3 Ways Inbound Marketing Helps Build a Brand

Your company brand is more than your logo and website. Your brand is your company’s identity. It’s how others perceive you. You can’t buy one, borrow one or steal one. You have to build it. You earn your brand over time. Your brand can be built by maintaining consistent one-to-one message communication and value delivery to your prospects and clients over an extended period of time. But if you rely on this alone, the progress of building and establishing your brand will be slow.

The brand building process can be accelerated with a comprehensive inbound marketing strategy that’s executed with consistency and discipline. Below are three specific ways inbound marketing can help build your brand.

1. Be unique. 

Sometimes it’s a good idea to blend into the crowd and not get noticed – like when the magician on stage is looking for volunteers (that’s a recurring nightmare I have). However, working to establish a brand is not one of those times. Inbound marketing allows you to be loud and proud about what makes you different than your competition. Crafting an inbound marketing strategy forces companies to evaluate and identify the characteristics that make them unique. Then the tactics and content created for the inbound marketing strategy provide the platform to rise above the noise in the market and communicate to the world what makes you different and why that’s important. 

2. Be relevant, educational, and helpful. 

The lifeblood of any inbound marketing strategy is content. That content can come in many forms – blogging, eBooks, whitepapers, case studies, buyer guides, tutorial videos, webinars, podcasts, etc. However, the content (no matter what format it’s in) will only be as effective as the audience it draws. Only publish content that your target personas want to consume. A big piece of creating a brand is helping your prospects and clients have a positive buying experience. This can be accomplished by doing less selling and more helping. Create and publish content that informs and educates. Share your unique point-of-view. Answer questions before they’re asked. Tell your prospects something they don’t already know. Being relevant by sharing your thought leadership and subject matter expertise will build trust and help you become a valued resource and advisor.   

3. Be visible. 

Inbound marketing will transform your marketing from 1-to-1 communication to 1-to-many. Creating and publishing relevant content will help you exponentially grow your audience. Prospects that your sales team didn’t even know existed will find you and raise their hand to demonstrate interest in your solutions. That is, however, if your content is easy to find and easy to consume. Your content should be written with sound SEO strategy in mind so your prospects will find it organically. Your content’s reach can be further extended with a comprehensive promotion and distribution strategy. This may include social media sharing, paid social, paid digital advertising, and email campaigns to your known universe of prospects and clients. 

Focusing on these areas will guide you as you develop and execute your inbound marketing strategy. Then your inbound marketing strategy will not only help you develop a strong brand but also leverage that brand to drive revenue.