One of the most important parts of marketing yourself is creating an effective brand. However, it also seems to be one of the most overlooked. So many businesses seem to be focused on the short-term goals, those objectives for the here and the now, that they lose sight of those longer-term things that they want to achieve.   

An example of this is creating a brand. Branding is something that can be more important than you may realise and it is worthwhile putting the effort into.   

What impact does your branding have?  

One of the key parts of branding is that it gives a sense of humanity to your business. Without a brand, you are going to find it hard to create a connection with your clients, which will have an impact on how your business performs.   

Another thing that a brand will be able to bring is loyalty too. Clients are going to feel that they connect with a brand, more so than they would a business, which means that they are likely to stick around for longer, grow with you and also recommend what you do to others.   

When it comes to B2B branding, lots of companies believe that the idea of emotions and the sense of a person on the other end is not as important. This is because you are trying to market to a business, but this is not the case. Even though your client will be a business, just like you, there will be a person behind the decisions that they make; and this is who you are trying to appeal to.   

A brand will bring a sense of trust and it is this trust that has the biggest impact when it comes to your clients how they see you and what you can do for them.   

How to create the perfect brand campaign  

It is easier than you may realise to create a brand awareness campaign. First of all, you need to break it down into four key areas. These are:  

• Reach  
• Engagement  
• Brand Perception   
• Sales Impact   

When it comes to brand awareness, you should always start by finding out how your brand is currently seen, then you can start to make changes for the future. There are lots of ways that you can do this, however, it is usually best to speak to your clients and target audience to see what they say about your brand. You can do this with client analysis and also with audience surveying too.   

Next, you need to think about who your target audience is and what you hope your campaign is going to do for you. 

Think about how large your audience is, and make sure that you scale your efforts to match this.  

That said, you want to be as realistic as you can about what you can achieve, after all, the last thing that you are going to want to do is set yourself up to fail.   

Once you have your goals set out, you are going to need to set yourself some milestones and benchmarks that you can check in on during the process and see how you are performing. These could be tracking, performance forecasting, activity benchmarking or they could be KPI audits and creations, all of which will help you to see how well you are performing and whether or not any changes need to be made.   

Another thing to consider about branding is that it should never be a standalone part of your business. Sure, the creation, planning and implementation are going to be tackled by set departments or people within your business, but these plans should fit in with the rest of your business and be able to come together to create a holistic way of working.   

Measuring the success of your branding efforts  

Finally, once you have put all the effort in and done all the hard work, you should ascertain whether or not your marketing plans have been a success or not.   

If we think back to the four main aspects of brand awareness that we identified earlier, then we can identify KPIs that we can explore within each aspect and look at whether or not the brand campaign has performed just as you wanted it to.   

Reach  

How visible has your brand been in front of your target audience? How aware of your brand are people?   

Engagement  

Are your target clients interacting with your advertising and promotion? What kind of traffic are you seeing to your website and social media profiles? How long do people spend on these pages? What is your click-through rate?   

Brand Perception  

How do people see your brand? What are people saying about your brand? What is the perception of who you are and what you can do for them? How often do people mention your brand? What is your position in the wider market?   

Sales Impact  

What impact has there been on your wider business as a result of your branding activity? Did anyone notice it? How does your performance now compare to the performance in the past? Has it improved?  

As you can see, there is more to think about when it comes to brand awareness campaigns than you may realise. The important thing to remember is that you should always be focused on improving how your brand is seen and how you appeal to your clients. If you make the effort, then I can promise you that over time, you will see the reward and you can start to feel the benefit in the number of clients that you have and the success that you are seeing.   

Some of my services: 

Outsourced Marketing Management

Marketing Plans

Need help?

If you would like help with your marketing then bringing on a marketing consultant with a fresh pair of eyes can make all the difference. I work with B2B businesses and professional service firms in London, Kent, UK and Europe as well as specialising as a Legal Marketing Consultant. Please get in touch or book a free 30-minute consultation.