Brand Marketing: What It Is and How to Build a Strategy

Brand marketing is the practice of promoting your business’s values and personality, rather than any single product. It involves telling the story of why your brand exists and what it stands for, through elements like packaging and social posts.

Store owners see the benefit of investing in brand marketing: In a November 2025 Shopify survey, 43% cited brand reputation as a competitive advantage, second only to product quality (48%).*

This guide covers what brand marketing is, why it matters, and how to build a brand marketing strategy in seven steps, including examples from Shopify stores.

What is brand marketing?

Brand marketing is the process of promoting your company’s brand to drive awareness and loyalty. An important part of brand marketing is consistency. Reinforcing your value proposition and vision so people learn what to expect from your business, whether they’re on your website, opening a package, or seeing an ad. 

One way to understand brand marketing is in contrast to product marketing. Whereas product marketing explains how something you sell meets a customer need, brand marketing shapes how people feel about your business as a whole. 

Those impressions form over months and years, so brand marketing can run alongside shorter-term promotions. 

“I believe that brands are built by customers over time,” Matthew Scanlan, cofounder of cashmere brand Naadam, says on an episode of Shopify Masters. Naadam has taken a mission-driven approach with their brand.

What’s the difference between branding and marketing?

Branding is the process of establishing your company’s identity, including your brand voice and visual identity. Marketing is how you communicate with your audience through channels like social media, email, and blogs.

Your brand strategy defines who you are, while your marketing strategy determines how you reach your target audience. Brand marketing is where the two meet.

Why is brand marketing important?

• Brand awareness
• Brand loyalty
• Brand preference

An effective brand marketing strategy builds brand equity, the value your brand name adds to your products. It can influence a shopper to choose your product over a similar one from a brand they don’t know. 

Here are three elements of brand equity, and how brand marketing supports each:

Brand awareness

Brand awareness measures how familiar people are with your business. Brand marketing builds it by making your brand easier to recognize and by getting people talking about you. 

It’s an area where early-stage businesses, in particular, tend to invest. Shopify’s survey found that word-of-mouth marketing was the most common growth strategy in a business’s first year (53%), ahead of building a social media presence (35%).*

“The number one way in which people hear about Jolie is through a friend or through a family member, or maybe someone they follow online,” says Arjan Singh, cofounder of the filtered showerhead company. 

Jolie encourages conversations through intentional product seeding: sending free products to people like content creators. 

“We seed product because we know that if you get a Jolie and you install it, you’re likely going to love it,” Arjan says.

Brand loyalty

Brand loyalty measures how likely customers are to keep buying from you. You can use marketing to encourage customer loyalty by helping shoppers connect to your business, not just a product. 

“If people can build an emotional connection with your brand, that is far more powerful and long-lasting than if people are simply purchasing a product to meet a quick need that they have,” says Rembrant Van der Mijnsbrugge, cofounder of branding agency Mote.

Here are a few ways to strengthen brand loyalty:

• Improve the customer experience. Answer questions quickly and keep checkout simple.

• Launch a loyalty program. Build a loyalty program that rewards repeat purchases with points or perks.

• Stay in touch after the sale. Follow up by email after an order and ask customers for feedback.

Brand preference

Brand preference is your brand’s strength relative to competitors, or how likely shoppers are to choose you when similar options are available. Brand marketing can help by improving your reputation and highlighting what makes your business different.

Carl Goyette, who has led organic energy drink brand Guru Energy as president and CEO, tells Shopify Masters that a strong product alone wasn’t enough to stand out in a crowded category. 

“You also need to build a very different brand,” Carl says. 

The result shows up in what customers tell the team: “I don’t drink energy drinks. I drink Guru.”

To measure brand preference, you can use:

• Customer surveys. Ask customers which brands they considered and why they chose yours.

• Social media engagement. Track shares and saves on your posts over time.

• Branded search. Keep track of how many people search for your business by name, a sign they’re looking for your brand specifically.

How to build a brand marketing strategy

1. Define your brand purpose and values
2. Understand your target audience
3. Research competitors and look for white space
4. Create your brand identity and guidelines
5. Develop your brand messaging and story
6. Choose your marketing channels
7. Plan, launch, and measure your campaign

Here’s how to build a brand marketing strategy. Each step builds on the one before it, from defining what your brand stands for to launching and measuring a campaign:

1. Define your brand purpose and values

Your brand purpose is the reason your business exists beyond making money, and your brand values are the principles that guide how you pursue that purpose. 

For Naadam, the purpose was to make a sustainable version of a luxury product that more people could buy. The values show up in how the company operates, starting with buying cashmere directly from herding communities in Mongolia instead of through intermediaries. 

Naadam “was really never a cashmere brand or clothing brand,” Cofounder Matthew says. Instead, the company was “a set of values around why we believed we should do things.”

One way to define your purpose is to write one sentence about why your business exists beyond selling. Then decide which practices you won’t compromise on. 

When Carl joined Guru, the leadership team asked, “What’s really important for us in terms of values? What can we compromise and what we cannot compromise on?” Agreeing on that list became the foundation for how they worked together.

2. Understand your target audience

Target audience research is the process of learning who your ideal customers are, what they need, and what keeps them from buying. It tells you which values and messages to lead with and where to find the people most likely to buy. 

Shingly Lee, vice president of marketing at Guru Energy, recommends looking beyond demographics. 

On Shopify Masters, she says the first step is “really understanding this consumer’s lifestyle, their needs, their motivations, but also the barriers.”

Start with the data you already have. Shopify’s Customer reports show who buys from you, including where they’re located and how many come back to buy again. To learn why they buy, read customer reviews and DMs or talk to customers directly through one-on-one interviews or focus groups. 

You can synthesize this research into buyer personas, fictional profiles of your ideal customers. 

From there, Shingly recommends testing messaging in organic and paid channels to see what drives clicks and purchase intent.

3. Research competitors and look for white space

Competitor analysis means studying how other businesses in your market present themselves, including what they promise and how they talk to customers. This research can reveal opportunities for your brand to stand apart, which is the basis of brand positioning.

When Jonathan Grahm, CEO of the chocolate brand Compartés, decided he wanted to create a packaged chocolate bar for retailers, he visited grocery stores like Whole Foods. He wanted to see how he could make his bar stand out on shelves.

“I wanted to make it look like fashion, not like what everyone else had on the market,” Jonathan says on Shopify Masters. 

In response to the more literal designs he saw (like an illustration of caramel and salt for a salted caramel chocolate bar), Compartés created labels so artistic they were eventually part of an exhibit at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. 

To do your own research, review your competitors’ websites, social media accounts, packaging, and customer reviews. Note each competitor’s brand promise, tone, and visual style, and look for gaps—such as an audience they overlook. 

4. Create your brand identity and guidelines

Your brand identity is the set of visual and verbal elements that make your business recognizable, including your logo, colors, typography, voice, and packaging. Brand guidelines document how to use those elements across every channel.

Consistency builds trust, according to Margaret Pilarski, director of brand strategy at branding agency Outline. 

“You’re creating a world and people experience your world visually,” she says in an interview with Shopify. 

Brand guidelines can help you keep that consistency as more people create content for your brand across multiple campaigns.

Once you’ve chosen your brand’s core elements, like your logo and color palette, write down the rules for using them. For example, note which colors can appear together and how your logo should look on light and dark backgrounds.

You can add your logo, colors, and slogan to your Shopify admin as brand assets, which sync to the sales channels, apps, and themes that support them.

5. Develop your brand messaging and story

Brand messaging is the set of key points you repeat across your marketing, and your brand story is the narrative that ties those points together. 

On an episode of Shopify Masters, Claudia Snoh, cofounder of coffee concentrate brand Kloo, says a customer survey showed people who found the brand online didn’t know their origin story. Mariella, Claudia’s mother and cofounder, is a master roaster and Q Grader (like a sommelier for coffee) who developed Kloo’s brewing process. Kloo rebuilt their website around the brand’s story and craft. 

To develop your own brand messaging, you can write down the moments that shaped your business, such as why you started and the problem you set out to solve, and connect each to your values. Then follow Kloo’s approach: Pick the one message you most want to be known for and repeat it everywhere, from your product pages to your email marketing. For Kloo, that was “sommelier-crafted coffee.” 

6. Choose your marketing channels

Marketing channels are the places you reach customers. They can include social media, email, events, and word of mouth. 

Marketing channels aren’t all digital. Ski brand Stratus builds word of mouth through local ski shops. 

CEO Ricky Jones says relocating to the Canadian Rockies brought the team closer to their customers, and much of the brand’s content is now shot in the mountains. At ski shops, staff point Ricky to respected skiers, and Stratus gives them free products. 

“These are the kind of passionate people that drive credibility,” Ricky says on Shopify Masters.

To choose your channel mix, map where your customers spend time, online and off, and assign each channel a goal—for example, raising brand awareness among new audiences via Instagram. If your mix includes creator partnerships, you can use Shopify Collabs, a free-to-install app, to send gifted products to creators and pay their affiliate commissions through Shopify (a processing fee may apply).

7. Plan, launch, and measure your campaign

A brand marketing campaign is a coordinated effort, over a set period, to get your messages in front of your audience. 

For puzzle company Piecework, campaigns grow out of the brand’s point of view. Cofounder Rachel Hochhauser describes each puzzle as “a universe or world that feels very themed,” and customers ask “what weird, wacky world” the next one will be, she says on Shopify Masters. 

When the brand launched a tomato-themed puzzle, the team extended that concept into Tomato World, a microsite of tomato-themed products.

To plan your own campaign, you can choose a theme or message that says something about your brand. You’ll carry that theme across your site, social posts, and emails. A marketing plan gives you a structure for mapping out the campaign’s goals, channels, timeline, and metrics.

Then, track results. Before scaling investment in brand building, Shingly of Guru recommends tracking early-stage indicators such as repeat purchase rates, consumer comments and feedback, and organic referrals. Shopify’s Returning customers report shows you how many customers come back over a given period.

*Based on a November 2025 survey of 500 Shopify merchants conducted in English across Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, New Zealand, and the United States. Respondents were established merchants with two or more2+ years on the platform. Results reflect the experiences of this specific sample and may not be representative of all merchants.