Most modern companies have figured out that marketing plays a massive role in the growth and success of your business. They invest in team members, agency partners, and marketing campaigns. But what happens when those tactics stop delivering results?

When marketing initiatives continually miss the mark or no longer deliver a strong ROI, it may be time to look beyond your marketing strategy or most recent execution and consider that your brand may be the root of the issue.

Brand Gives Meaning To Your Marketing

Many people think branding and marketing are interchangeable, and that’s typically for good reason. They do have to work hand in hand to promote your business and, therefore, your goods and services. In fact, branding is defined as “the promotion of a particular product or company by means of advertising and distinctive design.” But how does this really differ from marketing?

Your brand is the soul of your business. It’s aspirational and all about creating a deep, emotional connection with your customer. Your marketing is the tactical way that you communicate this to the world. Yes, your marketing should still be creative, but it’s really at its best when it’s rooted in a bigger idea (your brand).

The Power of Brand

Your brand is made up of far more than just your logo and tagline. It builds on the functional parts of your business and becomes a single entity that represents who you are, what you value, how you uniquely deliver to your customers, and why you do it each and every day. Your brand builds that emotional connection with your customers. When purchase decisions move from rational to emotional, you begin to play a completely different ball game with a different set of rules than the rest of your peers.

This emotional connection has clear implications for your bottom line. Studies show that companies with strong brands build brand equity, resulting in meaningful customer loyalty and increased differentiation among competitors—critical factors in helping your business grow and last for years to come.

As you build more brand equity, you create distinctive assets, allowing your brand (emotional) and offering (functional) to work together as a shorthand way to communicate to the world who you are and what you offer with far less effort.

Beyond increasing customer loyalty, recognition, and differentiation amongst peers, your brand also makes you more resilient to category commoditization and external pains like supply chain shortages and rising costs of goods. When you have a strong connection with your customers, purchase decisions are emotional vs. rational. So, while everyone else focuses on efficiency and who can deliver the cheapest or fastest, you’ve already set yourself apart.

Putting It Into Action

What a huge impact your brand can have on your business and marketing is clear, but how do you make this all happen? Here are a few recommendations to get started.

• Know your customers and know them well. Think beyond demographics and focus on their mindset, values, and the cultural influences that may come into play.
• Assess your category and competition. Identify where everyone sits on a spectrum from functional to aspirational. Who are they trying to connect with? Who’s doing it well? Do you see any whitespace?
• Build your brand strategy and positioning. Work to solidify your strategy and positioning. Ensure it is aspirational and broad enough to give you runway for years to come.
• Craft your strategic messages. Consider what’s most important to communicate to your audiences. Ensure your messages bridge both aspirational and functional elements.
• Build your brand identity. Use your visual and verbal brand to create synergy between your strategy and marketing.
• Define your distinctive assets. Consider where you may already have brand equity and where you will invest to establish more over time.
• Expand your brand’s reach. Allow your brand to influence everything you do, from your customer service to your onboarding process. Use every experience and interaction someone has with your business to build brand equity.
• Assess and optimize. There’s not a one-size-fits-all solution. Monitor what’s working and what’s not. Consider playing with different levers in your marketing, as long as it’s rooted in the soul of your business (your brand).