Your brand encompasses everything about your business; it’s about the experience you give your customers and reflects how your product or service is different to competitors. As today’s customers have easy access to a multitude of brands, how can you make yours stand out? A good place to start is by having a purpose. Read on for part two of our Account Manager Megan Thoume’s digital marketing blog series and catch up with part one here.
A brand’s success isn’t solely down to its product or what the brand does; it’s about the brand’s purpose. This means having a bigger organisational goal in mind and attracting customers who share your core beliefs.
The Why-How-What framework helps organisations understand ‘why?’ anyone should care that they exist and their purpose. The ‘how?’ answers how the ‘why?’ will be met, what actions will help them achieve their purpose and what differentiates them to competitors and the ‘what?’ is the service or product.
If Apple just focused on the ‘what?’ then their brand wouldn’t sound that meaningful or impactful.
Red Bull is another example of a brand that has a strong purpose. It aims to energise the world and so has reinvented itself from an energy drink to become an extreme sports brand. This forms the basis of the majority of their content.
Most people are emotional and intuitive, and their buying decisions are often based on trust and unique value. 71% of consumers prefer buying from companies aligned with their values (Small Business Trends, 2020). If you can show that your brand value is aligned with your customers’ needs, and you deliver what you’ve promised, they’ll trust you and become loyal customers. Customers don’t always articulate the type of experience they want to receive from a brand; we should think like a customer and understand their needs.
The Hero, Hub, Help model helps categorise content types that can strengthen a brand by telling stories that resonate with the customers and their needs.
Hero content targets a broad audience to attract attention to your brand. This could be a new product launch campaign.
Help content answers your audiences’ questions and provides information or inspiration. This could be tips or a FAQ page.
Hub content is regular content that loyal customers expect such as a weekly blog post on the recent updates of a product.
The four main reasons that people go online is to be educated (e.g. guides/articles), inspired (e.g. reviews/ratings), entertained (e.g. quizzes/videos) or convinced (e.g. case studies/events) so your content should fulfil these needs to keep your audience interested. All your content should have a purpose or align to a bigger goal.
Getting your customers on board with your values and beliefs will not only ensure they remain loyal but will also mean they could become your own marketeers. They could tell their friends and family how great their experience was and post on social media about it. They could also go one step further and create a video which reaches millions of people. Check out the video below where a YouTuber recorded his Emirates 1st class experience which reached over 75 million views.
If you need help defining your purpose, find out how we can help here.