How to Improve Your Brand Marketing and Scale Your Company Faster Than Ever Before

Section 1: What is Brand Marketing and Brand Identity?

You might have heard the term brand marketing. It’s becoming a growing trend in the entrepreneurial, marketing, and branding space. So let’s first discuss what brand marketing is. Brand marketing refers to promoting a company’s overall brand identity, values, and story, rather than just individual products, with the goal of building reputation, customer loyalty, and emotional connection.

In my honest opinion, as an agency owner, CEO, founder, and marketer throughout my entire professional career, my definition of brand marketing is marketing that puts the brand first.

I know that sounds tongue-in-cheek because we’re saying, “Well, Josh, isn’t that obvious? Brand marketing? It’s in the phrase?” Yes, but I think we forget that fact so many times in marketing and advertising.

I think we went through a period where there was a lot of technical, analytical, first digital marketing and advertising—rightfully so, right? With GA4, analytics, CRMs, and digital advertising as a whole, we definitely went very far down one path into quantitative digital marketing and advertising, where everything was numbers, numbers, numbers. It had to mathematically make sense.

Now I think the pendulum is swinging back the other way because AI and this new flood of technology is making it so much easier for anyone to not only set up their analytics, but track what they want to track and understand what those analytics mean.

In other words, I think analytics, data, numbers, and the math behind it all are becoming a commodity. It’s becoming much more approachable and easy to do.

I think back to when Facebook ads first started back in the early 2010s. It was borderline impossible for a novice to run online advertising. When SEO was brand new, it was this new, innovative, pioneer frontier where people didn’t even know what those three letters meant. Now, for the most part, everyone knows what SEO is, and many people know how to do pretty good SEO.

I think that’s what’s going to happen with AI, analytics, and quantitative data. So what does that mean? It puts emphasis on brand marketing. Building a strong brand now centers on communicating your brand’s values, understanding your brand positioning in the market, and crafting a compelling brand story that resonates with your audience.

That’s what it is for me: putting the brand first in your marketing, advertising, and growth efforts. Key elements of brand marketing include developing a clear brand identity, establishing a distinct identity that sets you apart, and ensuring your brand has a unique identity that is recognizable and consistent across all channels. Brand marketers play a crucial role in developing a strong brand marketing strategy that drives trust, loyalty, and long-term success.

Section 2: Why Is Brand Marketing Important?

As I just described, it’s important to differentiate yourself from the inundated marketplace by emphasizing quantitative data, numbers, and mathematics, and by avoiding the AI flood.

I think more and more, what we’re starting to see is brands that truly value their perception—who they are as a brand—and that know their audience, their ideal customer, and their tribe, inside and out. This deep understanding leads to a positive brand perception, increased customer loyalty, and the cultivation of loyal customers.

• Those are the brands that are rising to the top.
• Those are the brands that cut through the noise.
• Those are the brands that are differentiated.
• Those are the brands that look, sound, smell, and feel different from everyone else in the marketplace.
• Effective brand marketing helps these brands achieve strong brand recognition, a compelling brand image, and high brand awareness among their target audience.

You can tell if it is a human, organic piece of content, rather than AI-generated. You can tell if there are imperfections in the creative work.

I think that AI, technology, and where this industry is going, is going to put more value on the intangibles:

• The face-to-face.
• The human element.
• The organic.
• The imperfections, the mistakes.
• That natural feeling that is difficult for AI to capture.

Building an emotional connection with customers is also essential, as it fosters deeper relationships and long-term engagement.

Ultimately, focusing on brand loyalty and building a strong brand are crucial for achieving sustained success and standing out in a competitive market.

The Benefits of Brand Marketing and Brand Loyalty

Why is brand marketing important? Because if you get on this early, early strategy, you will be immediately differentiated from your competition.

• You will start to attract more of your ideal customers than ever before.
• You will have lower conversion rates on your website.
• You will have a more engaged audience, leading to higher customer engagement across your channels.
• You will increase revenue because of those things.
• You can use key performance indicators to measure the success of your brand marketing efforts.
• By tracking brand awareness through social media mentions, website traffic, and other engagement indicators, you can assess and improve your ongoing brand marketing efforts.

Section 3: How Do We Execute a Brand Marketing Strategy?

01. Start with Empathy for Your Audience

First and above all, it starts with empathy for your audience. You’d better know your audience inside and out. This means clearly identifying your target audience and target market to ensure your brand marketing efforts are focused and effective. The best brands that you can think of—Liquid Death, Starbucks, Red Bull, Walmart, Amazon, Tesla, Hermès, Gucci, Nike, even some of the smaller brands that you might be thinking of—they know who their audience is. They know their tribe.

To achieve this, develop a detailed customer persona and conduct thorough market research to uncover your audience’s preferences, behaviors, and needs.

Apple is a great example. They know exactly who the Apple crusaders are. They know what per cent of their customer base will live and die using Apple products. And that’s who they advertise to. That’s who they design for. That’s who they roll out their products for. You have to understand your audience inside and out.

02. Talk to People (Qualitative Data)

How can you do that? You need to talk to people. Again, swinging the pendulum the other way.

Instead of just looking at your Google Analytics, your Meta Analytics, or your CRM data, you should be picking up the phone, going to lunch, and talking to your clients and customers.

It has been way too long since small-to-mid-sized business owners, and certainly enterprise business owners and marketers, have had face-to-face qualitative data and insights from people.

• Do some secret shopping.
• Interview your customers, interview your clients. During these conversations, look for potential brand ambassadors—loyal customers who are highly engaged and willing to promote your brand to others.
• Do a focus group.
• Take them to lunch, pick their brain.
• Why do they choose you?
• What do they like?
• What do they hate?

You’d be surprised what your customers will tell you. How do you do brand marketing? It starts with your audience. You have to have empathy. You have to be part of your own tribe.

03. Create a Community

From your audience, you can create a community. I think that’s going to be a big differentiator going forward—that you can create community within your brand.

How do you do that?

• Webinars
• Events
• Special packages, special offers
• Email newsletters
• Exclusive groups, exclusive memberships
• Live streaming, behind-the-scenes content

Utilizing brand assets, marketing materials, and marketing collateral helps support and engage your community by providing consistent and recognizable touchpoints that reinforce your brand’s identity. Establishing clear brand guidelines ensures that all communications and interactions maintain brand consistency and a unified brand voice, which is essential for building trust and loyalty within your community.

How do you create a friend group within your audience? Think about your own network. Think about your own family and friends. We all have acquaintances; we all have people that we know. But we usually have that smaller group of friends and family that we are very familiar with. We know them inside and out. We trust them 100%, and they trust us 100%. That’s what you need to build in the business world. That will differentiate you from AI and from your competitors.

04. Understand Your Tribe (The 80/20 Rule)

Within that community, you can go a level deeper and start to explore your tribe. Your tribe is the 5% of your customer base responsible for most of your revenue.

It’s almost like the Pareto principle, right? 20% of your customer base is responsible for 80% of your revenue. And vice versa: 20% of your customer base is responsible for 80% of your headaches.

You should cut out the 20% that is responsible for your headaches, and you should try to get more of the 20% that’s responsible for 80% of your revenue.

This tribe are people who:

• Refer the business to you.
• Leave five-star reviews.
• Talk to their friends and family about what you do and what you offer.

You need to get to know them. You need to ask them all sorts of questions. And you need to put them on a pedestal and make them feel like they are the best of the best. They are VIP because they are for your brand. Nurturing this core tribe not only drives growth but also significantly contributes to building brand equity, strengthening your brand’s long-term value and reputation in the marketplace.

Practical Application

You can better understand your audience, create a community, and better understand your tribe by:

• Having face-to-face events.
• Having a VIP-level member service or subscription.
• Having a client or customer happiness process.
• Reviewing what your onboarding and off-boarding look like.
• Face-to-face time is super critical.

In addition to these practical applications, brand marketing can be implemented through brand marketing campaigns, marketing campaigns, and launching a new marketing campaign. These approaches help build brand awareness, create emotional connections, and reinforce your company’s brand identity.

Integrating other marketing efforts such as social media, social media platforms, social media marketing, social media ads, social media engagement, email marketing, and content marketing can further support your brand marketing strategy and boost engagement.

While performance marketing and product marketing focus on immediate results and promoting specific products, brand marketing emphasizes long-term brand equity and customer relationships.

Utilizing various marketing channels allows you to promote your company’s brand and highlight your brand’s products effectively across different touchpoints.

Maintaining a consistent brand’s tone and having a clear mission statement in all marketing activities ensures your messaging is aligned and recognizable.

Corporate branding, professional networking, and social listening tools also play important roles in supporting brand marketing by strengthening your brand’s reputation, expanding industry connections, and monitoring audience sentiment.

Conclusion: Put Your Brand First

That’s how you create this brand marketing strategy. You’ve got to put your brand first.

I’ve said this a million times, and I’ll keep saying it: Your brand is the perception that your ideal customers have of your product, service, or what you do.

Every action you take will either improve your brand or destroy your brand.

• Every day.
• Every customer service call.
• Every sales pitch.
• Every deliverable is executed on.
• Every customer contact.

It will either build the brand or it deteriorate the brand. And so it’s up to you to put the brand first. You can do that by:

• Empathizing with your audience.
• Building a community.
• Being part of your own tribe, making them feel special.
• Prioritizing the human element (now more than ever!):
  • Organic events, community, live streaming, behind-the-scenes, imperfections.
  • Handwritten notes, custom personalized gifts, and face-to-face meetings.
  • Personalized videos, personalized emails, human-written content.
  • Organic photography and videography.

This will differentiate you, I promise, and that to me is what brand marketing is. It’s putting your brand first. It’s putting your ideal customers first. It’s thinking constantly about your tribe and saying, “What do they want? What do they value? Because they’re the ones that believe in my vision, just like I do, and we are a team together.”

Instead of just focusing on marketing and advertising, now it’s time to focus on brand marketing. And I know that if you do, you will start to see tangible, real, measurable, long-lasting growth in your top and bottom line. In other words, revenue growth and profit growth for your company.

Good luck out there.