The Twists and Turns of Marketing

If your social media content is not building your brand, you’re doing it wrong. Various pieces tie into the art of social media marketing and branding. It's more than just posting videos and creating the content. There needs to be reason, purpose, and a vision behind it all⁠— behind your brand. Branding is what makes the brand, THE BRAND. With so many hair care lines out there, why create a new one? What will make it stand out? I was able to speak to five professionals in the marketing field to provide their insight on how branding is the key to success in the world of social media marketing. 

Branding is Storytelling

What is the first thing that comes to mind when you think of hearing an announcement of a new brand hitting the market? Perhaps the following questions: What does it look like? What is it for? How is it going to stand out in this oversaturated market? Well, this is what storytelling is here for. 

Storytelling in marketing is as simple as it may seem. You tell the story of your brand so that your target audience can understand what you are promoting on the shelf, online, and on social platforms. However, depending on how you execute it will determine your brand's success. Katherine Moldes, A Digital Marketing and Brand PPC Specialist, shared her thoughts on how important it is for your brand's success. “Storytelling is a powerful way for hair care brands to connect with their audience because it fosters an emotional bond and builds trust. Sharing authentic narratives, such as customer stories or your brand’s mission, allows people to see themselves in your story and feel a stronger connection to your brand.” 

As a marketer, you need to think about how you can get consumers to purchase this product. Maintaining a consistent “look” on social media accounts will help your audience recognize your brand. Consistency is another key factor in branding. No one wants to see a brand change its image many times as that shows unreliability and lack of commitment. Michelle Gonzalez, a Digital Creative Designer, shared with me her process of designing a brand's perfect image. “To ensure my brand stands out in crowded markets, I focus on creating a unique visual identity and a seamless, engaging digital experience that resonates with the target audience. I differentiate the brand by staying authentic, using personalized content, and consistently evolving the design to stay fresh and relevant in the competitive landscape.” It is known that building connections and a community within your brand will help you foster engagement on social platforms. Build the connection, be relatable, and make your audience feel seen⁠— I believe this is what will help you sculpt out your marketing plan when thinking about your brand image. 

Location Based Branding

Another factor of branding is location. Who is your target audience and where are they located? Taking consideration of your audience's demographic will help in the process of the long-term image and identity of your brand. Benjamin Paul, a Digital Marketing & E-commerce Analytics Professional, shared with me how implementing the location factor has changed his client's business success rate. “I developed the branding strategy for a service-based business in Atlanta. Having a strong understanding of the market, I included ATL in the brand's name. While the service is not exclusive to Atlanta, targeting a specific location in the brand name has helped to surface APP above comparable businesses that cast a much wider net.” He was able to shift the success of his client's business just by adding the location of the business in the name! Tactics like this are small but impactful.

Branding is more than the visual aspect of your brand. It is also how you promote it and find ways to catch engagement. There is a curly hair brand, Skala, that is based in Brazil and has gained buzz in the United States market. On the bottle, all of the words are in Portuguese. This automatically helps the brand in various ways: 1. The target audience sees that it's a foreign product 2. Some may say that Brazilians are known to have amazing curly hair 3. The fear of missing out strikes the consumer and now they want to have curly, luscious, voluminous hair like Brazilian women. Do you see how that all connects? As mentioned before, many key factors play into branding your brand on the market. 

One Story, Many Formats

With online platforms, you need to share your content religiously. How else will your target audience be aware of your brand? Capturing all forms of content is crucial when promoting your brand online. Finding various ways to repurpose your limited content into more than 1-2 posts will help with exposure. Hanna Sekenski, a Marketing Manager, shared her input on how creating various types of content while keeping consistency engages the audience. “To repurpose content effectively, start with a strong core piece and tailor it for each platform, turn a blog into social snippets, a video into short clips, or a post into an infographic. The key is keeping the message consistent while adapting the format to fit audience behavior.” You do not want to continue to post the same generic content over and over on your social accounts and website. After a while, it gets boring and becomes meaningless. Implementing dynamic, unique, and engaging content in a variety of ways while keeping the brand's image prominent will help with viewer retention. 

Staying on top of trends will bring more traffic to your account. To stay relevant, you must join these trends with relatability to your brand and of course, add something that your followers will enjoy. Putting out well-planned content will help your audience remember your brand. Your brand can put out a video of doing a curly hair routine with soon-to-be-launched products. There are various ways to repurpose this. First, you can create a full curly hair routine. Second, provide brush styling do’s and don’ts. Third, share how to layer products while doing your hair care routine. Lastly, you can share the results of the curly hair routine with the new products of the brand and this video especially can push your viewers to purchase the products from your brand.  The point is so that your target audience can see how diverse you are by being able to stay consistent with the brand's image, identity, and message. Repurposing content with consistent brand visibility and identity will help it succeed. Just remember to not get off track of who and what you are promoting.

Diffusing the Cast 

In the curly hair market, there is a lot of repetition of many products. As mentioned before, if you are coming out with a new curly hairline, how will it be any different than the others that are sitting on the shelf? Will your content be better? Is the packing going to be eye-catching? Or will your brand's message be the reason why it sells in-store and online? Cem Bahadir, an Associate Professor of Marketing at Florida International University (FIU) was able to provide advice to those who are starting new in the marketing realm. “At its core, branding is about offering better value than alternatives. If we were marketing hair dyes, then our product would need to offer a longer-lasting color experience or healthier options than the competitor products. The key issue is to figure out how we can differentiate our brand from the competition on a dimension relevant to our target market and be profitable at the same time.” How to be different and stand out is difficult in an oversaturated market. However, the way you overcome it allows for great ventures of success.

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Branding is the core of a marketing plan. Supported by experts, marketing is more than the logo, the name of your brand, and the products you are creating. The ability to foster a community within your target audience is just as important as the brand's image. To stand out in an overcrowded market like the curly hair market, you need to create with intention and strategy. The challenging part you’ll have to face as a marketer is not creating the marketing plan but how to maintain, change, and grow it throughout the longevity of your brand.