What Is Brand Marketing, And How Does It Work?

In layman's terms, brand marketing is all about selling by not selling. Brands that focus on brand marketing heavily use content to tell the world who they are, rather than just what they sell. While most marketing focuses on a specific product or a limited-time discount, brand marketing focuses on the identity of the business as a whole. The route is a little longer when it comes to generating leads, since the idea behind brand marketing is to be memorable in the customers' minds. If your business were a person, brand marketing would be its personality, its values, and the way it makes people feel when they walk into the room.

The goal of this strategy is to move your business out of the commodity category. When you are a commodity, you are forced to compete on price. Brand marketing, on the other hand, creates a mental shortcut for your customers. It ensures that when they have a need, your name is the first one they remember. It’s about building a foundation of trust so that when you eventually ask for a sale, the answer is a yes before they even look at the price tag.

How does it work?

The way to do this is to build and establish a consistent narrative across every touchpoint of your business. The content must unleash the emotional promise you make to the market. It functions through repetition and reliability. When a customer sees your postings on social media, receives an email from your team, and eventually uses your product, they should feel a singular, cohesive experience. This consistency builds a sense of safety in the buyer’s mind, reducing the friction of the purchase.

In practice, this works by shifting the focus from features to benefits and feelings. Instead of talking about technical specifications, brand marketing tells a story about how the customer’s life will be better with you in it. It targets the why behind the purchase. Do not expect immediate results from this. It appears in a compounding mode. This is known as brand equity. The higher your equity, the less money you have to spend on aggressive sales tactics because your reputation is already doing the heavy lifting for you.

Starbucks did this really well before

Imagine there are two coffee joints in the same neighbourhood. The first shop has a sign that says Coffee - RM3.90. They focus entirely on the transaction. You go in, you pay, you leave. You have no loyalty to them, and if a shop opens next door for RM2.90, you will likely switch. This shop has no brand; it only has a product.

The second shop is Starbucks. Before their downfall, they sold a third place between work and home, instead of selling coffee. They indirectly pushed the green mermaid logo, the specific scent of the store, and the status of hanging out at their cafes and displaying that mug on the table. Remember the long queues. Even if the coffee is more expensive and the line is longer, millions of people choose it every day. Those people are buying the Starbucks experience. That is a superb brand marketing example. It transforms a simple beverage into a daily ritual that people are willing to pay a premium for.