Why investing in your brand is not a nice-to-have but a must-have 

A strong brand presence is key to success. A well-established brand conveys professionalism, trust, and identity. Therefore, building a brand is an investment in the future – both in the short and long term. Over time, it becomes easier to make your brand appealing to your target audience if you continuously strengthen your brand.

A strong brand has advantages that unknown or untrustworthy brands do not have: consumers are willing to pay higher prices, compare less, and make purchasing decisions faster and easier, which generates more revenue and less costs.

Thus, Coca Cola can afford to launch a contest page that is not conversion optimized and does not include testimonials, because everyone already knows what they get when they hear or taste Coca Cola. It is a brand we learned to trust and love in childhood – health aspects are of course excluded.

Consumers are also more willing to give their data to a well-known brand than to leave their contact information on a website they have not heard of before, or where various security factors are missing.

Another example would be the willingness to buy a Starbucks coffee for $4 – $8 compared to the coffee shop around the corner. Or why Swarovski can charge up to $95 for a ballpoint pen, while we would not pay $2 for it in the office supply store, and even get them for free.

There are many ways to build and grow a brand, but some are faster and more effective than others.

In this article, we will introduce you to the top 5 branding hacks that you can use to organically grow your brand.

Establish a strong brand identity

A strong brand identity is essential to building a successful brand. It is so much more than just a visual presence, which is often mistakenly equated with it.

During our current rebranding process, it is the centerpiece of our evolved brand identity. But we will reveal more about it soon.

“Sign up for our newsletter and we’ll let you know as soon as we relaunch our website. You’ll not only be the first to know what’s changing, but we’ll also take you through the process. You can watch over our shoulder and learn the best tips from our challenges and steps.”

A solid brand identity includes a logo, color palette, typography, and language. Some would even say that every brand has its own personality. These elements must come together to create a consistent, unique, and recognizable brand. The potential customer must feel addressed, connected, and understood.

A strong brand identity can help build customer loyalty, strengthen trust, and ultimately increase your sales. But how do you establish a strong brand identity? Here are some steps you can follow:

1. Define your target audience

To build a strong brand identity, you must first know your target audience. Who are your customers and what are their needs? What problems can your products or services solve? The better you understand your target audience, the more targeted you can align your brand with their needs.

2. Define your values

What makes your company unique? What are your values and beliefs? Or what do you dislike? A clear definition of your values can help differentiate your brand from others and build an emotional connection with your customers.

3. Develop Your Logo and Visual Identity

The logo and visual identity are the first things customers perceive from your brand. Develop a logo and visual identity that reflects your values and personality. Ensure that your visual identity is consistent across all channels and marketing materials to create a consistent image.

4. Create a Brand Voice and Personality

The brand voice and personality are the way your brand communicates. Define a brand voice and personality that fits your values and target audience. Ensure that the way you communicate is consistent across all channels to create a consistent brand identity.

You’ve made it when the user thinks you’ve read their secret diary if they were to write one.

5. Spread Your Brand

To make your brand known, you must actively promote it. Use social media channels, blog posts, email campaigns, PR actions, partner companies, guest speeches or contributions, and other marketing activities to spread your brand. Make sure that all activities fit your brand identity and are consistent.

In summary, a strong brand identity is an essential part of a successful business. This is the basis for all other activities. It’s about building an emotional connection with your customers and differentiating your brand from others.

By understanding your target audience, defining your values, developing your logo and visual identity, creating a brand voice and personality, and promoting your brand, you can build a strong brand identity.

You must ensure that these elements are consistently used on your website, social media channels, and advertising. This way, your brand can slowly but steadily establish itself.

Hack #1: Use social media actively

Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn are important tools to establish a brand and promote it organically. Here are some tips on how you can effectively use social media to promote your brand:

1. Choose the right channel

Social media is not a short-term game, but hard work that can pay off if done correctly. We’re not talking about follower numbers, but about engagement and sales to your target audience.

It is important to choose the social media platforms that your target audience uses most frequently. For example, Instagram is ideal for brands that want to share visual content, while LinkedIn is more suitable for B2B marketing. However, what is often forgotten is that at the end of the day, every B2B customer is also a B2C user and therefore often present on different channels for different purposes.

Research the different social media platforms and choose the ones that best fit your brand.

2. Develop a social media strategy

A social media strategy is essential to ensure that your activities on social media are aligned with your marketing goals and made measurable. Your strategy should include the following:

• Choosing the channel you will use
• Defining your target audience, their needs and pain points
• The definition of goals, such as increasing brand awareness or generating leads
• The voice used or the use of emojis on social networks
• The planning of content and its subcategories that will engage and inform your target audience
• The features used, such as posts, stories, reels or lives
• The frequency of publications
• The design of the social presence, as well as formats and, if applicable, initial design templates for various content types (which can sometimes differ slightly from the website)
• Advanced accounts can also take into account how to deal with the community or hate comments.
• Determining KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) that you will track to measure the success of your activities on social media

3. Create high-quality content & interact with your target audience

On social media, it’s not just about promoting your products or services. It’s also about entertaining, inspiring, and informing your target audience. Depending on the target persona and where the potential customer is in the customer journey, this can look very different. Create content that is engaging and relevant, and that encourages your target audience to share and comment on your posts.

Social media provides a great opportunity to engage with your target audience and generate excitement about new products and services.

Answer questions that users ask on your social media channels, and respond to comments and feedback. This shows that you listen to your target audience and that you care about their needs and concerns.

Hack #2: Use Content Marketing

Content marketing is another important hack to grow your brand organically. It refers to the creation and distribution of high-quality, relevant, and useful content that aims to reach, engage, and inform your target audience at each point in the customer journey. Here are some important aspects of content marketing that you should consider:

1. Target Audience Analysis

As explained in the section brand identity, you start with your target audience for content marketing. While the persona may be the same, depending on the step in the customer journey, a different medium and approach may be necessary. 

Before you start creating content, it’s important to understand your target audience. Who are they? What are their interests and needs? What are their challenges and pain points? What do they need and want right now in the situation they are in (when they see the content)?

By thoroughly analyzing your audience, you can ensure that your content is relevant and engaging to them.

2. Content Strategy

A content strategy is a plan for creating and distributing content aimed at promoting your brand and your products or services. It’s important to develop a content strategy that is aligned with your target audience and focused on their needs and interests. This can include:

• Setting goals for your content, such as increasing website traffic or lead generation.
• Selecting the right channels to distribute your content, such as social media, public relations, email marketing, or blogging
• Developing an editorial plan for regular or automated content publishing 
• Alternatively, the multiplier contacts to use, for example journalists, partners, influencers
• Identifying topics that are relevant and useful to your target audience
• Establishing metrics to evaluate the success of your content

3. Content Creation

Content creation can be challenging, but it’s important to create relevant and useful content that engages and informs your audience. Here are some types of content you can create:

• Blog articles that cover relevant topics for your target audience
• Infographics that present complex information in a visually appealing way
• E-books, whitepapers, or guides that inform your audience and help them solve their problems
• Videos that demonstrate your products or services or provide informative content
• Landing pages that are only accessible to specific users
• Emails, for automated relationship building with your target audience

4. Content Distribution

Once you’ve created your content, you need to make sure it’s seen and used by your target audience. Here are some ways to distribute your content:

• Share your content on social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, TikTok or LinkedIn
• Use email marketing to send your content to your subscribers
• Use influencer marketing by partnering with influencers in your industry to share your content and increase your reach
• Publish guest posts on other websites to spread your content and back
• Do a press release promoting your content’s landing page
• Ask partners and affiliates to share your content

Hack #3: Use Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search engine optimization, also known as SEO, is an important part of any successful marketing strategy. SEO refers to a set of techniques used to ensure that your website is found and preferred by search engines like Google and Bing. 

With 80% market share among search engines in 2023, Google is definitely number one and therefore the search engine you should pay the most attention to. Unless your target audience is in Asia.

Here are some important aspects of SEO that you should consider to grow your brand organically:

1. Technical Optimization 

If you want to optimize your brand for search engines, technical optimization is an important component. Technical optimization involves ensuring that your website or blog is easily accessible for search engines and that they can understand and index the content on your site correctly.

Some of the technical factors that you should optimize include the loading time of your website, the use of structured data, the optimization of your URLs and meta tags, and ensuring that your website has an XML sitemap and a robots.txt file.

A fast loading time is particularly important as it is not only a crucial ranking factor but also improves the user experience. A poor loading time can cause users to leave your site before it has even loaded.

Using structured data can also help make your site more readable for search engines. Structured data can help your content appear as rich snippets in search results, attracting more attention.

Optimizing URLs and meta tags, such as title tags and meta descriptions, can also help make your site appear better in search results and receive more clicks.

2. Keyword Research

Keyword research is the process of identifying keywords used by your target audience to search for information, products, or services related to your brand. Thorough keyword research can help you understand what your target audience is searching for and how you can optimize your content to be found for those queries.

3. On-Page Optimization

On-page optimization refers to optimizing the individual pages of your website to ensure they are relevant and useful to search engines and users alike. This can include:

• Using relevant keywords in your title tag, meta description and headings.
• Optimizing the URL structure of your website
• Using internal links to connect your pages to each other
• Using images and videos to enrich your content
• Ensuring that your website is fast and user-friendly

4. Off-Page Optimization

Off-page optimization refers to any SEO techniques performed outside of your website to increase your authority and credibility in the eyes of search engines. This can include:

• Creating guest posts on high quality websites with relevant subject matter to generate backlinks.
• Launching a PR campaign to gain backlinks from media outlets
• Participating in industry forums and online communities to promote your brand 
• Social media marketing to share your content and increase your reach, which consequently links back to your website
• Using online directories to register your website and generate backlinks

However, be careful. Not every link is a useful or good one! You have to distinguish between NoFollow and DoFollow links. 

5. Content Creation

High-quality, relevant and useful content is an important part of any successful content and SEO strategy. By regularly publishing new, unique and high-quality content on your website, you increase the chances that your website will rank higher in search results and be found by your target audience.

It’s also a chance to answer your users’ questions and signal to them that you have just the right solution to their problem.

Overall, SEO can be a very effective way to grow your brand organically. However, it takes a lot of work, research and time to implement a successful SEO strategy. 

If you’re not sure how to leverage SEO for your brand, click here to book your discovery call with us.

Conclusion

In conclusion, branding is a long-term process that requires a lot of time and patience. However, there are several branding hacks that you can use to grow your brand in an organic way.

By using the right marketing and branding strategies, you can reach your target audience, build trust, and create a strong brand identity.

The hacks presented here are just a sample of the many other ways to promote your brand. It’s important to experiment and find out which tactics best suit your brand. 

Also, be patient as branding is a long-term process and it takes time to build a strong brand.

By following these hacks and continuously working on your brand, you can achieve long-term success and build a strong brand that stands out from the competition.

If you have more questions or need support implementing these brand hacks, book an initial consultation with us through this link.

We can help you identify the best quick wins and long-term actions through our growth hacking workshops or detailed strategies to grow your brand sustainably and efficiently by convincing your target audience and minimizing your workload.

Defne Hüryilmaz

Defne Hüryilmaz is a versatile creative professional who has a natural talent for digital marketing. With a keen eye for detail and an exceptional writing style, she excels in her role as a social media manager. Her ability to create compelling, persuasive content that resonates with audiences is second to none.

Defne is a social media expert who understands how to optimize content for maximum impact on each platform. She has a wealth of experience in creating content that engages and converts, and she knows exactly how to get the most out of every account.

When it comes to crafting an effective message, Defne lives by the mantra “Make it simple. Make it memorable. Make it inviting to look at. Make it fun to read.” With this approach, she creates content that is both informative and entertaining.

You can often find Defne working on her projects in unconventional places, such as sitting on a Pilates ball, writing copy from an airplane, or creating a content plan in a coffee shop. She is a true travel addict and sports lover, which makes her an exceptional blogger.

In summary, Defne is a passionate digital marketer who has the skills and expertise to take your social media presence to the next level.