What are brand marketing strategies and how can utilizing brand marketing strategies help an online business? Just like a bricks and mortar business, an online business also needs to suggest a positive image to the customer. In spite of what many people believe, branding is much more than creating a company logo and using a specific color scheme. Brand marketing strategies should also include the purpose, focus and image of the business. Let’s discuss some of the benefits with regards to brand marketing strategies.

Benefits of Branding:

• Having your own brand helps people to remember your company as opposed to companies using a common name. Brand marketing strategies are about helping the target market to distinguish your company focus and purpose. Consumers are more likely to turn to your business when they are aware of what you do and what you’re all about.
• Brand marketing strategies also will help you to become well recognized. People who may not yet have done business with you should still be able to recognize who you are and what you do. If they see your advertisements on the internet, receive your newsletter, receive regular mailings from your company by email, etc. then you’ve established a brand identity. When the tine arrives that they require your product or service then your company will be the first that they think of.
• Using brand marketing strategies will help get and retain customer loyalties. It is a fact that people bond closely with brand identities. The astute consumer wants a quality product or service from a company they know they can trust. In delivering great brand identity people tend to remember you and your company. Quite frequently they’ll refer family, friends and associates to you based on their level of satisfaction.
• Buyers will pay for image, it’s that simple. Society is very “brand aware.” Commonly people associate certain brand names with superiority and only choose to purchase certain brands for that reason. Brand marketing strategies can reward a business well when done wisely. When a consumer only wants one certain brand of a product or service, they are willing to pay any price to get it. Establishing a great brand using brand marketing strategies will give your company a superior brand image and make the consumer forget about the competition.

Brand Marketing Strategies Initial Steps Of Branding Yourself

It’s worth repeating that branding is much more than a logo and color scheme or a catchy motto. When using brand marketing strategies there are some initial steps that should to be followed to create a successful brand image.

Step 1: Brand Marketing Strategies Focus On the Competition

A key factor in creating a successful brand image for the network marketer is to set yourself apart from the competition. It’s imperitive to find how the consumer sees the competition and to recognize how the competitor sets themselves apart from others. Identifying the competitors weaknesses and strengths is also important. When the competition’s weaknesses are learned it’s much easier to learn from their weaknesses and can be an asset in helping to portray your business in a more positive manner.

Step 2: Brand Marketing Strategies Recognize Your Strengths

Once the competition’s weaknesses are known the focus should move to defining your own company’s strengths. Running a target market analysis can be most advantageous when what is learned from it is used. The usefulness of this tool will be realized by confirming that your company strengths are actually important to your target market. In knowing your company strengths and what strengths are important to your customers, you now have the ability to market these successfully to the public involving them in your branding campaign. Branding marketing strategies have to be implemented properly to work.

Step 3: Brand Marketing Strategies Be familiar with Your Customer

Getting familiar with the consumer is another key branding marketing strategy not to be ignored. Find out about their buying behaviors, how frequently do they buy? Are their purchases a select few or a wider array of services and products. Asking these types of questions can help to better market to the consumer. Also finding out your target customer’s needs, standard of living, attitudes and mindsets. In discovering and working with these personality qualities another key to marketing success has been found.

Step 4: Brand Marketing Strategies Be Your Brand

Be your brand, live your brand by making certain that your company truly expresses the brand identity you’ve established. In other words if you’ve established quick response time to customer inquires as one of your brand marketing strategies, then you must give response time to your customers. Every member of the company should live your brand and be your brand for your brand marketing strategies to be useful.

How to Make Sales With Branding

After the brand marketing strategies are in place then what? When thinking of the McDonald’s brand what comes to mind? Do the golden arches come to mind or Ronald McDonald? Similarly it is important to choose a niche online and brand our business accordingly. Get recognized for doing well in I area before moving on to another. Here’re some of the things needed to sell online with branding after the brand marketing strategies have been implemented.

1) Your own company website. This shows that you’re in fact a serious entrepreneur. Nothing screams amateur more than somebody showing a replicated affiliate web page. Your own domain hosted website is a wise brand marketing strategy.

2) An auto responder service and opt in form are two “must haves” in brand marketing strategies. Very likely your site’s visitors won’t purchase or join on the first visit. So when they leave your site you may lose them for good unless you capture their name in an opt in form. In doing this you are able to follow up with a series of emails messages. The follow up email messages help to reinforce your brand name in your target consumers’ minds. Remembering to keep the follow up at a respectful level of persistence can win sales.

All serious entrepreneurs must have an auto responder service. In adding to this brand marketing strategy you can increase your chances of capturing visitor names by offering a free gift like a report or eBook.

3) A profile picture of yourself and online signature adds not only a personal touch to your brand marketing strategies but lets your readers see that you are a real person.

4) Sound, if your speaking voice is pleasant then put a voice recording together with your profile picture and signature to help humanize your company website and establish a relationship with your audience. This is a great brand marketing strategy that works well for many marketers.

5) Start a business blog. Your blog can be an add on to your primary domain or if you’re working on a tight budget you can use a free blog service at least until you start to realize some profits. Every brand marketing strategy discussed here can be used into a free blog. The blog should be updated often with fresh, unique content that is relevant to your niche. The message of the blog should remain a consistent one, so off topic content should not be added. The goal is to keep the theme and message consistent. Readers of your blog can be kept updated about your blog’s content by using RSS feeds.

6) A final brand marketing strategy that will be very important to the online marketer is a domain name. A domain name can be registered and forwarded to point to your blog if you don’t use an add on to your primary website domain. Showing your audience that you’ve registered your own domain will show them that you are serious about your business.

Brand marketing strategies should be an integral part of all online business as people do want to do business with people that they know, like and trust.

A Marketing strategy is crucial if you want to really succeed in your marketing. Amongst its advantages are:

1. Helping you to focus your marketing attention.

2. Better complete utilization of resources

3. Helps in increasing sales; and

4. A powerful resource of winning over your competitors.

Every company applies some kind of marketing strategies to maintain existing customers, attract potential customers and also to maintain and enhance their reputation in the market.

When designing a marketing plan, first a marketing strategy is taken into consideration. The marketing plan consists of steps to be taken so as to attain success in the implementation of the marketing strategy chosen. Big projects involve selection of different strategies at different levels. Usually a strategy consists of well-sketched tactics. They are meant to meet the needs and finally reach marketing objectives.

Each of the strategies has pre-calculated results because when a particular strategy is chosen at a particular level, its outcome becomes the goal of that particular level. If there is an absence of a well thought out strategy in a marketing plan it means it is supposedly lacking a good foundation. A reasonable marketing strategy should not only facilitate marketing goals, but also the action sequence of a campaign.

At regular time intervals the firm should analyze the marketing decision. This is done with the help of strategic models. The 3C’s model is usaully considered for this purpose. The 3C’s model determines the factors, which leads to the success of a marketing campaign.

There are three key parties involved in this model. These are:

>>> The corporation

>>> The customer; and

>>> The competitors.

The involvement of all the three key parties leads to positive results and this involvement is known as the 3C’s or strategic triangle.

The role of the corporation is to increase the strength of the company in the success critical areas, when compared to that of the competitor. The customer and his interest form the basis of any strategy. The competitor also plays a vital part. The competitor-based strategies are based on the functioning of business competitors like design and engineering, sales and servicing, and purchasing.

When making a marketing plan some particular strategies known as mix strategies are used. 4P’s model is used to calculate whether the plan is sticking to the strategies or not.

The four Ps stand for product, price, place and promotion. Products are goods produced by the company on a huge scale for the purpose of selling them and earning profit. Price is the money paid for a product by the customer. The price is based on many factors like competition, market share, customer perception and product identity. Place where the product is sold can be either physical store or store on the Internet. It is also known as distribution channel. To make the customer knowledgeable about a product, the marketer does promotion. It involves advertising, public relation and point of sale.

There are different types of marketing strategies based on some criteria. Some of the common marketing strategies are:

1. Market dominance strategies – Market dominance strategies are used to dominate the market. Examples of these are Challenger, Leader and Follower.

2. Porter generic strategies – Porter generic strategies are built on strategic strength or competing abilities and strategic scope or market penetration. Cost leadership, Market segmentation and Product differentiation are types of porter generic strategies.

3. Innovation strategies – Innovation strategies are meant to trigger the rate of product development and model innovation. It helps you as a business to incorporate latest technologies. Close followers, late follower and Pioneers are types of innovation strategies.

4. Growth strategies – Growth strategies facilitate the growth of the organization. Intensification, Diversification, Vertical integration and Horizontal integration are types of growth strategies.

5. Marketing warfare strategies are conjunction of marketing strategies and military strategies.

A marketing strategy or a mix of them is chosen only after thorough market research. A marketer should always be ready to face any kind of situations like if the strategy is changed in the middle, he should be able to perform another market research so as to choose the proper strategy, within a short period of time. This can be done easily if you have the experience.

For many B2B marketers, the traditional marketing funnel that motivates prospects to self-identify and then move to a sales funnel, is ingrained in our minds. However, in the Age of the Customer, Forrester Research’s phrase for a customer-driven marketing landscape, the funnel has evolved to reflect a new customer expectation requiring sales and marketing to work in tandem.

With this in mind, B2B marketers must evaluate how their current B2B marketing strategy is aligned with the psychology of their buyer journey. In other words, B2B marketers must know how to craft a marketing strategy based on the predominance of the customer.

So, we have outlined a series of steps to follow when crafting a customer-centric B2B marketing strategy. Ask yourself and your team, “have we checked the following boxes when crafting our B2B marketing strategy?”

IDENTIFY TARGET PERSONAS IN YOUR B2B MARKETING STRATEGY

Going through the exercise to develop personas based on market and customer research is fundamental to understanding not only who is your audience but how to engage them in the buyer journey. Incorporating marketing personas makes websites two to five times more effective and easier to use by targeted users. However, only 44% of B2B marketers use buyer personas. So, ensure your B2B marketing strategy includes persona-based experiences that moves buyers forward in their journey with your brand.

MAP A PERSONA-BASED CUSTOMER JOURNEY TO DRIVE YOUR B2B MARKETING STRATEGY

Building out your influencer and decision personas to understand your target audience is only part of the process of laying a customer-centric foundation for your strategy. Next is to map the touch points of your buyer journey through all buyer stages. In order to close the loop from awareness to revenue it’s critical to know the touch points along the journey that are motivators and detractors in order to influence all parts of the customer experience. When developing your B2B marketing strategy answer the following, “How do I craft a strategy with the framework that aligns with your customer’s journey to gain clarity and define priority?”

DEFINE AND MEASURE B2B MARKETING STRATEGY GOALS & METRICS

Perhaps a no-brainer for a data-driven B2B marketer is clearly-defined metrics for success. With a heightened emphasis on personalization and customer experience (CX), B2B marketing goals and metrics must be established to measure the success of the marketing efforts supporting a customer’s progression through the buyer journey. Your B2B marketing strategy must outline how it will create direct contribution to revenue with a return and fuel high growth.

A recent case study example from one of our technology platform and services clients is Viewpointe, a leading private cloud managed services provider. Viewpointe was challenged with continuing to engage customers over the course of a 6+ month sales cycle. After clearly defining their B2B marketing goals, they aligned their content marketing plan with their persona-based customer journey. As a result, Viewpointe stayed engaged with their customers throughout the buyer journey and closed more deals. One way Viewpointe measured customer engagement lift was a 52% increase in persona aligned website content and 164% increase in blog content engagement from organic search referrals.

YOUR B2B MARKETING STRATEGY INCORPORATES ACTIONABLE INSIGHTS WITH SALES

Referring back to our earlier customer funnel illustration, the traditional hand-off from marketing to sales, with no feedback loop when a lead is “flipped over the fence to sales”, causing misalignment between B2B marketing and sales teams. In fact, 25% of B2B marketers have no idea what is their customer conversion rate. In the Age of the Customer, your marketing strategy should outline how to rip out the proverbial fence and instead encourage inter-team collaboration. Ensuring this marketing and sales alignment is crucial to creating a consistent customer experience along a buyer’s journey. Being intentional about sharing insights between teams is one way to encourage broad acceptance of a successful B2B marketing strategy execution.

YOUR NEXT STEP

With only 45% of B2B marketers confident that they have decent, if not high, levels of customer centricity, the time to is now to author your new B2B marketing strategy that elevates you above your competition.