Branding Campaigns: 4 Strategies that Drive Positive Results

The trouble is that a lot of businesses don’t know where to begin with plotting a branding campaign. After all, it can be quite overwhelming!

There’s no need to worry, though, as we’re here to help. Read on to discover some of the different strategies you can use to drive positive results when launching a branding campaign. 

What are branding campaigns?

A brand campaign is designed to put your message and story in front of an audience. The aim is to boost brand awareness and increase brand equity in the mind of the consumer.

Strategies you can use to drive positive results when building a branding campaign

There are a number of different approaches you can use to ensure your branding campaign is a success, including the following: 

Power your campaign with unique GQPR-compliant data

There’s only one place to begin, and this is by using data to power your branding campaign. Businesses have access to a whole host of unique data nowadays, but not all of them are using it in an effective manner.

Before we delve deeper into this, we must first stress that there are stringent rules and regulations in place regarding data collection. So your first port of call should be to familiarize yourself with GDPR requirements and any other regulations your business must adhere to. The last thing you want to do is find yourself in a world of trouble because you’re gathering data in a manner you shouldn’t be. 

Once you’re familiar with the legislation you need to abide by, we can start looking to how to go about developing a data-driven brand campaign. Here are the steps to follow: 

Set a well-defined goal - No matter what type of marketing or branding campaign you’re devising, you always need to start with your objective. By having a clear goal, this will drive everything you do and ensure you’re always focused on the end result. Your goal should be relevant, achievable, measurable, specific, and time-bound.

Understand your target audience - No business can afford to target everyone with their branding efforts. You’ll need to narrow down your audience to a group of people that are most likely to take the required action.

Line up the right data - Now, we get into the data. We’re sure you’ve got data you’ve already gathered, such as completed customer surveys, actions visitors have taken on your site, customer service communications, and sales histories. Now, how do you supplement this? You’ve got your first-party data, so do you need second-party or third-party data?

Organize your data - You then need to organize your data. This is critical to consumer journey optimization. You can then pinpoint which parts of the consumer journey need to be enhanced, and accessing the required data and making sense of it will become seamless. 

From here, you can choose your marketing channels and serve appropriate content - Once you have all of your data in place, you can then start building your branding campaign, focusing on marketing techniques that will most suit your consumer base. 

2. Find a new audience

Another approach you can use is to reach out to a new audience. Now that you’ve got that useful data at hand, you’ll be able to fully understand which part of society you’re not reaching.

Porsche 99X Electric Formula E race car’s Twitch campaign

A good example of this is Porsche. Traditionally, Porsche used radio and TV advertising. However, this form of advertising doesn’t really resonate with 18 to 34-year-olds, and so they wanted to engage this new, hard to reach audience when launching the Porsche 99X Electric Formula E race car, their new electric vehicle. 

To do this, Porsche teamed up with the popular live-streaming platform, Twitch. They created an interactive gameplay ad. Viewers controlled the IRL actions of two drivers in the ad to unlock the new car, and it took four hours to figure out the puzzles. 

The experiment was a massive success. Over the four hours the game was played on Porsche’s live Twitch channel, almost one million people played it! This made it the most viewed live stream around the world, and a storm of engagement was generated in the platform’s chat. 

From video translations to live streaming, there are many avenues

Take inspiration from Porsche and start looking at ways you can engage with segments of society that you’re not really engaging with at the moment. For example, you can use a video translator to engage with young professionals who often watch videos while commuting, meaning they have the volume turned off. Explore avenues like this to reach as many people as possible.

3. Form strategic partnerships

You don’t have to work against your competitors. In fact, you can work together and both experience the benefits! Partnership brand marketing is simple: it involves bringing two businesses and brands together. 

We know, we know… it sounds unthinkable, doesn’t it? However, it can be done. Just look at KSI and Logan Paul. They shared the boxing ring a few years ago, enhancing their careers by going back-and-forth with one another, but now they’re taking the world by storm with Prime. There’s no reason why other brands can’t do this themselves.

It’s something Asda and Sainsbury’s wanted to do. Although the merger was blocked by the UK’s competition watchdog, the two UK supermarkets clearly realized that they would have more power together. In fact, the sheer fact the move was blocked tells you everything you need to know; they’d have too much power for the industry to handle! 

What are the benefits of partnership marketing?  

Partnership marketing helps you to gain new customers in new market segments

You can save money, as two companies split the branding bill

Widen the scope and purpose of marketing, enabling you to market in various ways

You can extend your marketing budget

Partnership marketing will also boost marketing exposure

Finally, widen the reach of a business’s target audience 

4. Influencer marketing

Last but not least, in a crowded marketplace, one of the best ways to ensure your brand has a strong identity and stands out from the crowd is with influencer marketing. 

Influencer marketing is a type of online marketing that use product mentions and endorsements from influencers. 

An influencer doesn’t have to be a celebrity. It can be. However, an influencer is basically anyone with “influence” in your industry. So, it can be someone with a moderate following, but a following that’s highly engaged and fully represents the type of audience you’re looking to target. 

What are the benefits of influencer marketing?

Influencer marketing has a high ROI - in fact, it has the second highest ROI of any marketing trend!

Quite simply, influencers encourage purchases - if you see an influencer showcasing a product, it may lead to you purchasing it 

An influencer can help you build awareness and establish social proof

Gen-Z trusts influencer marketing over recommendations from family and friends

Influencers help you to share content in an authentic and human way

Tips on building an effective influencer marketing campaign

Use social media to find influencers - You can simply search by topic to find conversations and see who is making their voices heard! Follow people with influence, check out who they follow, and find out who follows them. Participate in conversations. This will help you to come up with a shortlist of some of the best influencers in your niche. 

Make sure influencers see your content too - Influencer marketing also means you need to get in front of the right people as well. This is why it makes sense to start participating in conversations so that influencers have a chance of noticing you too. Needless to say, this doesn’t mean you should start carpet-bombing social media with blog post links!

Have some patience - Being patient is difficult, especially when results matter. However, you know what they say; good things come to those who wait! That’s certainly the case with influencer marketing. Yes, you can experience quick gains, but bear in mind that tangible results do come with time. 

Drive positive results by using effective branding strategies 

So there you have it: some of the different strategies that you can use to take your branding campaign to the next level. 

The goal of any branding campaign is to get your message and story out there so that you can reach more people and leave a lasting impression. 

If you use the techniques we’ve provided above, you should notice that your branding efforts are more successful. 

About the author:

Kerry Leigh Harrison has over 11+ years of experience as a content writer. She graduated from university with a First Class Hons Degree in Multimedia Journalism. In her spare time, she enjoys attending sports and music events.