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There’s a lot of advice on the internet about how to successfully market your brand, but not all of it is worth paying attention to. Many of the most well-known marketers on the internet (you know who they are, and may have even taken some of their courses) have a one-size-fits-all approach to marketing and are literally selling you their “formula for success.”
The problem with that, however, is that there is no one-size-fits-all way to approach marketing your brand. After all, your brand is something that is completely unique to your business.
So, how can you figure out how to master marketing your brand without having the budget to bring in a big agency to help you? You get creative with your approach.
Step One: Embrace Storytelling
Marketing often gets a bad rap for being associated with numbers and data, but that’s only one side of the marketing coin. Marketing is also about understanding human behavior and tapping into the stories that make people feel more connected–to each other and to your brand. By choosing to approach marketing your brand through a storytelling lens, you can have a bigger impact on your target audience. Figure out the compelling narrative around your brand, and let it guide you in how you interact with customers. By creating a deeper emotional connection with your audience, you’re much more likely to have them remember and engage with your brand.
Step Two: Leverage User-Generated Content (UGC)
Why do all the talking when your customers can do it for you?!? Tap into the power of customer stories by encouraging them to create content for your brand. This can include product reviews, testimonials, videos and social media posts. When you let your customers showcase how they interact with your product or service, and use their own words or examples for how your brand adds value to their life, it’s one of the best ways to get other potential clients to make a purchasing decision. Added bonus: in addition to collecting authentic content, you’ll also build a sense of community around your brand.
Step Three: Become a Subject Matter Expert
If you’re willing to build a personal brand as the founder of your company, that can go a long way for marketing your brand. But you don’t have to do that to position your business as the subject matter experts in your field. When I worked in the marketing department for a medical alert company years ago, I was tasked with raising the company profile using content and not depending on SEO at all (they were in penalty with Google at the time, but we’ll save that story for another day). My solution? Pitch myself as a subject matter expert on aging care. I wrote a ton of articles on the topic and, as a result, was invited to serve as a guest blogger on other websites and was also quoted in articles and stories around aging care. It not only helped to boost my professional profile within the industry, but it also drove people back to my employer website since I mentioned it in nearly every post.
Step Four: Personalization
Okay, so even when we are discussing creative ways to market your brand, we still have to talk about data! Data, believe it or not, also has a story to tell, you simply have to know how to interpret it. By understanding the data that you collect, you can make smarter marketing decisions, continuing to tweak some of the assumptions you have to make about your audience and their behavior when you’re first launching a new campaign. You can also use data to personalize your marketing efforts,like tailoring your messages to fit audience behavior, making recommendations based on how they have interacted with your content or website, and crafting offers to match individual preferences. Personalization on this level shows that you both value your customers and understand their needs.
Marketing Your Brand Without Fear
In a very crowded digital world, creativity can be your most potent marketing weapon. After all, successful marketing is not a formula for selling a product or service; it's about creating an emotional connection and providing value to your audience. Don’t focus so much on what you “should” be doing to market your brand and instead figure out what feels most natural and comfortable for you in terms of marketing and lean into it. If you're struggling to figure out where that sweet spot of comfort is for your brand, you know where to find me.