Brand Marketing
Brand Strength: Why You Should Invest in Your Brand
Your business’ brand is possibly your most important asset. It is the asset that you have the most control of and – if you are able to leverage your brand strength correctly – you can reap major benefits in your industry.
Strengthening your brand is no easy task. It takes time, patience, money, and a lot of hard work.
In this article, we will cover three aspects of brand strength:
- Your website
- Your competitors
- Proving your strength
But first, you may be wondering, what is brand strength?
Brand Strength Definition
Brand strength is the ability of a brand to create an emotional connection with customers and stand out from competitors in terms of customer loyalty, reputation, and perceived value. A strong brand can help differentiate your business from its competition and create an emotional bond with customers that will, in turn, keep them coming back for more.
Brand Marketing: Why Invest in Your Brand
You will only be able to strengthen your brand by investing in brand marketing. Importantly, however, marketing a brand differs from marketing a product or service.
Brand marketing is the process of creating, managing, and growing your brand identity and reputation. This involves creating a clear message about who you are as a company, what products or services you offer, and why customers should choose your business over others.
Brand marketing also includes activities like:
- Developing compelling visuals (e.g. logos)
- Using social media to enhance relationships with existing customers
- Attracting new potential customers through advertising
Brand marketing is essential for surviving in today’s competitive market. By creating a strong brand identity and reputation, you are investing in your business’ long-term health and success.
So, now we know what brand strength is and why you should invest in it, we will tell you exactly how you can build a strong brand.
A Strong Website Makes a Strong Brand
If your website represents the first time a potential customer interacts with your business, what does it say about you?
Put simply, a slow, unhelpful website communicates to a potential customer that your business lacks credibility. If a customer struggles to find what they are looking for, they will simply go to a competitor. In fact, 88% of users are less likely to return to a website following a bad experience! Meanwhile, a well-designed, well-thought-out website shows that you care about your customers. This investment will go a long way to building a strong brand.
At every stage of a web build and continued development, it is important that user experience is your priority. In other words, your website must be designed with the user in mind. Is it easy to navigate? Is it optimized for mobile users? Is the content helpful? These are the sorts of questions you need to ask yourself, and the answer to all of them must be yes. Hiring a UI/UX design agency will help ensure that this is the case.
Your website is often the first impression people get of your brand, so it needs to be modern and professional. It should show off your products or services in the best light possible.
How Your Competitors Position Their Brand
By performing competitor research, you can gain valuable insights into your industry. You can use this information to learn from your competitors’ mistakes and make sure that your brand stands out from the crowd.
Identifying what your competitors are doing well will help you improve your website. There is no reason why you should not use them as a learning tool. They may not have better products or a better service than you, but if they perform more effective marketing campaigns they might attract more customers.
So, here’s a few things you can do to effectively monitor your competitors:
- Sign up to their newsletter
- Follow them on social media
- Read their blog
Newsletter
The first thing you should do is sign up to your competitor’s newsletter. Their newsletter is how they position themselves and their brand to already existing customers.
Even the sign-up process is important to understand. Do they offer money off for signing up? What wording do they use? What email platform do they use? Answering these questions will help you understand how they entice potential customers to sign up and existing customers to come back.
Then, once you start to receive your competitor’s emails, you can see how often they send them. Try to spot patterns e.g. is there any particular day or time they stick to?
Finally, read the content of the newsletter. What title do they use? What is their leading story or deal? Do they have more content on the rest of the email, or does it just focus on one subject? How do they attempt to bring customers to their website?
Once you have an understanding of what may work best, it’s time to test it out on your website or as part of your online marketing efforts. Invest in UX writing and build your email lists.
Social Media
Following your competition on social media tells you what their brand marketing strategy is day-to-day. However, it should be said that you should never engage with any competitor post.
You will gain an understanding of how they present their brand and how they would like to be seen by their customers. They may also present themselves slightly differently on different platforms, tailored to different audiences. When using LinkedIn Ads, they may be professional, on Instagram more personal, on Twitter more informative, and on Facebook a mixture of personal and professional.
If you use social media, it is important to understand each audience and how best to interact with them. Many businesses opt to use a social media management service for all the benefits of competitor research and the expertise to run campaigns.
Blog
Reading your competitor’s blog is important for a number of reasons. Firstly, it is good to keep up to date with the latest news they might share. Secondly, you can identify the content strategy they are working towards. Finally, you can understand their SEO strategy and develop better content than they are producing.
If your competitors do not utilize a blog for their SEO efforts, it gives you an opportunity to use your own blog to eclipse their brand presence on search engines. Furthermore, if you hire an agency with SEO services, they will be able to develop a data-driven strategy that will boost your rankings.
Strengthening Your Brand
In order to strengthen your brand, you need a persistent strategy that makes your business appear as the best option for new and existing customers.
Your brand strategy should include your website and everything you discovered from your competitors. Then, once your strategy is live, consistency needs to be built into your marketing approach. A strong reputation in quality and consistency of service needs to be managed throughout the whole business.
Building Your Brand Is an Ongoing Process…
Think of the strongest brands in the world, like Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, or Apple. They never stop reinforcing their brand through marketing. Once you have established a strong brand, then you need to continue presenting a strong brand to your customers and clients.
At Trafiki, we have worked with global brands and we know what it takes to build a brand from the ground up. We use a combination of powerful web design, intelligent user experience optimization, targeted search engine marketing (SEM), all of which are underpinned by a data-driven approach.
If you want to discuss how to build your brand online then book a free 30-minute discovery call with our digital experts today.
