Taking Branding to the Next Level
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Branding is neither an exact science, nor is it exactly an art. It is mostly keeping one’s ear to the ground and making educated predictions of what strategies will work. It may sound simple, but the process actually involves social analytics and historical fact checking; gut instincts rarely turn out well. In an industry that seems to be always in flux, how can anyone get anything done, much less get ahead of the competition? This is where marketing lends a helping hand: by studying the biggest trends of marketing products, advertisers can create a brand image that will fit them perfectly, and spread it more effectively.
Many advertisers and industry observers have been making predictions on what will work and what will not for the coming year, and many of them have the right arguments to back them up. As long as advertisers design their brand images along these lines, they can be confident that their audiences will react positively to their work.
First, focus on aligning the brand with content marketing. Customers continuously turn to original and valuable content as indicators of a company’s authority and credibility to a certain subject. Anyone in branding knows that those are two things most people do not associate with advertising, so getting them would be an amazing boost. Second, companies cannot trust a good campaign to work more than once. The trick Coca-Cola pulled with the Red Santa Claus is something that will never happen again, especially when social media makes everything feel stale after a week of international exposure. Brands should be ready for this and employ multiple strategies. Diversity is the name of the game in social media.
Third, content does not necessarily mean text. More than seventy percent of companies are using more images in their marketing strategies, which is not really news to anyone in advertising. What is new is how brands can use images to complement content instead of the other way around. Advertisers like to use images because they deliver a message without taking up space or time. For content to remain authoritative, however, images need to take a back seat and settle for a supporting role.
Branding is a competitive business, but these strategies should make the job much easier for anyone who understands the nature of the job and how it works.
SOURCES: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/159814 http://www.voodoocreative.com.au/branding-strategy http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/social-media-trends/