No matter your industry, you’re likely one business in a sea of many. When the supply of available professionals far outweighs the demand, your ability to succeed as a small business relies so heavily on strong brand marketing.
There is a very real paradox that exists when it comes to marketing your brand successfully. One that is likely to blame for so many small businesses struggling to expand their reach, earn brand awareness with the right people, and sustain profitability.
But there is a way forward. To master your brand marketing, you must first understand this unique paradox so you can effectively adapt and optimize your operations for sustainable growth.
CONTENTS
THE BRAND MARKETING PARADOX
Here’s the troubling contradiction we, as entrepreneurs, are up against when it comes to our marketing strategy.
At the top of the marketing funnel, where you’re trying to build brand awareness, you benefit most from being novel, original, and new. To get new audience’s to notice your brand, it requires interrupting the pattern of sameness with something novel and different.
But here’s the catch.
After you’ve earned their attention and have them in your brand universe, you benefit more from being familiar and consistent. In other words, to stay top of mind and foster trust with your existing audience, your brand needs to be increasingly familiar.
This is the paradox of novelty and familiarity that exists for brand marketing.
HAVE YOU MISDIAGNOSED YOUR MARKETING PROBLEM?
Your marketing problem is really a brand problem.
For so many young businesses, when marketing their services isn’t panning out the way they’d hoped, they toss everything in the trash and start over. They reinvent.
This could be reinventing their brand identity, reworking their offer suite, or rewriting their brand messaging.
But when pivoting and reinventing your brand is your go-to solution for slow sales, you’re giving up on your original concept for the business. If you start looking to what other “successful” businesses are doing and mirror their approach, you end up blending in with your peers instead of amplifying your own unique strengths.
Let’s be real, this approach almost never works. And worse yet, it causes you to distance yourself from the true heart of your brand and business.
You see, good marketing really starts with good strategy.
And I don’t mean a marketing strategy, I mean a brand strategy.
THE BRAND MARKETING SOLUTION
So how does a business navigate being both novel and familiar at the same time?
By owning their brand. By being iconic and committing to the brand they’re inviting people to connect with.
Of course, this is really only possible with a strong brand foundation that you trust to begin with.
For any marketing strategy to work, to have novel ideas actually succeed at building brand awareness, your business benefits from a brand strategy that anchors every one of those novel ideas and makes them an evolution of your brand instead of a reinvention of your brand.
Apple is a great example of this because they’re in the business of being novel (innovative) but they also do a really beautiful job of remaining familiar and accessible.
That’s how they’ve been able to build such widespread brand loyalty. Users are excited by the novelty but keep coming back for the reliable familiarity.
Effective and sustainable brand marketing relies on brand strategy.
It’s about successful and creative offer development on the front lines that never undermines the core of who you are or how you show up and represent your business.
THAT’S familiarity. That’s the strategy filter.
It’s through brand strategy that we uncover the through-lines of your brand experience and your brand story that will continue to exist in all of the novel experiences that you present through your marketing.
In fact, it’s the creative limitations and parameters that a strategic brand offers you that leads to greater outcomes for your business and marketing.
Your brand strategy shows you how to be novel without sacrificing the comfort and familiarity that your audience has grown accustomed to. Because that familiarity is how you stay top of mind and earn their trust.
If you’re ready for this kind of clarity, confidence, and conviction in everything you do, let’s collaborate. Apply to develop your brand strategy and strengthen your brand marketing so your business can evolve and grow with ease.
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Jenny Henderson Studio develops memorable brand experiences and strategic brand foundations to improve recognition and revenue for service-based small businesses.