Anything to help you establish a solid brand for your business is a great opportunity. Many entrepreneurs have taken risks and invested in every opportunity coming along their way. But is it worth spending time, effort, and money on something you aren’t 100% sure of?
By having a concrete plan on how to implement a brand activation strategy, you are giving your business a sure win to success. Like hitting a bullseye target in archery, your goals should be firm and specific before planning a larger marketing strategy. This can lead to the brand activation strategy, which we are very excited to share with you. But let's get familiar with the term before going further.
Image taken from Strikingly templates
What is Brand Activation?
Brand activation is a marketing strategy in the form of ad campaign, event, or direct customer interaction that aims to give a positive impression and experience to your audience. Imagine having an appetizer for your meal. It aims to entice your target audience or at least perceive the kind of image you want them to see on your brand. Brand activation can boost attention and push the button that leads the way to your business’s marketing strategy.
In an article from Linchpinseo, David Tsoeute describes brand activation as part of a larger marketing strategy. To implement brand activation, you need efficient planning. Brand activation plays a crucial role for startups and even long-time running businesses. Whether you’re promoting brand awareness or giving your brand a new face, an effective brand activation strategy is what you need.
A business owner must carefully weigh opportunities to make the strategy work. You need to understand the types of brand activation that can rock your way.
Image taken from Strikingly templates
What are the Types of Brand Activation?
If you want to make your target customers actively engage with your brand, bring out the best quality and features. Engagement is key to a successful brand activation strategy. Make sure you get people talking about your business brand to reach a wider audience. Here are the six types of brand activation that you might have already seen online or offline. See how it can bring life to your brand image. Also, notice how to position them along with your marketing strategies properly.
1. Experiential Marketing
2. Digital Marketing Campaigns
3. Sampling Campaigns
4. In-Store Events
5. Promotions
6. Social Media Movements or Contests
1. Experiential Marketing
Making your brand remarkable and unforgettable is one of the most important goals of brand activation. Experiential marketing is a trend and one of the go-to ideas for startups and big businesses over the years. It simply goes with the basics of building a solid brand. Make your brand stick to the mind of your target customers, emphasizing the benefits of the products instead of just throwing away chances in useless tricks to get attention. Coming up with an attention-getting strategy is good, but you must ensure not to disappoint your customers once they get to know your brand.
As per Linchpinseo, you can successfully implement brand activation with these three simple dynamics – know your customers better, know your brand, and come up with a mutually beneficial touchpoint. These three dynamics are mainly the basics of achieving a remarkable brand. It can make your campaigns stick to the mind of your customers.
2. Digital Marketing Campaigns
Digital brand activation strategy is one of the latest trends in business marketing. It started around 2019 when the year of the digital era opened up opportunities for businesses and individuals online. As you can see now, millions of websites are probably built, social media pages created, and other online channels made for everyone. Most people, regardless of age, know how to browse the internet. They use the internet even to look up vocabulary meanings and find the best places to go, popular restaurants, and online shopping stores. The digital era is a breakthrough in this generation and an excellent opportunity for business brands to get noticed.
Image taken from Pet Milestone Cards website
3. Sampling Campaigns
This is one of the coolest types of brand activation because it pushes many buttons for brand awareness, drives website traffic, and even increases sales. Giving freebies is not a bad thing at all. You are just allowing your customers to feel, taste, or experience what you’re trying to say about your brand.
Free samples are sent to your target customers or to those who are interested in trying your products. This is also a good chance to work collaboratively with influencers who can write a blog about your brand. It also makes sense to have your media kit ready in case you need to appear on media for featured interviews. All these scenarios give way to sampling campaigns.
Image taken from Lever & Bloom Coffee website
4. In-Store Events
For physical stores, there are in-store brand activation strategies you can try. This is effective because not all your customers can engage with your brand online. If you are running a cosmetics shop, for instance, you can have a free sample kit for your customers. For launching new products, this is a traditional style yet a very effective and sure way of brand activation. This has been proven to work especially with businesses selling goods or various products.
5. Promotions
Who says promotions aren’t cool? Everyone loves getting some kind of discount or rebates on things they purchase. For a brand activation to work, you must be prepared with exciting promos that can help your customers decide to buy the products.
Some business owners offer big savings on multiple orders, a price off, free additional stuff, or even free shipping. Anything free is cool. People love to get some kind of generous treatment, and this is how promotions work for business brands.
Image taken from Strikingly templates
6. Social Media Movements or Contests
We can’t set aside the fact that social media platforms have played a significant role in the success of businesses these days. Small businesses use social media to implement brand activation strategies.
They can hold contests and movements that attract more customers and reach new audiences. Since most of us are into social media, it is an excellent chance for businesses to show up on ad campaigns, appear on shared content, and get lots of reactions. You can grow your business both organically or artificially using social media movements. Just make sure you’ve got a huge number of followers on your page.
Image taken from Facebook page
How to Implement Brand Activation Strategy?
You must be able to identify what works with your brand. Otherwise, you’ll miss the chance. Keep in mind that brand activation can make or break your marketing strategy, so make sure not to break it. Here’s how you can do it right:
• Identify Your Goals
It goes without saying that your goals serve as the foundation of the whole marketing strategy. For you to implement brand activation, you must identify your goals first. What do you want to achieve? Which business areas do you want to focus on? Who are your target customers? Be specific with your purpose in brand activation – brand awareness, rebranding, growing your audience, etc.
• Get a Team to Work With
Two heads are better than one. Get a PR team, strategic advisers, along with your marketing personnel with whom you can discuss your plans. Let them understand what you have in mind and your goals for the brand. If your staff knows every detail of the brand activation strategy, there’s no reason it will fail.
• Position Brand Activation Strategy
After brainstorming with your team, it’s time to position your brand activation strategy properly. What platforms are you going to use?
Know the type of brand activation that fits your brand. Don’t miss any single chance to rock your way. Engage with your target customers promptly. You can get dedicated customer support to handle inquiries about your products.
• Get Ready With the Results
If you’re ready for any results, no bad news is that bad. You can expect the unexpected but make sure not to get swayed even if you didn’t get favorable results. As a business owner, prepare a plan B or even up to plan Z for your marketing strategy. Remember that there is always a way out. Get ready to reach success, and don’t get overwhelmed with the attention you’re getting from customers. Get started with the right website platform to give you what you need.
Image taken from Strikingly website
Final Thoughts
With Strikingly, your brand activation strategy won’t go to waste. Everything you’ve planned can be well-implemented with our best web tools and features. Building a solid brand with the best platform is necessary to rock your way to business success. Working with millions of website users worldwide, we know how to entice your audience with great landing pages. We have the web features you need for customer engagement and empowerment. Try our ridiculously easy-to-set-up websites and do it like an expert. Sign up now.
