Brand Communication Methodology That Drives Success

Brand communication is “the combination of activities that influence customers’ opinions of a company and its products,” according to The Cambridge Dictionary.

Proper brand communication requires a process that truly aims at the stated objective – “to influence customers’ (or potential customers’) opinions.” Are your company’s content producers, social media managers, and performance markets really accomplishing that? Do they even know what the brand stands for? What the brand’s voice is? And do they reflect that in the blogs, posts, and ads for your brand?

DO YOU WANT TO RUN YOUR BRAND ON HACKING OR STRATEGY?

In the past decade, marketers have been too shortsighted and many have had an over-focus on “growth hacking” in lieu of a solid long-term marketing strategy that yields successful results in good and bad economies and over a life-time-value provided by their target audiences. As stated in the article, “Is Growth Hacking Dead? The Truth About Growth Hacking in 2020:”

Today, it is the role of a marketer to find the right channel, place, and platform to target people in the most cost-effective ways. If short-term growth is the business goal, it’s the marketer’s job to help strategically recommend the most effective way to get there.

Marketing is no longer just a revenue tactic. It’s not just about reach and frequency — and it’s not just about click through rates either. Modern marketers are interested in tactics like lifetime value (LTV), customer acquisition costs, net promoter scores, and much more. 

Today, the concept of marketing is more holistic, where marketing, sales, support, and product teams need to be aligned. Modern marketers need to be proactive learners, quickly adapting to new tools, methods, and market trends. 

It is not that growth hacking is a bad activity, but in most cases the growth hacker efforts are not integrated with the overall marketing strategies. I have witnessed far too many companies that have a “paid media specialist” that posts ads without the guidance or collaboration with brand, product, or content managers. 

IT IS ALL ABOUT BRAND COMMUNICATION

So let’s dive into the holistic brand communication strategy and plan that WILL yield sustainable, long-term success for companies/brands.

Brand Strategy

What is a brand strategy? 

A brand strategy can be hard to define but encompasses:

• What your brand stands for.
• What promises your brand makes to customers.
• What personality your brand conveys through its marketing.

Here are three things every brand needs to define:

• What is your brand’s objective?
• Who are your customers?
• How does your brand define long-term success?

 (Source: https://marketingland.com/building-a-brand-strategy-essentials-for-long-term-success-240712)

The brand is at the core of it all. You cannot have a successful product/service, content plan, and communication execution without a solid brand definition and position. “The goal of brand marketing is to link your identity, values, and personality with communications to your audience. Essentially, your brand is the bridge between your product and your customer. Brand marketing is not just about putting your logo and business name in as many places as possible and expecting to generate sales. Many times, the importance of brand marketing gets overlooked, as it takes time. Many marketing departments are focused on short-term goals, rather than nurturing long-term goals that impact the entire business, like building a brand.” (Source: https://blog.rebrandly.com/what-is-brand-marketing/)

Product Strategy

So you believe you have a strong product or service for a defined target market. Your next step is that you need a positioning statement that succinctly defines your offering. Here is the product positioning statement:

• For …………….………… [target customer]
• Who ……………….……. [key qualifier – form]
• Our product is a ….. [product category]
• That provides ………. [key benefit]
• Unlike ………………….. [main competitor]
• Our product ……….… [key point of differentiation]

This positioning statement is for internal use only. It is not explicitly communicated. The positioning statement should drive your content and communication plan. All content and communication should support and reinforce the product/service positioning statement.

Content Strategy

Your content strategy is the intersection of the brand and product strategy coupled with your target audience behaviors, needs, wants, and motivations. You should lean more to what is compelling to your audience than pushing your own brand agenda. Your content strategy objective is to get your target audience emotionally attached to your brand. 

I have written an extremely detailed content strategy playbook that can be found here:

The series provides the following:

• Content Marketing Goals and Objectives
• Determining your Target Audience for Content
• Leveraging Your Brand Position to Produce Compelling Content
• Social Audits to Drive Content Marketing
• Messaging Strategy Before Content Strategy
• Developing a Content Marketing Strategy
• How Do You Know Your Content Will Pay Dividends
• Content Marketing Metrics
• The Power of Orchestrated UGC – (User Generated Content)
• Earned Media – Finding Influencers to Distribute your Content
• What Does It Mean to Produce Data Driven Content?
• How to Determine Which Content is Driving Success for Your Brand

Communication Strategy

How many articles do you read that tell you that you need to have social media presence, to blog, to produce videos, to do podcasts, etc? Yes, it may be beneficial to do these things, but I strongly suggest you have a communication strategy that points to the types of communication and platforms you need to participate in. The communication strategy should be driven by your target audience behaviors – the platforms they are active on and how they are influenced. Understanding your audience behavior will drive you to a communication plan. Your communication methodology must include a plan that utilizes owned, earned, and paid media. It also needs to address the use of original, curated, user-generated, and influencer content.

SUPPORTING STATISTICS

Not sure this makes sense? I would like to provide you a number of supporting statistics (Source: 42 Interesting Stats about Customer Loyalty You May Not Know):

• Customers with an emotional relationship with a brand have a 306% higher lifetime value and will recommend the company at a rate of 71%, rather than the average rate of 45%. (Motista) 
• 80% of customers gradually gained loyalty for a brand over time, due to experiences with excellent products, service, reviews, advice, etc. (InMoment)
• About 50% of loyal customers have left a company for a competitor who was able to stay more relevant and better satisfy their needs. (InMoment)
• 82% of customers feel more positive about a brand after engaging with personalized content. (Demand Metric)
• 60% of loyal customers will purchase more frequently from their preferred companies. (InMoment)
• Emotionally-connected customers will spend an annual sum of about $699 with a company, versus regular, satisfied customers who will spend an annual sum of only about $275. (Motista)
• Loyal customers spend 67% more with a business than new ones. (Thanx)

CONCLUSION AND HELP TO MAKE IT HAPPEN

Brand communication is key to audience development and gaining an emotional attachment from that audience – work through all the upfront work and see results.

If you would like further guidance on brand communication, checkout how I can help you and your company/brand – read this one-pager, and reach out to me.

Make It Happen!