4 Tips on How to Get Your Brand to Break through Industry Noise

Editor's Note: Take a look at our featured best practice, Strategic Branding (25-slide PowerPoint presentation). What is your brand important? Brands is a major driver of consumer behavior. A strong brand leads to higher market share and higher profit margins. It serves as a significant competitive advantage. In this presentation, we understand what "brand" is dig deeper into why it's important. [read more]

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We’re living in a world where new brands seem to pop up every minute. Maybe you’re part of one of these brands, or you see your brand drowning in a sea of new brands. Advanced technology makes it very easy to start a business, causing saturated markets. And at the same time, this global digitalization makes it possible for consumers to choose between worldwide brands and make tough demands. This causes an increased competition and, therefore, a challenge for new and existing brands to gain attention from their customers.

So how do you break through this industry noise and distinguish yourself from your competitors to attract customers? The answer is simple: become a preferred brand—a simple answer but hard to execute. Nowadays, brands who want to become top-of-mind with their customers need to offer more than just a good product. Whatever they’re offering, customers are currently searching for more: they are searching for an experience. Every touchpoint your potential customer has with your brand needs to add value and align with their identity.

So how to create an experience around a brand? The following four tips will help your brand standing out and breakthrough industry noise:

1. Get your brand story straight

Brands that don’t have their brand story straight won’t make it. Maybe a harsh message, but it’s true: only brands with a clear and original brand story win it from the competition. Brands need to ask themselves this question; would I buy my product based on the story I tell? If not, why do you think others will buy your products if you can not even convince yourself.

A clear and concise brand story is the foundation of your brand. The first thing you need to do to create an appealing and original brand story is to discover your Unique Selling Point (USP), which means: finding that one thing that differentiates you from the rest. A USP can be anything, from a unique product feature to outstanding customer service. The second is determining the brand identity: who you are as a brand and your brand’s purpose. Once brands have found their USP and brand identity, they need to focus on it and create a brand story around it.

2. Create appealing branding – and be consistent with it

Once brands have that story straight, the branding around it has to be on point, and most importantly: it has to support and strengthen the brand story. Many brands forget that branding can make or break your company. Why is branding so important? Well, it is the representation and communication of the carefully defined brand story: who you are and how you would like to be perceived. Where branding was before only the visual representation of a brand, it nowadays includes every communication around a brand, in- and outside the company: from visual representation such as logos to its tone of voice.

Once created an appealing branding, it’s essential to stick to the plan and be consistent with the brand identity.  Sounds logical, but many brands find maintaining brand consistency a challenge. Research shows that the revenue of brands that are consistent in branding can be 23% higher than brands that aren’t consistent.

3. Become an expert in the field 

To become a preferred brand and succeed in that saturated market, brands need to create brand credibility among their customers by continuously building trust and expertise. Customers need to see the brand as the expert in the field, the one brand that truly knows everything about that product category and can always be trusted. Research shows that brand credibility is one of the most critical factors in predicting consumers’ brand consideration and choice. This credibility has to be present at every touchpoint the (potential) customer has with the brand: from the website, social channels to the salespersons in-store and customer care representatives. Creating this brand credibility among customers is a time-consuming project, but it will help brands stand out in the market.

4. Be where the customers are: use local marketing 

Once brands have a clear brand story, branding is on point, and have created an expert status among their customers; it’s time to be at the right places. Where is that? Right there where the customers are. This can vary from a national, regional to a very local level, as long as the brand is present. Most importantly: it is relevant for this specific group because one size fits nobody. Products need to be relevant for every single customer and therefore adapted to the local market. All successful brands know exactly who their customers are, where they live and what they like.

You can do this by investing in local marketing. Who thinks local marketing is only something for local brick-and-mortar shops is wrong. Local marketing can be executed by any brand, in any industry, on any level: it’s the act of targeting the community around a specific market.

However, an excellent local marketing strategy is more than just adding a local twist to the existing marketing strategy.

So, how to create a successful local marketing strategy?

1. Get to know the local audience: create (local) buyer personas
2. Find out what other brands are active in this local market
3. Deep dive into the local culture, relevant topics, and events
4. Create campaigns that are personal, customized, and recognizable for the local audience

Brands that are exceptionally good in local marketing often make a difference in a crowded market. To give some inspiration on how local marketing is done: check out these 12 examples of successful local marketing campaigns by top-of-mind brands.

In short: to break through industry noise, brands need to differentiate from competitors by delivering a great brand experience. It doesn’t matter whether a brand is new or an industry “veteran”; if it can’t beat the competition, it should go back to the basics and start with discovering its brand personality and story. Of course, this is a long-term project, but following these four steps will ultimately lead to brand preference and increased market share.

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