man at a wedding. This not only builds their brand identity but also increases their reputation by going above and beyond their promises.
Over the years, a few exceptionally famous brand marketing campaigns have won the hearts of consumers, increased sales, and left a lasting impact, such as Apple's ‘Think Different’ and Nike's ‘Just Do It.’ You can take inspiration from the following companies to build your own strategy.
Zendesk
Zendesk, a customer service SaaS company, gained popularity right after its launch with its bright green colour palette. The company's mascot, a Buddha, is featured wearing a headset to symbolise the novelty of combining mindfulness with technology.
Its mission is to help businesses deliver exceptional customer service. However, in 2016, Zendesk rebranded to a simpler geometric brand design with mini logos representing each of its different services. Throughout the rebrand, the brand voice remained the same. This example clearly shows how brand identities can evolve over time to better appeal to users without offending them while striving to differentiate themselves from traditionally stuffy B2B branding.
Redbull
One of Red Bull's strategies is its ownership and creation of Red Bull Media House, which produces a variety of content, including extreme sports events, feature films, and documentaries. Red Bull controls the media that promotes its brand to ensure the perfect alignment of content with its high-energy brand image.
The brand also sponsors extreme sports events and athletes, including the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series and Red Bull Air Race (now discontinued). It also collaborates with athletes across extreme sports such as motocross, skateboarding, and snowboarding. These athletes serve as brand ambassadors and help improve Red Bull's image as a supporter of extreme support.
Slack
Another great example of brand marketing is Slack, which combines simplicity and functionality to create a unique and influential brand identity. Slack's mission is to facilitate connections between individuals and ideas.
Slack ads highlight its speed and convenience to appeal to users. During marketing campaigns, it did many great things in the right way, such as responding to every email and resolving every ticket, keeping an eye on all social media channels for brand mentions, either good or bad, and improving and adding new product features based on user experience and feedback, and amplifying what makes its product/company special.
Zappos
Zappos has also become well-loved for its customer service and trustworthiness. The company has built an image that centres strongly around its vision statement: "To inspire the world by showing it is possible to deliver happiness to customers, vendors, shareholders, employees, and the community at the same time in a sustainable way.”
Zappos’ “Keep what you love” commercial emphasises an effortless shopping experience and a generous return policy. The company also surprises shoppers by letting them know how much they are valued, such as sending flowers to customers or overnighting a free pair of shoes to a man at a wedding. This not only builds their brand identity but also increases their reputation by going above and beyond their promises.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between brand marketing and product marketing?
Brand marketing focuses on a brand's story, vision, mission, and values. On the other hand, product marketing includes messaging that is all about specifics, including what the product does, how it's used, and why it is better than others. It is more direct and to the point.
Why is branding important to the success of a product?
Branding is important for a product to differentiate it from the competition. It also allows you to create or narrow the market to exactly the people you want to reach. Without investing in product branding, you will be stuck in a sea of bland and poorly defined products, and this will definitely reflect in your sales.
How to align brand marketing efforts with overall business goals?
To align your brand marketing efforts with overall business goals, you need to set clear and realistic marketing goals, focus on the right tactics for your company, find important metrics and track them, analyse results and refine your strategy.
Final Thoughts
Whether you want to create a movement like Apple, have great brand recognition like McDonald's, or tell a story like Nike, the more detailed you are in your brand marketing, the simpler it will be to create, launch, and improve with each of your marketing campaigns. By following the strategies we highlighted in this guide, you can create a powerful brand marketing strategy that matches perfectly with your ideal customers and keeps you apart from the competition.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between brand marketing and product marketing?
Brand marketing focuses on a brand's story, vision, mission, and values. On the other hand, product marketing includes messaging that is all about specifics, including what the product does, how it's used, and why it is better than others. It is more direct and to the point.
Why is branding important to the success of a product?
Branding is important for a product to differentiate it from the competition. It also allows you to create or narrow the market to exactly the people you want to reach. Without investing in product branding, you will be stuck in a sea of bland and poorly defined products, and this will definitely reflect in your sales.
How to align brand marketing efforts with overall business goals?
To align your brand marketing efforts with overall business goals, you need to set clear and realistic marketing goals, focus on the right tactics for your company, find important metrics and track them, analyse results and refine your strategy.
Final Thoughts
Whether you want to create a movement like Apple, have great brand recognition like McDonald's, or tell a story like Nike, the more detailed you are in your brand marketing, the simpler it will be to create, launch, and improve with each of your marketing campaigns. By following the strategies we highlighted in this guide, you can create a powerful brand marketing strategy that matches perfectly with your ideal customers and keeps you apart from the competition.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between brand marketing and product marketing?
Brand marketing focuses on a brand's story, vision, mission, and values. On the other hand, product marketing includes messaging that is all about specifics, including what the product does, how it's used, and why it is better than others. It is more direct and to the point.
Why is branding important to the success of a product?
Branding is important for a product to differentiate it from the competition. It also allows you to create or narrow the market to exactly the people you want to reach. Without investing in product branding, you will be stuck in a sea of bland and poorly defined products, and this will definitely reflect in your sales.
How to align brand marketing efforts with overall business goals?
To align your brand marketing efforts with overall business goals, you need to set clear and realistic marketing goals, focus on the right tactics for your company, find important metrics and track them, analyse results and refine your strategy.
Final Thoughts
Whether you want to create a movement like Apple, have great brand recognition like McDonald's, or tell a story like Nike, the more detailed you are in your brand marketing, the simpler it will be to create, launch, and improve with each of your marketing campaigns. By following the strategies we highlighted in this guide, you can create a powerful brand marketing strategy that matches perfectly with your ideal customers and keeps you apart from the competition.
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