How to build your brand and why that’s the #1 growth hack in 2022

When you think of the top growth hacks for your business in 2022, is building your brand story at the top of the list? If not, we’re here to tell you why it needs to be.

Your brand tells consumers who you are and what you can do for them that no one else can. Great B2B brands do this in a way that speaks to their authenticity and authority, making people much more likely to buy from them.

Let’s dive more into why brand is so important and talk about how to build your brand with some hacking tips.
(Note: These tips are courtesy of Larry Kim, the Founder of WordStream and currently the Founder and VP of Marketing at MobileMonkey. You can check out the full episode of our podcast with Larry here to get all of his fantastic insights.)

Why building your business brand is so essential

The most discriminating factor in whether or not someone will click and buy from you is whether or not they’ve heard of you before. If they’ve heard of you, they’re three to five times more likely to click on your ad, find your organic listing, open your emails, and more.

What’s more, algorithms have evolved to quantify traditional brand signals, as measured by people’s propensity to trust and click on a company’s ads and emails. Brands are then rewarded for those signals.

“The most leveraged thing that you could ever do to boost not just one of your channels, but every one of your marketing channels, would be to build your brand,” says Kim. “Those are the people who are most likely to click and buy from you, which then gets kind of amplified in this virtuous cycle through Facebook, Google, and other social and marketing channels.”

Leverage creativity

So how do you successfully build your brand in such a crowded marketplace with everyone fighting over a piece of the pie? You need to come up with memorable ideas that stick.

“How do you build your brand? Well, it’s in recognizing that not all ideas are equal and that you really need to, in addition to a lot of different wacky ideas, find the unicorns or the outlier at the top,” says Kim.

And finding that outlier takes time and creativity. “If you’re just randomly guessing ideas, you would need to try 40 or 50 or 60 different ideas to kind of have a good probability of finding that outlier and then going all in on that,” says Kim.

Focus on creating something “remarkable”

It’s important to remember that no matter how in love with an idea you are as a marketer, you have to stay objective and see how people respond to it. If it has a low click rate or conversion rate, that could be the universe’s way of telling you that you need to move in a different direction.

“There’s just some ideas that are awesome and some ideas that are not that remarkable,” says Kim. Offering something as basic as a free trial is unremarkable and something that every other B2B or software company provides. Create an offer that really helps you stand out.

Upping your offer to something remarkable can take your conversion rate from 2-3% to 5-7%, or even 10% in some spectacular instances.

Brand hacking tips

Utilize these tips and tricks to build up your brand even more.

Brand hacking tip #1: Get people to search for your brand terms more

If more people are searching for your brand terms and they’re trending upward, that sends out a signal to the algorithms that you’re a big brand that people trust and are searching for.

The key is to find ways to get people searching for you. “You’re going to have to put your thinking caps on,” says Kim. “How do I get people searching for my name more?”

Brand hacking tip #2: Leverage remarketing

“Remarketing, I think, is actually a very leveraged form of advertising,” says Kim. “You’re kind of helping people recall who you are.”

Brand hacking tip #3: “Annoying” web pop-ups

Those web pop-ups that everyone says are so annoying? They’re actually highly effective at keeping people from bouncing, which drives time-on-site and engagement signals.

Want more tips on how to build your brand?

Check out our 3-Minute-Marketing podcast to hear from more marketing leaders on how to successfully build your brand, and let us know if you’re ever in the market for a performance agency that has experience in helping brands with all of their digital marketing needs.