Branding Buzz You Can Rely On

If you’re running a business or taking decisions than can affect one, like overseeing the launch of a product or an event, you need to be thinking about generating publicity and buzz as much as successfully concluding the project. Or, to put it another way, generating buzz for your brand is a vital part of success for that project. A product that no one hears about or an event that doesn’t enhance your reputation are both examples of costly investments that don’t make the sort of return you need from them.

Today we’re taking a look at generating the sort of buzz for your brand that you can rely on to boost your reputation and increase your mindshare.

Spreading the Message

If you’ve got something to tell people, whether it’s about a new product, a sale, or the opening of a new branch of your business, you need that message to go as far and wide as possible. Treating your audience as a single homogenous mass, however, is not a successful tactic. Your potential customers are a big group of different people with unique qualities, wants and needs, and targeting them with a blanket of identical advertising won’t get the best results.

A market segmentation analysis will help you understand who makes up your market in terms of groups you can target in different ways. A successful strategy might require bespoke advertising for each group, or simply the reframing of ads to work on the home social media platform of the different market segments you’re targeting.

Ensuring you’re speaking to each significant segment of your market in a language they can understand, not requiring students to translate ads intended for homeowners, means everyone can see, quickly, why you’re relevant to their needs and just why you’re worth spending money on.

Consistency

If you’re trying to generate buzz, it might seem like the best thing to do is make big, bold promises but unless you’re certain you can fulfil them, this could backfire spectacularly. We’re fresh from the Christmas season, and each year it comes with a rollcall of news stories highlighting failed ‘winter wonderland’ experiences where the organisers have promised wildly beyond their capacity to deliver, ensuring refunds, bad publicity and the swift termination of the event and the business.

The best way to generate buzz you can rely on – buzz that translates into repeat customers – is to be consistent and reliable. Make sure your marketing, your packaging and all your publicity is consistent with your brand identity so people can identify it easily as coming from your brand. Promise what you can deliver, and only make big claims when you’ve put the work in to back them up, and over time you’ll generate a rock-solid following of loyal consumers.