improve brand recognition

How to Improve Brand Recognition in 2021

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Developing your brand is essential to your ability to attract new leads and convert new customers. The more recognizable your brand becomes, the easier it will become to generate brand trust and to build your audience. For instance, if a consumer is searching for a specific solution and they find two or three options, one of which is from a brand they recognize, they will typically gravitate towards that brand. As such, recognizability is crucial. With that in mind, the following are five ways that you can improve brand recognition this year:

1. Identify Your Target Audience

If you can’t recognize who your audience is, you can’t expect them to recognize your brand. All of your branding strategies and decisions depend on who you’re trying to reach. A company’s worth is highly reliant on whether or not they provide solutions that meet the needs or solve the problems of its customers. If you’re targeting people who have no need for your solutions, then those who do are going to be confused about your brand. The more you understand who your audience is, the more likely you’ll be able to build a brand that they will be able to recognize.

2. Develop A Clear Brand Message

You need to be clear about what your objectives are as a brand. This includes your mission, your vision, and your purpose. Think about how Apple’s message is about innovation and creating technology that’s not only user-friendly but essential to a creative and independent lifestyle. This message is clear because Apple has developed and promoted its message since the 1980s. If your message isn’t clear, consumers become confused. An unclear message can send the wrong message, thereby hurting your brand’s recognizability. building brand recognition

3. Build Your Brand Identity

Your brand identity involves a lot of different elements. The most obvious is the logo. If your brand becomes strong enough, a unique logo can be recognized even if your company name isn’t part of it. Take for example Nike’s swoosh. Everybody knows that the swoosh is Nike even if their name doesn’t accompany the logo. Although the visual connection of the logo is important, it’s not the only component of your brand identity. The tone of voice you use in your content, the reputation you have, and the brand storytelling you use to deliver your message are all vital to building a strong brand identity.

Here are 5 additional reasons why brand marketing works.

4. Maintain Branding Consistency

Consistency is key to making your brand recognizable. If your message varies from one platform to another, people are going to get confused about who you are. For example, if you run a clothing company and you position yourself as a luxury clothing brand on Instagram but then promote affordable shoe wear on Facebook, people won’t know what you are or who you’re targeting, making it more difficult to recognize your brand.

Additionally, the aesthetic of your brand and the tone of voice should be consistent over all channels. Use the same colors and logos on every platform. Do not change the tone of your brand to try and fit the channel you’re using. If you use an excited, informal tone on one channel, don’t use a formal, level-headed tone on the other. If you switch tones, people won’t recognize that you’re the same brand using both channels. Consistency across all of your marketing efforts is essential to building a strong brand that’s recognizable across all channels.

5. Develop And Implement A Long-Term Marketing Strategy

Even if you’ve spent a lot of time crafting your brand, you still need to build awareness to boost recognizability. This is where your marketing efforts come into play. You need to figure out where and when you can reach your target audience, as well as what marketing efforts will help to effectively deliver your message and spread brand awareness. Such efforts will not succeed overnight — you need to develop a comprehensive long-term branding strategy to successfully boost your brand recognition.

Building your brand is crucial to your company’s success. Even if your brand has been established for some time, brand development should never stop. You should always look for ways to increase brand awareness, and improving brand recognition is necessary to do just that. As such, you should consider implementing these effective strategies to improve brand recognition in 2021.

brand strategy

How to Share Your Message With A New Brand Strategy?

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Brands fight to gain attention. Brands need communication without words. Brands are psychology and science brought together as a promise mark as opposed to a trademark.

Products have life cycles, but brands outlive products. Brands convey a uniform quality, credibility and experience. Brands are valuable.

Without branding, there is no differentiation. Without differentiation, there is no long-term profitability. People don’t have relationships with products, they develop relationships with brands.

Read more

b2b marketing strategy

Integrating Story Branding With Your B2B Marketing Strategy

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Marketers have realized that their audiences’ attention spans are getting shorter by the day. In an effort to get it back, they resort to anything to engage them: humor, sex, etc. However, it is one thing to get involved in a commercial and another to get involved in a brand. Successful brands market by forging a deeper emotional connection using story branding which is a part of attraction marketing.

In a technique called The Hero’s Quest, they create a story with a hero, a conflict, and a resolution. The hero has a certain drive like love that leads him to action past certain barriers and eventual conquest. Generating emotional connection with the story is what sells. To be successful in B2B marketing strategy, make your brand the hero of your own story.

Where story branding and marketing integrate:

Distinction

Consumers have vast amounts of choice today but are drawn to the one they can relate to. Distinction is vital in any marketing strategy. A good, realistic brand story enhances a brand’s overall presence regardless of its competitive position in the industry. The right perception hits the audiences’ emotional quotient, tipping it in your favor. Wrapping up your brand in a more meaningful story context further adds value to it. To fellow businesses, buying your product will mean getting higher utility compared to the others in the competition.

Humanizing your brand

A successful B2B marketing strategy is one that humanizes your brand. A brand story cannot be underestimated in doing the job. Individual experiences like those of Steve Jobs, when fed into a company message, go a long way in personalizing and even achieving celebrity like status for your brand. You can use employee or your founder experience for this. Although you cannot have complete control of your story, a little positive twist helps to strengthen it by making it more interesting. Your marketing strategy is even boosted further as a result. A story should be a corporate persuasion tool that leads your audience to you.

Read more on 4 Strategies For Improving Your B2B Customer Experience.

Emotion is more compelling than a straight fact

In spoken word, good oratory skills are regarded highly and can be more compelling when they involve more emotion than fact. Arousing an audiences’ emotion can create big turnaround in your brand path. The Royal navy for example, uses stories to boost confidence and productivity where it is expected of the military to have a tough, factual approach to communication. That B2B cannot use warm and emotive storytelling is not a true rationale. Make your story more willingly received and memorable to achieve greater marketing success.

Interplay

There is a two way exchange between telling a story and marketing success. Story branding strengthens your business whereas a good, stronger business performance reinforces your story. Similarly, poor performance becomes part of your brand story just as easily. A B2B marketing strategy can be shaped but success will always depended on perception. Story branding is one way of building this perception.

brand storytelling examples

Brand Storytelling Examples to Learn From

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Your brand identity goes beyond your name, logo, and the products or services you provide. A brand identity is all-encompassing: it also includes your goals, your beliefs, and the feelings you elicit from your audience. To create a strong brand identity, you need to create a narrative that’s consistent across all channels. This is where brand storytelling comes in. Brand storytelling involves using storytelling techniques that bring together both facts and emotions to create your brand identity. The following are five brand storytelling examples that you should use as inspiration to help create and drive your own brand story:

1. Apple

Apple is arguably one of the greatest examples of successful marketing in the history of marketing. They were able to capture a small corner of a market dominated by Microsoft and, through the use of incredibly effective brand storytelling, turn themselves into a behemoth. Knowing that they were up against Microsoft, Apple decided that their message would be to go against the grain. They would position themselves as a revolutionary innovator. Their “think different” tagline showcases this, as does all of their other advertising. Their most famous ad is the most obvious example: the 1984 ad in which a woman defiantly smashes the screen with a sledgehammer.

brand storytelling example

2. Ikea

Ikea has built its brand on the functionality and simplicity of its products, which they showcase using lighthearted humor. Their most famous commercial “Lamp” highlights this. It’s a commercial showing an old lamp being replaced and being thrown away. It’s a sob story until a narrator shows up to exclaim that the viewer is crazy to feel bad about the old lamp since it doesn’t have feelings, and the new one is much better. It gets a great laugh and emphasizes the need to update old products with newer, higher-quality versions.

3. Old Spice

Old Spice used to be a brand associated with older men. The word “old” certainly didn’t help. They altered their brand storytelling to emphasize that the scent of old spice was how men should smell. They used humor and great writing to convey this, but what made the storytelling particularly effective was that they didn’t target men — they targeted women. Old Spice essentially focused on delivering a message to women about how their men should smell, so that they could influence men on Old Spice’s behalf.

How to build your own brand story

4. SoulCycle

What’s interesting about SoulCycle is that it basically consists of a class full of people riding exercise bikes. That’s it. There’s nothing more to it. But their brand storytelling has lifted this simple service into something much greater. They have positioned themselves as a high-end fitness service that’s not just a service, but a lifestyle. This lifestyle includes the use of teachers who are essentially fitness influencers and classes that are almost club-like in their atmosphere. Members feel like they belong to a community, not a gym. Without their incredibly effective brand storytelling, you could argue that they would be a glorified gym with limited equipment.

5. Warby Parker

Warby Parker is a glasses frame manufacturer that has positioned itself as a company that sells fashionable frames at reasonable prices. Their storytelling focuses on how they build their frames and on the customers that buy them. In fact, much of their content is user-generated, which helps emphasize that they are frames built for everyone. Their message gets across because they keep their brand storytelling simple and focused.

These are a few brand storytelling examples to keep in mind when crafting your brand story strategy. Successful brand storytelling will strengthen your company’s identity, thereby making it easier to evoke an emotional response from your audience and to build long-lasting connections with them. By implementing an effective brand storytelling strategy, you’ll be more likely to increase your company’s visibility, impact, and — eventually — profit.

advertising agency

Top 5 Reasons of Proof That Brand Marketing Works

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I hear these three words every month, DOES MARKETING WORK? I can give you five reasons that support the answer of “absolutely”. Brand Marketing is as powerful as being number one or number three.

Reason 1) If you are a woman, what lipstick do you wear? What Shampoo do you use? What brand Jeans do you own? Women spend an average of $15,000 on makeup in their lifetimes. Beauty manufacturers spent $2.2 billion on advertising last year. Marketers allocated most of their ad spend to TV (42%) and print (54%). So what makes you buy the brand you purchased? Whatever your answer, it stems from marketing. The formula to penetrate into your mind is a complex one. But you have been brainwashed whether you accept it or not.

Reason 2) Typically, if you are of age, you are driving your car. Why are you a BMW or Volkswagen driver? Does not every brand have some sort of emotional and intellectual connection with you? What are your thoughts on a Mercedes Benz driver? The reason you have these thoughts are because of this fact:

  • General Motors spent 3.5 billion on advertising last year
  • Ford Motors spent 2.7 billion on advertising last year
  • Fiat Chrysler Automobiles spent 2.2 billion on advertising last year

Automakers sold almost 18 million vehicles. Do you think they would do all this advertising if it didn’t work? Marketing is the driving force to give you a lasting impression when it comes time to purchase your next car. You probably already know what vehicle represents who you are. Brand loyalty is also a big piece of the advertising puzzle and they spend millions to keep you coming back.

Reason 3) You’re hooked on some television shows? Why is that? How did you find out about them? The advertising to capture an audience of a certain demographics has become easier with all the analytical data thats accessible. You may of picked a show just because you liked that actor or actress. They too are a brand. I want to focus on one show and one show only, NFL Programming. NFL are branding machines. They encourage Fantasy Football, they can charge up to $600,000 for a .30 spot on Sunday Night Football, they have begun to market to women and they have the best branded show in the history of shows, the Super Bowl. Why then are they losing shares at the end of 2016?

Factors for decline:

  • The Chicago Cubs win
  • Donald Trumps Election (this took shares away from everyone)
  • Deflate-gate debacle
  • Stand on Domestic Violence
  • The respect of the American Flag

Americans are standing up for what they believe in. Colin Kaepernicks kneeling at the American Flag has still left Colin a free agent who is not signed. He is not liked and this is linked to the NFL. The NFL needed to take a stance and speak out on the issues pertaining to this behavior. They remained quiet and seeing how that impacted them must be painful. How smart proof is your company? New factors always pop up and how you address them might mean your brand lives on, or dies over time. Don’t get me wrong, the NFL will bounce back since they have a great cash surplus. They just signed a deal with Amazon for the rights to Thursday Night Football. Now that is re-inventing yourself while keeping your brand.

They do have the strictest guidelines when it comes to using their brand. I respect them for protecting their assets, for making counterfeiters go to jail, and great product placement with partnerships. Who else could have every football team on a BudLight can? But always remember your demographics. NFL might just have lost that reality when they don’t take a stand on players actions. Never take your eye off the ball.

Learn more on Defining Your True Brand Story and Bringing it to Life Online.

Reason 4)  The grocery store is a subject of brands. I want to focus on just beer. How is it that Bud Light leads the beer division. If you drink beer, you have a favorite. The reason might be image or taste. But you tried other beers because of marketing. If you say no to this idea, how did you hear about the other beers in the first place? If your answer is friends, that is also marketing. Word of mouth marketing is still the most powerful marketing this century. And your friends received the marketing somehow. Alcohol ads have increased 400% over the last 40 years. The industry spends around 89% of its advertising dollars on television, according to research done by Citigroup. Bud Light spent 85 million dollars on TV ad placements in 2014. Today Anheuser-Busch spends 1.68 billion in all advertising spends. They have averaged 1.4 billion over the last decade. It’s the reason they have 48% of the beer market. How else would a company stay above the rest in the highly competitive beer category?

Reason 5)  Fast Food. McDonalds has a value of 88 billion and next on the list is Starbucks with 43 billion. To understand this slightly better, Burger King has a value of 3.6 billion. A huge wide difference. So why the separation you may ask? McDonalds spent 5.9 billion on advertising in the United States alone. Burger King spent 255 million on advertising, which has contributed to the separation of these two brands. Marketing obviously works or McDonalds would not continue this spending trend for over a decade. I do wonder, if Burger King had good marketing and spent what McDonalds spends, if they would jump over Starbucks? Product is still king. There is a connection of why Coca-Cola and Bud Light are both the most valuable soft drink and beer brands in the World. Marketing, and marketing dollars allocated.

Those are five samples of how creative marketing builds brands to lead a nation. Marketing + Strategy + Creative + Execution = A powerful formula for elevating your product or brand. I will agree that all samples above have unlimited budgets. My point to this blog was to simply support the concept that you are a victim of marketing and strong marketers seem to rise above the competition. What is your company doing to rise above?

brand marketing strategy

5 Examples To Improve Brand Marketing Strategy Using Amazon Alexa

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Amazon’s Echo is a voice-controlled home device that uses Alexa technology. Such devices are providing marketers new and exciting platforms to improve brand marketing strategy by better connecting with their customers and fans. Companies are using the voice-enabled platform to offer more creative and frequently updated content to their users. Learn from these brands that have timely adopted the new concepts of digital marketing and integrated artificial intelligence into their brand marketing strategy to listen to your customers’ needs and generate audio content that develops and fosters effective relationships.

1.    Digiday

You must be familiar with Digiday, a renowned portal for information on digital marketing industry. In just ninety seconds you can know the top marketing news while drinking your morning coffee, and through a human voice not a robotic one. Moreover, users can request Alexa to stream music through Spotify or order a ride through Uber.

2.    Giant Spoon

As a leading communications and market strategy agency, Giant Spoon distributes its personal content in innovative ways. It is fun and lighthearted and tends to capture the overall feel of this company.For instance, if you ask the company for brainstorming help, you may get a snarky response like: We are currently low on ideas, hire an influencer. This could be a good ice breaker before you start a meeting.

As voice has become the new frontier for many interactive experiences, a platform like Alexa provides brands a big opportunity to play differently in a new and exciting environment on a revolutionary canvas to enhance their brand marketing strategy.brand marketing strategy

3.    Web Analytics

If you want to evaluate your brand marketing strategy, analytics is must. If you want to know how your new marketing campaign is going,rather than accessing and going through Google Analytics reports, simply ask Alexa and it will pull the numbers and details for you. You can use both granular and broad queries to stay updated on real-time traffic data.

Are you a marketer? Here is an article with some helpful tips for Google Analytics

4.    The American Heart Association

Using Alexa you can ask AHA how you can perform CPR to get a step-by-stepwalkthrough, or know the important warning signs of a heart attack or stroke. This is another example of how you can provide value or benefits to your audience through a voice-enabled platform.

5.    GoodNes

Nestlé has introduced Amazon Alexa customers to a unique and convenient visual and voice browsing experience with the launch of its GoodNes skill for Alexa. With an Alexa device, consumers can now improve their cooking experience using voice instructions as well as a visual guide that lets users see and hear recipe steps in the paired web browser. It also provides them access to valuable nutritional information, fun facts, ingredients, and useful how-to videos especially designed to help them learn new cooking recipes and techniques.

You can find the GoodNes voice-assisted skill in the Alexa store. Once you enable the skill, you can link your account with your email to get a link to the unique visual guide. This visual guide is fully compatible with Safari and Chrome web browsers on laptops, tablets, and desktop computers.

b2b branding

B2B Branding Tips For The New Buyer

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Over the past few years, B2B business has seen a dramatic shift in the decision makers involved in purchasing. Now more than ever before Millennials are at the forefront of the company decisions especially when it comes to purchasing. According to a survey conducted by Google 2015 was the first year that nearly half of all B2B purchase influencers were Millennials. This shift impacts not only the B2B branding message but where that message is displayed as well since most Millennials spend a majority of their day online.

One of the biggest differences between Millennials and decision makers in the past is how they evaluate and research potential purchases. The same traditional advertising that worked on baby boomers is not going to work on Millennials and chances are they’re much further down in the purchase funnel before they even contact you. Thanks to the Internet and social media, decision makers do their own research on what they need, want, and whom they want to work with.

With more than 87 percent of online Millennials using Facebook and other social media sites, it’s imperative that your business has a strong social media and online presence however it’s not as simple as setting up pages and scheduling out posts. Millennials are looking for brands that are approachable, easy to navigate and as odd as this sounds more human.  Even in this hyper-connected world people still want to be connected with real people, especially in B2B transactions. The most successful B2B companies have utilized their social media pages to reach out directly to their customers and build a sense of community with their brand and customers. It’s extremely important to assure your audience that you or your team of people will be there for them and that you can solve some of their pain points.

Read more on Using Your Brand Story To Reach Millennials In Business.

So, how does a brand convey all of this to their audience? Here are 4 things you should be talking about in your B2B branding:

Have a Purpose

Many argue that this is more geared to B2C businesses but that couldn’t be farther from the truth. Showing your company culture and your core values, or the reason why you do what you do is just as important in B2B marketing. Millennials more than any other audience are looking to work with companies that leave a positive impact on the world or those that have a great story about how they started.  Your brand values such as your mission statement and communication style will help create a personality and purpose behind your brand.

Read more on improving your B2B customer experience.

Knowledge

Potential customers are looking to solve a problem and they need to be confident that you will be able to solve it for them. Showing that you’re an authoritative source is one of the most important parts of your B2B branding.

Service

B2B buyers want someone that’s going to still make them feel that they have a 1 to 1 relationship even if they never communicate with you directly. Show them that you’re a company with real people who are willing to go the extra mile to get the job done.

Dependability

Showing that you can be depended on will take your brand messaging far. B2B buyers need to know that they can depend on you to get the job done so they can focus on other parts of their business. They don’t want to feel that they need to micromanage your work.

This generation is looking to be proud of who they purchase from. Today’s world is so much more transparent and connected and Millennials are not only used to that they expect you to be as well. It’s important that they are proud of who they buy from. By using ‘story branding’ companies can set a tone and feel for who they are and why they do what they do. With buyers getting inundated with so many screens and messages, stories help keep your B2B branding clear to your audience. The story with the strongest messaging that delivers an authentic feeling will stand out from the crowd. At the end of the day, B2B buyers are still, in fact, people and people love a good story.

brand packaging resources

Top 7 Packaging Design Resources

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Today’s package designers have such a wide variety of tools, technologies, and materials available that they can create just about anything they envision. Add in digital printing and their amazing design options become available to everyone. If you are looking for packaging design resources, here are 7 to get you started.

Packaging World

The world of packaging continues to evolve. To keep up with the latest happenings in the industry, you need to keep in touch with Packaging World. They offer daily articles on a variety of topics about what is hot, what materials are on top, and the leading inspirations designers have today.

The Die Line

Do you want to see the latest design inspirations from students all the way to big corporations? The Die Line is definitely the place to start. You get access to a packaging directory as well as a complete library of designs. There are new designs being added all the time, so you have a wealth of inspiration at your fingertips.

BXP (Brand Experience)

Packaging design comes together at BXP. It features design inspiration from the entire globe along with industry headlines and a fully stocked directory of packaging design resources. You get to meet some of the brightest talent in the design world. It is a place for inspiration and trends.

Seven Steps To Launching A Packaging Brand

Packaging of the World

 Packaging of the World is like an art gallery of package design. You get to see some of the best design work from professionals around the globe. The best part is that you can filter the gallery based on exactly what you want. You can search by country, category and even most popular.

Retail Design Blog

The Retail Design Blog from the Creative Craft Laboratory brings selected retail packaging designs to the world. You get to see exactly what designers have in mind in a visually stunning presentation. The blog is updated every few days with even more designs. That makes it a resource you can return to time and time again.

Packaging Design Archive

If you are looking for a place to do package design research, the Packaging Design Archive is the place to start. You have the opportunity to see a wide range of designs in any number of presentations. You can filter by typography, shape, design aesthetics, materials, and environmental category, among others.

Brand New

The design firm Under Construction offers up Brand New. This features a true library of packaging designs. You get to see the latest inspirations. But, what makes this site extra special is the fact that you get a thorough review of many designs, which helps you know why a particular design works (or not).

All of these packaging design resources will give you inspiration, news, updates, and design help with any packaging need you might have.

seven steps to launching a packaging brand

Seven Steps To Launching A Packaging Brand

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Stevens & Tate Marketing is proud to announce the launch of a new product called Truly Supplements. It just landed on the shelves of Walgreens this week, and I am so proud of our team for launching the brand. We have launched countless brands for Aldi and Walgreens with our proven brand development process. Here are the seven steps to launching a packaging brand. Read more

earned media vs paid media

Creative Marketing Solutions

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There are many creative marketing strategies that you can implement in order to increase outreach to customers and improve your bottom line. While many businesses are going above and beyond in their search for creative marketing solutions, you can simply seek to be creative within the 4 basic components of an online marketing approach (i.e. brand development, inbound marketing, content marketing and email marketing).

By seeking creative solutions within these 4 tactics, you can develop a successful creative marketing strategy. Here’s how:

Creativity in Brand Development

A creative way of increasing the relevance of your brand is by making your brand tell a story. Story-banding is an effective way to connect emotionally to your customers so they can see your products as having a greater purpose. You can achieve story-branding for your company by highlighting the inspiration behind your products and services.

Emphasize what motivates your company to achieve its goals (for example creativity, self-fulfillment, better health etc.), and incorporate your operations as a means towards achieving this goal. That way you can make your brand the hero of its own story, one which customers will relate to.

Read more on Defining Your True Brand Story and Bringing it to Life Online.

Creativity in Inbound marketing

A creative way to generate leads to your website is by having unique, yet appropriate content across all your channels. One approach you can use is to dedicate a portion of your site for product education.

If you are selling a well-known product, you could come up with creative ways on how the product can be used, how to make it last longer, behind the scenes details on how it works, etc.

One company that uses product education as a tool for its inbound marketing strategy is Gonesh Incense. The company produces incense products and has a DIY blog that contains videos on how their products can be used in many different ways; from re-using flowers after Valentine’s Day to making bath salts using their fragrance oils.

Such content is not only useful and appropriate to potential leads, but it also helps their brand establish trust and stronger relationships with customers.

Read more on The Benefits Of Inbound Marketing.

Creativity in Email Marketing

When you send out emails, incorporate interactive elements such as GIFS, rotating banners and menus. You could display an enticing sales discount or a new product launch by using a GIF. You could also categorize information about your product under different headings within a menu in the email.

This gives your customers the independence to browse product information and select whichever section they would like to read more about, right within the email.

Read more on Interactive Email Trends.

Creativity in Social Media Marketing

One way that you can utilize social media creatively is by developing targeted messages that appeal to common groups of people online, who you can bring together in relevant social media groups.

For example, a company specializing in manufacturing bicycles can create a fan page for cyclists and bring them together through targeted messages that contain useful information that applies to cycling. The more cyclists the company is able to attract to join the group, the more they can incorporate their branding into the fan page and begin to nurture their leads.

Read more on 8 Tips on Social Media Best Practices For Your Business.

Creative marketing solutions are the future of online marketing. By simply rethinking and refocusing the conventional ways through which you carry out your online marketing, you can be able to achieve creative marketing solutions and grow your bottom line.