7 Tips to Become a Marketing Pro: Brand Personality Still Wins
1. Personality sells
When I say personality, I don’t mean your personality, the personality of your CEO, or the personality of your intern (although these things can actually affect you brand). I’m talking about the personality of your product.
Products, like people, have personalities. Patagonia, for example, is outdoorsy, adventurous, and environmentally conscious. When you think of the brand, the first thing that comes to mind isn’t necessarily vests, jackets, or ski pants. It’s mountains, the outdoors, and a thirst for adventure. This picture isn’t inherent to a Patagonia jacket. It was created and expertly curated by a top marketing team.
Personality is the reason techie dads go to Best Buy, while young millennials and hipster designers head to Apple. If you want your brand to really sell, it needs to have a personality. Personality can be shaped by advertisements, social media presence, and even things like pricing. You’ll want to shape your brand’s personality to your target audience, which brings us to the next tip.
2. Engage your followers
Your audience is the group that you want purchasing your product, so you must know them inside and out. Know which social media platforms your audience uses most, maintain a presence on those sites, and produce the kind of content that your audience wants to see.
Try to do more than talk at your audience--actually engage them instead. Start conversations, hold contests, and ask for input and feedback. Your audience will love becoming involved, and you will learn how to make the best product you can. Most of these resources are free, and you really just need someone who knows how to use them effectively.
Also remember to test everything, even on social media. Something as small as the copy on your ad or website can influence whether or not a customer will visit your site or buy your product, so make sure everything you produce is optimized for the most efficient message.
3. Take charge of content
Everyone is producing content these days; this is a form of advertising! Do not fall behind on the content trend, and get creative with it. Curate photos that represent your brand’s personality on Instagram. Create breathtaking videos and post them for your followers on Facebook. Get as creative as possible with your content.
Consider the clothing brand Anthropologie. To advertise for the summer months, the brand published a series of DIY drink recipes. The drinks were seasonal and timely, and they played off of the styles of Anthropologie’s clothes. But this campaign was really successful because it was not an obvious gimmick to increase sales. The store doesn’t sell liquor or simple syrup. But the campaign does position Anthropologie as a fun, trendy friend. It creates the appearance of a certain kind of lifestyle one can live by making Anthropologie’s drinks and wearing Anthropologie’s clothes.
You should have fun with your content. Chances are, you started your business because it is in an area that truly interests you. Let that enthusiasm catch on for your followers and customers as well.
4. Practice what you preach
I mentioned earlier that the actions and presence of employees can affect the perception of your brand. Think about prominent past and current CEOs and presidents of top companies: Steve Jobs embodied Apple, Jenna Lyons embodies J.Crew, Donald Trump embodies the Trump Organization. Each of these figures has a personal brand that is an extension of their company’s brand, and they use this personal brand and prominence to enhance their company’s brand.
By practicing what your brand preaches, you show that you truly believe in its message. One extreme example is a new tech startup called Toptal. Toptal connects top companies with the top 3 percent of software developers from all over the world to work remotely. The company believes in the concept of remote work so much that the entire internal team is distributed as well. Now that’s dedication.
If you stay authentic to your brand, it shows your audience that you believe in what you are selling. This helps establish both trust and brand loyalty--two essentials for any growing company.
5. Unhappy customers help
One of the greatest things about the use of social media is the ability to actually interact with your customer base. Brands have an opportunity like never before to engage with their audience and actually listen to feedback. Bill Gates of Microsoft has been known to say that your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning--he’s not wrong.
Scour Yelp for poor reviews and address every complaint on your Facebook page. You can use these tools to find raw, honest feedback from your customers. Fix what you need to accordingly, and address complaints personally. Nothing will turn a poor customer experience around like personal communication. Use marketing platforms to find these complaints, address them, and send every customer away with a positive experience.
6. Keep a regular schedule
You should be producing content regularly and posting this content to different social media sites to keep your audience engaged. You can do this manually or you can use one of the many tools out there for scheduling posts.
Brands that post once a day or a couple of times a week have much better audience engagement than those that do not post regularly. Therefore, it is extremely important to maintain a schedule and post content with a variety of themes.
Take Instagram, for example. This is a platform where it is best to post once a day. You can mix up your Instagram pictures by showcasing current projects, giving followers a behind-the-scenes look at your company, posting pictures that showcase your lifestyle brand, or allowing sneak peeks of upcoming products. The possibilities are endless, and regular posts will help keep your audience engaged.
7. Get creative!
Don’t stick to the conventional social media sites or stick to the kind of advertising that everyone else is doing. Definitely don’t ignore these things, but feel free to try out new ideas as well. Create a Snapchat account for your brand or shake up the content on your blog. And don’t stop there. Try anything once, and measure the impact in order to see what works best and what doesn’t.
By trying out different avenues for marketing, you can engage with your audience even more and spread the word about your brand all over the world. You just have to get creative. After all, that’s why you went into marketing, right?
