What Is Brand Advertising and How Does It Work?

Companies use brand advertising to establish connections and build strong, lasting relationships with consumers. Brand advertising aims to help brands get long-term positive recognition through establishing brand identity, credibility, and loyalty with prospects. If you’re wondering how brand marketing works and are considering advertising in newspapers, here are some things to know.

Don’t Create Brand Advertising Until You’re Clear on Your Brand Strategy

The way companies win space in their customers’ minds is through brand strategy. This involves a brand promise, position, and personality. This can be achieved by doing the following:

Be clear on your brand strategy
Identify and decide on whether your brand promise, position, and personality will drive your brand advertising campaign
Ensure your strategy is well represented in your final brand advertising campaign

How Does Brand Advertising Add Value to a Brand?

Brand advertising adds value to brands even without the help of tracking and measurability. A trustworthy advertising campaign makes knowledge of your brand available to consumers, and you will increase the chances of many of them turning into loyal customers. Here are some of the fundamental ways brand advertising adds value to brands:

Exposure Establishes Brand Identity

First impressions go a long way, so during the exposure stage, you must do your best to establish a strong, positive first connection with your consumer. From that point, you’ll need to demonstrate a consistent brand identity, which includes your logo, fonts, colors, web presence, and other visual elements. These elements will speak volumes about your brand. If you have a more serious, corporate brand, your brand identity should be more professional and clearer. Choose a plain logo, simple fonts, and a minimalist web presence.

Influence Ensures Brand Credibility

Consumers are more likely to buy products from brands they trust, so your brand advertising must inspire that trust and build credibility. You can achieve this by portraying your brand as a leader in your industry and demonstrating how you outperform your competitors. Becoming an influencer in your community creates positive news for your brand, which helps consumers to learn about you and trust you. Here are some tips to create influence and ensure brand credibility:

Launch branded campaigns where industry and company experts provide knowledge and advice
Sponsor community events
Host charities for causes relevant to your business (e.g. environment, wildlife, medical research, human rights, disease and disorder, mental health, school reform, etc.)

Engagement Builds Strong Connections

A great way to build strong connections with your consumers is by offering solutions to problems they may have. This makes intellectual and emotional sense to encourage meaningful engagement with your consumers. If consumers cannot form a personal relationship with your brand, they will likely move to a competitor who they can.

Two tips for building engagement are to use a catchy slogan or have a memorable spokesperson. Consider the ads that engage you: McDonald’s “I’m lovin’ it,” Nike’s “Just do it,” the Monopoly Man, Tony the Tiger, or the Pillsbury Doughboy. When these tricks are used in brand ads, it is easier for prospects to recognize, remember, and connect with your brand and its story.

Brand Advertising Based on Brand Position

The style of position-driven advertising is a key aspect to consider when you create your campaign. It involves how you position your brand in the minds of your consumers, relative to a category and other brands in your industry. This type of brand advertising is more feature-oriented and intellectual. Think about whether you are the number one, first, biggest, or fastest in your category and use that to your advantage.

Ways to Build Brand Awareness

There are a few ways for you to build brand awareness along with your brand advertising campaign. Here are some to consider:

Referral Programs

When consumers know they will get an added perk for spreading the word about your product or service, they are more likely to oblige. Take Dropbox for example. They are a great example of how smart referral programs can help a business grow. Dropbox gives existing users an extra 500 MB of storage space for each person they refer, up to a maximum of 16 GB. When Dropbox was new, this referral program generated a lot of word-of-mouth advertising.

Freemium with Credit

There are many great online products that enable users to choose a free version (with a logo or watermark of your brand) and the option to upgrade to a paid version (for the option to remove the logo and watermark). Although many users will choose the free version, they will also give free advertising and promotion of your brand to others. Either way, you win by getting your brand in front of more eyes as you also attract users to your paid version.

Local Partnerships

Another brand-building strategy that works for many businesses is getting involved with local partnerships. Especially if you have a local-oriented business, local partnerships are a great way to get more eyes on your brand. You and your partner can hold seminars or festivals together, or you can sponsor local sports teams and donate to charities.

Freebies

There’s not a consumer in the world that doesn’t love free items, so hand out free pens, Frisbees, keychains, magnets, and other knick-knacks with your logo on them at local events or festivals. It will go a long way to keeping your brand presence alive and active.

Let North American Media Help You with Brand Advertising

As one of the most trusted and experienced newspaper advertising agencies, North American Media Inc. is here to assist you with all your digital and print advertising needs. We can help you network, select your target audience, and ensure your brand advertising strategy is prepared for success. We offer copywriting, direct mail list rental, graphic design, web development, and full-service interactive consulting services to help enhance your digital and print/newspaper advertising. Our services also include direct mail marketing, digital marketing, alternative media/inserts, radio & TV advertising, list brokerage, data solutions, list fulfillment, and list management. Contact us at (475) 256-0303 today to learn how we can help you grow your business.

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David Klein

David Klein is CEO and President of North American Media; Inc. David has a rich and deep background in direct response marketing. His experience comes from being a consultant and list broker with more than 30 years in the Industry; working with several hundred different clients in just about every industry, market, or niche found in direct mail. David is a graduate of the University of Illinois with high honors advanced degree course work in Marketing Communications from Roosevelt University in Chicago. Part of North American Media’s vision is to help its clients succeed in their acquisition efforts for finding new customers regardless of the marketing channel or media used.