Post 2020, as we rose from the pandemic, every brand took the learning from the phase as an opportunity to form a stronger connection with their audience. Their focus moved from mere marketing to marketing effective content. Every brand shifted its attention to educating and helping its audience while presenting its unique point of view. They all poured their souls into the task and presented appealing creative content, but most of them lost the race when it concerned brand marketing.
As a marketer, it is essential for you to make optimum use of all opportunities to establish better brand loyalty but it's also your responsibility to ensure that you don’t burden them with irrelevant campaigns. In this urge brands often lose sight of their being, i.e. their brand value and brand personality which should be a constant contributor to brand strategies, even in times of crisis. Let’s have a look at how a brand marketing strategy can make or break the market impact for the brand.
The Establishment Of Brand Strategies
What’s in a brand, if not the potential to alter market scenarios? During the early stages of the Coronavirus outbreak, while you had made up your mind to stick to any available brand of sanitizer and hand wash liquid, you still looked for your preferred brand’s availability before you settled with the available lot. What makes that impact on you that you recall your favourite brand despite a pandemic knocking around?
Building a brand strategy begins with identifying what its target audience needs and addressing the issue with a suitable solution. A brand that connects the best with consumers’ pain points, emerges as the winner. While this works as the base of a strategic campaign, the key lies in the execution. For example, hearing the phrase “Dermatologically tested”, gives consumers more faith in the product’s authenticity and effectiveness. Similarly, when Lifebuoy came up with television advertisements promoting the use of alcohol-based sanitizers and hand wash instead of self-branding, they won hearts with the notion that the brand puts safety above marketing.
How To Adapt To Moment Marketing
Trends, societal issues, film promotion and world events are some of the best moment marketing opportunities for brands, the challenge being to keep their original personality intact. These are moments, capturing which successfully, can be extremely beneficial for gaining eyeballs for a brand. It can speak with the audience through television commercials, social media campaigns, etc. depending on the audience that they wish to reach out to. The only aim should be to be distinct and timely.
We’ve seen how before the release of a famed movie, the lead actors co-promote various brands along with their movie. Similar is the scenario when trending social media campaigns are launched; brands get on their toes to be among the best participants in a trend. Even in the case of a crisis outbreak, we witness various brands donning the title of responsible citizens and spreading awareness about the situation and the safety measures that can be taken in the current scenario. During the Covid-19 outbreak, various brands like housing.com and Starbucks have added a mask to their logos. During Pride Month, several brands son the pride rainbow as part of their logo and designs. Another relevant example is of brands jumping on reel trends with a minor tweak in the content they share.
The Key To Strategising Like A Tap And Not A Hose
For a brand, a crisis is an opportunity to stand out in the market. Having planned how to act upon it, they are always ready to throw marketing campaigns into the market like a javelin. Awaiting the results, disappointment surrounds them with half the amount of traction gained by the campaign than planned. The reason behind the failure? Overburdening the audience and not emphasising the right factors.
An opportunity for moment marketing is the same for you as for other brands. Irrespective of whether these brands belong to the same industry as you or not, they will be taking it up to push themselves ahead in the race. In such cases, no matter how sought after a brand you might be, if you keep promoting yourself aggressively you are bound to be lost in the crowd. The best way to get the opportunity without getting lost in the herd is to understand the scenario, gauge the right time for your campaign to walk in on the market, and ensure it has something new or different to offer to the audience. The trick lies in controlling the message and timing of your campaign for a better impact and ensuring you have a clear track of the dos as well as the dont's of creating the perfect strategy.
The agenda of strategising for brand marketing is to stand out from the crowd, despite being a participant of the same race, especially in times of crisis. Strategising like a hose, i.e. implementing all ideas at the same time will make it difficult for the audience to connect with you as they will already be burdened and bored with the same theme of content in the market. The solution is to keep the tap under control and draft a strategy based on what you must communicate, to whom, and how much, for bets results.