The Art of Branding: Crafting Brands That Resonate

The Art of Branding: Crafting Brands that Resonate Copywriting + Brand+ Examples Branding vs Marketing vs Advertising: What's the Difference?  WHAT IS BRANDING? "Products are made in the factory, but brands are created in the mind." - Walter Land...

The Art of Branding: Crafting Brands that Resonate Copywriting + Brand+ Examples Branding vs Marketing vs Advertising: What's the Difference?  WHAT IS BRANDING? "Products are made in the factory, but brands are created in the mind." - Walter Landor The process of branding can take many forms, but its primary goals are to establish your business in the market and facilitate the building of relationships with your target customer. These goals have both a functional and emotional purpose. They include: FUNCTIONAL GOALS Increase the value of your business Build brand credibility Attract new customers Reduce price sensitivity Standout and be remembered among similar companies Become a platform to launch new products EMOTIONAL GOALS Earn your customers’ trust Make it easy for customers to self-identify with your business Improve employee satisfaction Retain and build an emotional connection with your customers Create a loyal community.  WHAT IS BRANDING? You achieve those goals by: Finding the WHY : Identifying the purpose behind your brand Finding the WHO : Creating buyer personas for your target audience Turning your WHY into WHAT : Translating your company’s “why” into a strong mission statement Finding the “Unique Selling Point” (USP) : Understanding the unique benefits and features of your product or service that set it apart from competitors Building the visual identity : Coming up with distinguishable brand elements (eg. logo and tagline) Crafting the verbal identity : Developing a unique brand voice and personality Getting creative : Incorporating storytelling into your brand messaging  WHAT IS MARKETING? "Our jobs as marketers are to understand how the customer wants to buy and help them do so." - Bryan Eisenberg Marketing, on the other hand, is more focused on the customer. It is the process of learning about your target customers through market research, understanding their problems, and showing them how your product can help them solve one or more of those problems. What Does Marketing Look Like? Like branding, marketing is a multi-staged process that has a variety of goals and strategies. According to The Blueprint, some of the primary goals of marketing include: Identify product-market fit Generate leads Nurture existing leads Boost web traffic Attract new customers Retain existing customers Improve customer satisfaction Increase conversions (sales, sign-ups, downloads, etc.) Research target customers’ problems, needs, and available solutions Track, measure and improve your marketing initiatives  WHAT IS MARKETING? And, in action, marketing is done using one or more strategies like: Affiliate marketing Content marketing Email marketing Influencer marketing Inbound marketing Offline marketing Social media marketing Search engine marketing (SEM) Search engine optimization (SEO)  WHAT IS ADVERTISING? Advertising, which often gets confused with marketing. But that’s only because advertising is, in fact, a form of marketing. Advertising is a tactic on the marketing tool belt that requires you to pay a third party to display an advertisement for your business during a set period of time. WHAT DOES ADVERTISING LOOK LIKE? The goals of advertising, also according to The Blueprint, include: Influence consumers to pay for your products or services Keep your brand and products fresh in the minds of consumers Maintain a strong image and brand reputation Foster greater brand loyalty Attract first-time buyers Motivate existing customers to make repeat purchases With those goals in mind, we can place advertisements in a variety of locations including: Billboards Social media (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, etc.) Search engines (Google, Bing, etc.) Print (magazines, newspapers, etc.) Denouncing Colin Kaepernick, the newest TV and radio Website banners and popups face of Nike’s “Just Do It” campaign. EXAMPLES OF BRANDING, MARKETING AND ADVERTISING FROM NIKE To help solidify in your mind the differences between branding, marketing, and advertising even further, we’re now going to take a look at a few examples of each from one of our favorite brands: Nike. As one of the most successful sportswear brands in the world, Nike is a great example of how branding, marketing, and advertising all work together.  Before reading this post, you may have thought that the video above was just simply an example of advertising. But actually, it’s an example of branding or, to be more exact, brand advertising. Rather than trying to influence you to purchase any particular product, the real goal of the video is to influence how you think about Nike. The goal is to solidify that Nike is the product for new and experienced athletes alike.  This example of social media marketing shows how branding can also influence marketing to become brand marketing. This Instagram post shows that Nike knows that many people in its target audience are athletic and enjoy running. They’re the type of people that would actively search out tips for running faster and would pay attention to marketing that uses keywords like “how to run your fastest mile”. Rather than give all of the information on which specific products actually help achieve that goal, the post ends with a call-to-action, “Stay up to speed at nike.com/findyour fast”. This helps to redirect the reader to more information and help them move along the customer journey.  The goal of this advertisement is to promote and sell one particular Nike product. The ad highlights the unique benefits of owning this product to influence the viewer to buy. the advertisement also has elements of branding, particularly the company’s well-known slogan and logo. Branding, marketing, and advertising are commonly used interchangeably. But they’re definitely not the same thing. Branding is the process of strategically shaping the public perception of your business and whatever it is you’re selling. Marketing is the process of learning about your target customers through market research, understanding their problems, and showing them how your product can help them solve one or more of those problems. Advertising is a marketing tactic that requires you to pay a third party to display an advertisement for your business during a set period of time.