Creating communication channels with your target audience is critical to the growth and success of your business. This is at the core of building a brand consumers trust and follow. It has elements of visual brand presence, both physical and online, storytelling, and much more. Brand building is definitely not an easy endeavor. But once you crack the code, your business is on its way to unprecedented success.
How do you crack the brand-building code? One strategy to employ is to implement a number of brand promotion hacks. This can be clever placement of your brand’s logo on promotional products, and/or being in front of your audience via media outlets like print news, radio, and TV.
Whichever brand-building outlet you choose, it is important to be consistent, transparent, and personal. In fact, consumers want a more personal connection with the brands they engage with and buy from. According to a Microsoft study, consumers have the attention span of a goldfish.
And a more visual brand image may be the key. “Marketers now have to work harder than ever to catch their audiences’ attention, and just any image won’t do,” Erin McCoy said in a Forbes Communications Council post.
Brand building, goldfish, consumer trust? This can be a bit overwhelming for first-time brand builders. To help we compiled three brand promotion hacks to maximize growth and success. Let’s take a deeper look!
1. Leverage promotional products to keep brand image on consumers’ minds
You can probably spot a Starbucks from blocks away. Why? Starbucks has made their mermaid brand logo an important part of their entire brand building concept. It is on the interior and exterior signage, on aprons and hats of employees, on coffee bags, and on cups. And when you buy a coffee mug from Starbucks, what is on it? The iconic mermaid!
This makes leveraging promotional products a must for raising brand awareness. To do this, brand everything you can in your company. For example, whenever you have a new hire, company party, or visiting client/customer, give them some brand swag. One of the most trending types of brand swag today is custom pint glasses. They are never tossed by clients or the team, because everyone loves and has a need for a well-made, personalized pint glass.
2. Combine brand promotions with the personal story of your business
Everyone loves a good story, and consumers pretty much expect to hear your business’ story before buying something from you. This makes storytelling an important part of brand promotion to maximize growth and success. Where does this story live? When it comes to brand building, your story lives everywhere.
For example, there should be elements of your business’ story on the walls of the office, in the boardroom, and on internal team documents or computer screens. Your story should also be client facing online. This means creating a robust “About” web page for customers to engage with. Your story should also be on the tips of your teams’ tongues as well. The team should be able to tell the brand’s story without issue. Make your story part of all your business is and does.
3. Position your brand effectively by utilizing local media and relevant news coverage
It is important to get your brand in front of as many eyes as possible, especially during those first few years of being in business. This makes positioning your brand effectively in the media an important step. But how do you get the local media interested in your brand?
One of the best ways to get free local media and relevant news coverage is to participate in and/or sponsor community events, as well as organize your own events. Events your business organizes could be community outreach campaigns, like cleaning up the beach or volunteering to teach skills at a local school. The local media loves to cover businesses giving back to the community.
To get the media interested, you first need to compile an email marketing list of the local media outlets, like radio, TV, and print news. Next, launch a press release a week before your event and then send an email with a short outline of the event, and a link to the press release. Then follow up with the news outlets and set up interviews and live coverage opportunities during the event.
Build a powerful brand today . . .
The above three brand promotion hacks to maximize growth and success are not the be-all, end-all. There is a long list of ways to build greater brand awareness to draw from. The important thing is to make brand building and promotion a priority and an ongoing process. This ensures long-term customer trust and loyalty you simply can’t buy with ads. What’s your top brand promotion hack? We want to hear from you.
