When Judy Abel, Senior Strategist at gyro New York found herself learning to surf one week and having dinner with a Buddhist monk in a monastery the next, sitting solo at a saloon jazz club, and meeting with an astrologer afterwards, it was neither strictly for pleasure nor for curiosity. It was for business. Her quest was to understand how to be a better brand marketer by understanding the psychology of the company’s many different audiences.
Experimenting with a world completely foreign to her taught her how to become a better brand marketer. As Abel said in a Forbes article, “As marketers, it is important for us to be able to empathize with multiple, diverse audiences. We need to understand their mindset, their goals, their challenges and their lifestyle in order to shift perceptions and to help our clients’ brands resonate.”
The point, and the most successful way to brand market, is to find a way to understand your targeted audience’s natural tendencies, and market your company so it fits their lifestyle. Sound easy? It’s not.
The trick to brand marketing is to wade through the thick plethora of marketing options and figure out what you can do to make your company stand out – and the most effective way to do so. You want your brand to be trustworthy, accountable, flexible, and experienced. Sometimes, it’s all about generating the right business name, so don’t limit yourself to personal, pleasant sounding names. If you can’t think up that perfect name with the perfect ring to it, use a business name generator and it might conjure up the next big name.
Don’t forget, unless you’re running an anti-modernity campaign, every company has an online presence these days. The key sites, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube, continue to dominate the charts as effective outlets to brand market. But knowing how to brand market well, that is, knowing what to post or Tweet and when, takes creativity and skill. Therefore, it’s crucial to know your social media limbo, because every media outlet works differently.
Here’s a rundown of what top companies on the top sites are doing:
Making the move to Twitter takes some breaking in, but it’s well worth it with the right plan and management. In a recent report from Social Media Marketing University, over 80% of marketing pros are brand marketing via Twitter. That raises the stakes for competition. AdidasUK built a strong following by creating a slogan (#takethestage) for UK fans during the Olympics. Every advertisement they ran – newsprints, television clips, outdoor billboards – all featuring an @adidasUK hashtag. Create a movement, and link it to something big happening in the world. This can be an effective way to catch bigger audiences, especially when many of your targeted clients come from very different backgrounds.
Facebook audiences rifle through hundreds, if not thousands, of statuses a day. Not only does your company have to compete with other companies on Facebook – you also have to compete with your audiences’ personal social network of friends. So how do you stand out? Market for clicks. Use that personalized connection intrinsic to Facebook to listen to your consumers. Taco Bell, for example, ran an engaging campaign by personally sending winners t-shirts, and a customized Speedo in another case.
YouTube
The top 10 most viewed channels on YouTube have over 3.1 billion hits and 17.4 million subscribers, according to VidStatsX. Not that you have to get there. But brands like NBA, Google and Red Bull have at least 700,000 subscribers and 270 million views. Being a big name brand helps, but it also helps to be quick, cute and catchy. Funnel your information in less than 30 seconds.
There is nothing universal about brand marketing. But if you understand your clients, then you’ll have an easier time getting your word out there in a consistent, captivating, approachable way.
