When building brand recognition and awareness is the goal, you may find the following branding activities to be particularly useful:
Giveaways: A giveaway is just what it sounds like: providing free merchandise or services to consumers. Giveaways may involve swag, such as branded pens, key chains, koozies, and retail bags; sample products or services; free trial subscriptions; or contests. You can do giveaways alone or in conjunction with partners (see Chapter 9). You can do them at physical locations (see Chapter 11), online via your website or blog (see Chapter 12), or via social media (see Chapter 13).
Press releases: Harnessing the power of the press (print, television, radio, and online news) is a great way to create buzz with very little effort. All you need to do is plan something newsworthy, such as an exciting event or a product launch, and distribute a press release about it. (See Chapter 10 for more about teaming up with the media.)
Influencer campaign: An influencer campaign is a marketing tactic that involves recruiting or hiring people who are well known and trusted in target markets to give their endorsements. See Chapter 13 for guidance on how to launch an influencer campaign of your own.Whenever I add a new product to my Girl Gang brand, I initiate a small, organic influencer campaign. Over time, I’ve developed strong relationships with a small group of influencers, who contribute significantly to the success of every new product release. You may be able to expand your brand’s reach with one macro influencer or multiple micro influencers. A macro influencer is someone with celebrity status (a household name) — someone with tens of thousands to millions of followers on social media. A micro influencer, on the other hand, has followers in the range of 10,000 to 50,000. Micro influencers charge significantly less for their services and may even promote a brand they really like for free.
Brand partnerships: A brand partnership is an agreement between at least two businesses that want to help each other increase their brand exposure. Teaming up with a brand that has an audience you’re hoping to reach can be very helpful. Strategically partnering with another brand can bring in a new audience, create sales opportunities, and offer brand exposure for both companies. (See Chapter 9 for details about building strategic partnerships.)Impossible Foods, a vegan food company famous for its plant-based burger patty, teamed up with Burger King to create the Impossible Whopper. This brand partnership is a great match because each company is reaching a new market. Burger King is adding a menu item for vegetarian customers who previously wouldn’t buy its beef burgers, and Impossible Foods is reaching customers at a popular fast-food chain who may not have tried its product.
Traditional advertising: Depending on the product or service you offer, traditional advertising in the right outlet can help create brand awareness. If you’re launching a coaching business, taking out an advertisement in a magazine or journal that’s popular in your industry can give you exposure to precisely the market you’re trying to reach. Before buying any ad space, check out the publication’s circulation, which provides insight into the maximum number of people who will see the advertisement, as well as the demographic, which is the target audience. Use these to make sure the reach and target demographic align with your goals. For the purpose of increasing brand awareness, this metric (measure of value) is key.
THE POWER OF THE PRESS
To promote my husband’s Color Me Book brand (personalized coloring books), we created a press release and posted it to one media outlet: BuzzFeed Books. After the press release was picked up and trending on the main BuzzFeed website, we started attracting more interest for interviews and features.
To make it easy for others to discuss the launch of our company online (on their websites, blogs, and social media accounts), I posted our press release and media kit on our website in a section titled About Us. This material included the basic info, logos, and high-resolution photos needed to produce articles and other content about the Color Me Book brand quickly and easily.
I also included an email address dedicated to press inquiries that journalists and bloggers could use to contact us for interviews. As soon as news of his product hit the press, it went viral, and orders started pouring in.
Creating an emotional connection
In many ways, building a strong brand is about building strong relationships. People form relationships with one another based not so much on what they think about each other but on how they feel toward one another. The same is true of relationships that people create with their favorite brands. It’s not so much what they know about your brand but how they feel about it that keeps them coming back and endorsing it.
One of your top branding goals should be to create an emotional connection with existing and prospective customers and clients. Stop thinking so much about what your brand is and what it offers, and start thinking more about how prospective customers and clients feel about it. How does your brand affect their lives? Get personal. Taking a more personalized approach enables you to nurture an emotional connection between your customers and your brand.
Here are a few suggestions for getting your customers, clients, and prospects connected more emotionally to your brand:
Get connected to the people in your market. When you’re connected to others, you’re in tune with their needs and desires, what they like and dislike, and who they are. You “get” them, and when you do, you intuitively know what to do and say to get them to love your brand. Maybe they appreciate a good laugh. Maybe they’re afraid of what’s going on in the world. Maybe they have a common cause.When you know what makes your customers tick, you can market more effectively to them. If you’re serving a community that’s committed to environmental issues, you could post blog entries about environmental issues and perhaps offer products made from recycled materials.
Share real stories. People like to see brands in a real-life context, so look for opportunities to tell customer stories. Better yet, encourage customers to share their experiences with your brand. You can take advantage of this type of user-generated content (see Chapter 13) in your social media, website, and newsletter.
Add a personal touch. Nothing makes a person feel more emotionally connected to a brand than being acknowledged and appreciated personally. Adding a personal touch can be as simple as addressing customers by name, calling them on the phone when they have a complaint, or liking and sharing their social media posts about your brand. Strive to personalize your brand’s voice, as explained in Chapter 8, especially when you’re scaling up and having to delegate or outsource some or all of your marketing. Creating a brand style guide, as explained in Chapter 6, can help ensure consistency in your brand’s voice when you’re having to distribute your workload.
Differentiating your business, product, service, or self
Brand differentiation involves setting your brand apart from the competition, and it’s one of the most important branding goals. You want to plant the perception in the minds and hearts of existing and prospective