In the current age, the importance of branding for a business cannot be stressed enough. Customers today are exposed to thousands of ads on a daily basis be it on social media or real life. Therefore, it is essential that as a brand owner you promote your brand exclusively and extensively to get into notice. Without proper branding, you will easily be left behind. A good branding strategy will add value to your company, encourage employees, help you acquire new customers and escalate ROI. In this article below, we will explain what exactly branding is and how it can help you increase the ROI of your business.
What is branding?
As per definition, branding is a marketing practice which distinguishes a company from others on the basis of the company’s name, symbol, design, and activities (promotions, advertisements). Branding makes a company easily identifiable. Essentially, branding will help a company to build a certain image or perception of their products or services. In a way, it helps your customers decide what they should expect from you and why should they choose you. Some important areas of branding include a brand logo, promotional offers, advertising, and customer service.
Tips to increase ROI through branding
Define your objectives
All your marketing and branding efforts will go in vain if you are unclear on what you want to achieve through them. Have a clear objective in mind that you want to achieve through brand promotion. When you have your objectives in front of you, you will be able to design appropriate branding strategies and achieve quantifiable results.
Hire the right company
To design an effective branding strategy and achieve results you will have to outsource work to relevant companies or people and work in collaboration with them. For example, you may need to hire a logo design services company to have your logo done. You may also need to hire a brand promotion company which can design the right strategies for you based on your objectives. Being an entrepreneur, it is impossible for you to micromanage everything and therefore, you will have to hire companies from outside for their services.
Sync your marketing with the image you want to build
Perhaps the most important element to keep in mind while branding is to have synchronization between your efforts and goals. Your brand promotion must be in line with the image you are trying to build. Ideally, your branding campaigns should reflect the ideology of your brand. The customers should be automatically associate your branding with your brand. This will help you establish a mark in your niche or industry.
Introduce campaign-specific microsites
Have you ever noticed companies have unique URLs for their campaigns? These URLs are called microsites and help companies divert traffic to a specific promotion campaign. Microsites can fuse your brand name with your campaign name to give your user a unique experience. This will also help you exclusively measure the results of your campaign. Think of your microsite as a landing page that has the same design as your main website but has content and offers only related to a specific promotion. Having these microsites will also help you to improve your strategies and achieve even greater ROI.
Be unique
To further increase your ROI, try to include a unique phrase or hashtag. The best branding strategy will promote user-generated content. These unique hashtags will not only attract new customers, increase engagement but will also help you to reduce costs and measure tangible results. For example, if you have online leather jacket store, you can introduce hashtags like “Myleathercraft” or “Thatsuedebag.” These hashtags can also be easily tracked back to your post, and you will be able to measure its engagement, reach and posts.
Focused promotions
Do not be overwhelmed while designing your branding strategies. Focus on a specific aspect or service of your product and brand it rather than focusing on several aspects. Strategize your content and use deep links against specific sections of your website. By doing so, you are funneling your customers to a specific promotion or product and increase your chances of conversions and sales.
Target your target customer
For effectively increasing your ROI it is important that your brand at the right place and time to the right person. Imagine putting in all your effort, time and money and getting no results only because it was not relevant to the target customer. Therefore, for effective branding it is important that you identify your customer, know their interests and respect their opinions. If your target audience is found in malls, indulge in marketing activities in a mall. If your target customers are found online, focus on online branding more. Consider both online and offline branding techniques and figure out how you can combine both for your benefit.
Give your user an experience
Take a moment to reflect on effective brand promotion strategies of your and other brands. Analyze what these strategies have in common. You will come to notice that all successful campaigns have worked on providing an experience to the end user. Branding is not only about increasing sales but about leaving a memory in the minds of your customers. You will have to create a memorable experience for your customers that they will be able to associate with your brand for long. This will lay a firm foundation for your brand and build a healthy customer relationship.
Have media partners
Try to partner or collaborate with a social media influencer or website. You two can collaborate to share reach and engagement to have a win-win situation. You can measure the impact of such a technique by measuring all website traffic redirected from your partner’s site. This strategy will help you reach a bigger audience and probably get in the notice of other influencers. There is a likely chance that other media groups and influencers will take notice of your campaign and feature it. Having a big audience will also reduce your investment costs and efforts.