If you are running a business, you will know how important it is to build a brand. To survive in this highly competitive and global world, we need to have a strategy that outsmarts all the other players in our respective industry. With the world getting more and more digitized many businesses are developing more creative ways to implement a brand activation strategy.
Brand activation means making your brand known to people in the simplest terms. It involves different ways of surprising your audience and keeping them excited about your products and services. If only someone has heard about your brand, can they consider visiting your store and purchasing your products? However, if you look closely, you would know that brand activation is actually a much more complicated and detailed subject. It involves different techniques and tactics used by today’s modern businesses to make their brand stand out in the realm of global competition. An example would be to hold an interactive event at the time of a product launch. The more the audience participates in the event, the more effective your brand activation is.
During the current pandemic we are going through, modern marketing tactics are all the more essential to be kept an eye on. Businesses are struggling to capture the attention of their audiences to be able to make sales at least over the internet, if not through their brick-and-mortar outlets. That’s why they are focused on the various digital forms of marketing and sales.
If you are looking for a guide to brand activation, you have come to the right place. This post will guide you through all you need to know about a brand activation strategy. We will also talk about the different types of brand activation and discuss their importance. But before we begin, let’s define this concept in business terminology to better understand it.
What is Brand Activation?
Brand activation refers to a campaign, event, or any other form of interaction through which an organization drives desired actions from customers. The marketing technique focuses on building brand awareness to establish long-term relationships with customers. Companies that implement a brand activation strategy engage more with their customers than others and give them avenues to interact with their support staff or sales personnel more directly.
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Why is Brand Activation Important?
It is difficult for businesses to stand out and make an impression in this digital age. There are thousands of brands in almost every industry. Every marketer needs to develop effective and interactive techniques to attract the target customers. For making your brand recognizable, you need to do different kinds of experiments. Such experiential marketing includes brand activation, guerilla marketing, ambush marketing, and influencer marketing. Such tactics come to the rescue for brands that are still building their identity.
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Businesses that get off the ground faster create unique campaigns and implement them in creative and entertaining ways. The more you interact with your customers directly, the more they will feel like engaging with your brand. If you understand the importance of customer engagement, it is time to learn more about a brand activation strategy.
How do you Build a Brand Activation Strategy?
There are several steps that you need to take to build and implement a brand activation strategy. A dull approach will not let you attract any crowd. If you want to create a buzz around your campaign, work on your brand activation steps as diligently as possible. Let’s walk you through these steps.
1. Determine the Main Goals of Your Brand
The first step is to determine what your brand name stands for. Identify the goals of creating your brand. Determine the value it provides to your target customers. A brand activation strategy is not just about brand positioning but determining why your brand deserves such a perception. You need to make your messages as clear as possible so that the audience can understand why they must have the perceived value for the products that you claim.
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2. Define Your Niche
For effective brand activation, you need to know who you are targeting. Businesses that do not define their audience clearly often face problems in developing campaigns that their target customers can relate with. Specify the demographics and other metrics of the people you want to target. Describe your niche and explain why they need to purchase your product. According to a study, 72% of customers like engaging with marketing content that is customized and tailored to their interests.
Businesses that keep taking guesses about the niche they want to target are often not successful in their strategies. Customer segmentation plays a critical role in defining your niche properly. You need to identify who is your ideal customer and who is not.
3. Conduct a SWOT Analysis
The next step is to conduct a competitor analysis. A SWOT analysis is a good way of going about this. It helps you reflect on your internal strengths and weaknesses and discover the opportunities and threats posed by the other players in the industry. Knowing these facts can help you steer your strategies in the right direction.
A SWOT analysis is particularly beneficial in identifying market gaps that you can capitalize on as you grow your business. Many businessmen realize that they do not necessarily need a massive budget for brand activation. There are always opportunities that allow you to penetrate markets with reasonable amounts of resources. For example, you can set up booths to attract masses in a low-priced but high-traffic location that nobody has consumed so far.
4. Use Creative Tactics to Attract Your Audience
There are many ways to attract your audience and persuade them to make a purchase. The more creative you are in your tactics, the more effective your brand activation. You can do product demonstration, gaming, mobile vans, and other such activities. Whichever technique you adopt, you need to make sure that your message is communicated to the audience clearly. If you have a brand portfolio, you can use a different tactic to promote each item in your portfolio. Use catchy slogans and brand visuals to keep the audience engaged.
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5. Think About Brand Management
The last step in your brand activation is to build a brand management strategy. Now that people already know about your brand, you need to maintain its position and perceived value by continuously providing quality products or services. Allocate the right tasks to the right people in your marketing team, and keep everyone well aware of your organization’s objectives and goals.
Almost all the elements of a brand activation strategy can be implemented through a brand website. To reach a mass audience, you need to have a professional website that is optimized for search engines. If you know how to optimize your website for search engines, you can attract anybody to your site who knows its URL.
Many of our users on Strikingly run their brand activation campaigns through their website. From offering giveaways to inviting people to participate in brand events, our users try different tools and tactics to generate more leads. Some of the websites built on Strikingly are created to promote a social cause. These websites also gather crowds around the noble cause they are striving for by announcing their campaigns on their web pages.
To further spread the brand activation campaigns, most businesses like to integrate their professional website with their social media pages. Social media plays an essential role in enhancing a brand activation strategy. The shareability feature of most social media platforms triggers excitement among users to share any post they like with their entire network of friends.
If your website is built on Strikingly, you can use our advanced social feed feature to insert part of your Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter feed into your web pages. This helps you grow your reach, as your site visitors do not need to come out of your domain to view the kind of posts you make on social media. If they want to view more, they can visit your Facebook or Instagram accounts.
Concluding Remarks
To conclude, brand activation is a strategy that needs to be used with all other marketing techniques that contribute to growing your sales. As long as you consistently make sales, you know your marketing team is doing well. If your sales begin to dip, it means you either need to change your strategy or pay more attention to eradicating those aspects of it that are not bringing in fruitful results.
Since brand activation is a relatively new concept, you can use it to grow and expand your business to reach new heights. Keep surprising your customers with new campaigns and activities promoted through your website to maintain their focus on your brand.
