# Learn best practices about brand management strategies | Capterra > Discover common branding mistakes and how to avoid them as we break down the best approach to brand management for small businesses with insights from an industrial expert. Source: https://www.capterra.com/resources/branding-mistakes --- Marketing 101Marketing # Common Branding Strategy Mistakes and How To Avoid Them Written by: David J. Brin David J. BrinAuthor David is the Managing Partner for the Code Ninjas franchise responsible for the Baton Rouge, LA market, where he facilitates the education of youth in progra... [See bio & all articles](https://www.capterra.com/resources/author/david-brin/) and edited by: Carolyn Santa Maria Carolyn Santa MariaEditor Carolyn Santa Maria is a senior editor at Capterra. Carolyn has been working in content for more than five years as an editor. With her keen eye for detail, ... [See bio & all articles](https://www.capterra.com/resources/author/carolyn-santa-maria/) Published September 16, 2024 9 min read Table of Contents - [What are some of the most common branding strategy mistakes?](#what-are-some-of-the-most-common-branding-strategy-mistakes) - [5 steps to avoid common branding strategy mistakes](#5-steps-to-avoid-common-branding-strategy-mistakes) - [You can’t afford to miss what consumers are saying about you](#you-cant-afford-to-miss-what-consumers-are-saying-about-you) Brand identity provides marketing professionals with a flexible and adaptive foundation upon which to build out a comprehensive marketing strategy that supports their organization’s growth and revenue goals. While a well-developed brand identity provides consumers with a vision to latch onto in an economic landscape crowded with competition, a poorly defined identity will leave a business fading into the background noise.  Small businesses and marketing experts need to understand how to navigate creating a powerful online brand identity—this will help them to bolster and reinforce their ability to encapsulate their branding within an effective marketing strategy. Navigating the finer points of brand management means understanding possible missteps, how those mistakes might negatively impact the business, and how to effectively avoid them. ## What are some of the most common branding strategy mistakes? Poor branding practices can greatly affect how much traction your marketing team can create with a diverse and layered marketing strategy. The extremely complex mix of disciplines required to craft an effective brand strategy means that there are a handful of pitfalls that can harm your brand if you don’t know how to navigate them. ### Mistake #1: Inauthentic online presence Modern consumers value a brand that is able to align its marketing, messaging, and values with the products and services that it sells. Content that is perceived to be not only authentic and transparent, but also factually accurate can reinforce your brand’s reputation and build trust and loyalty. With more brands relying upon inconsistent and unreliable AI-driven natural language processing platforms to crank out massive volumes of AI-generated content, the accuracy of the data and resources used by professional content creators must constantly be verified and validated. Content found to be inaccurate or unreliable can impact existing leads’ willingness to convert and if users start to leave negative comments and reviews about inaccurate social content, a brand can gain a reputation for being unreliable. AI-generated content can also suffer from a lack of authenticity, as content generators aren’t able to truly convey your brand’s vision or mission, and thus the content can come across as insincere and inauthentic. Leveraging freelance writers who don’t work hard to establish a true connection with your brand and community can result in similarly flat and uninteresting content that does little to boost your brand’s credibility. ### Mistake #2: Failure to monitor consumer engagement Social and online content is intended to increase a brand’s visibility when paired with other marketing strategies, such as a comprehensive approach to search engine optimization (SEO).  Depending on the channel and type of content, it can also be used as a way to be transparent with your audience about brand values and communicate the value proposition your products or services provide. Failing to monitor consumer engagement and comments around your brand on social media can lead to poor reviews, a damaged reputation, and poor perception of your products and services relative to the competition. ### Mistake #3: Failure to assess marketing strategy with data Brand owners are coming to realize that the consumer climate is increasingly challenging and customers are much more skeptical of the value they offer relative to the competition.[\[1\]](#sources) Without the insights provided by social media monitoring into your brand’s target audience, market trends, and customer perception of your brand, your marketing leadership will lack the necessary data and information to assess your existing strategy to find out what’s working and what should be improved upon in order to optimize marketing efforts and retain consumer attention.  #### Failing to use the right brand mention tracking tools leaves leadership poorly informed Brand tracking software provides your in-house team with powerful automation tools that help to keep track of brand mentions and customer perception across the breadth of the online economic landscape. While the right tools can provide leadership with reliable insights, poorly designed brand management tools leave leadership guessing on how best to adapt their overall strategy relative to brand perception. ### Mistake #4: Attempting to monitor brand mentions without professional agency support Gartner suggests in the “Market Guide for Brand Strategy Agencies,” that chief marketing officers (CMOs) and other marketing leadership determine their business goals and needs. With their brand marketing needs outlined, they should then work to identify agencies capable of fulfilling those needs via requests for information (RFIs).  Gartner’s findings revealed that 60% of brand leaders are supported by brand marketing staff that are between 25% to 49% sourced from external service providers, making the agency approach an extremely popular and viable option for many organizations.[\[1\]](#sources) Failing to leverage an agency can leave small-business owners struggling to execute brand monitoring in-house without the properly trained staff and the added expense of licensing and training staff on new tools. ## 5 steps to avoid common branding strategy mistakes Capterra's Brand Monitoring Survey reveals the concerns and challenges brand managers and small-business owners say they expect to struggle within the coming year.[\*](#methodology) In order to explore more in-depth some of the potential branding strategy mistakes your company can make and steps to avoid them, we spoke with Kaitlyn Ivancic, the social media brand manager with Ferguson. As of July 31, 2023, Ferguson’s U.S. business operated 1,549 branches and 10 national distribution centers serving all 50 states with approximately 32,000 associates.[\[2\]](#sources) During a recent conversation, we asked Ivancic to share with brand managers and entrepreneurs her own lessons that small-business owners can emulate in their own operations to support growth and visibility. ### Step #1: Develop an authentic and trustworthy voice across social channels Fifty-nine percent of surveyed marketers agree that fraudulent or inauthentic content on social media will get worse over the next 12 months.[\*](#methodology) Ivancic explains how Ferguson prioritizes the sharing of accurate information on social media, and how doing so positions the company for success. “Social media is the voice and heartbeat of the brand. We create and foster rich communities of proud builders and consumers by creating social-first, highly relatable content that drives meaningful industry-relevant conversation in a way that is authentic for Ferguson. It is of utmost importance that a brand is relevant, honest, and authentic on social media. The modern customer demands an engaging and responsive experience as it relates to a brand’s social media presence and social as a customer service avenue. The most powerful part of social media marketing is that every action a brand takes online has a dual purpose—it drives action and builds connection.” ### Step #2: Have a plan for the rising demand for content across multiple channels We asked respondents in our survey to share the top barriers they are facing when implementing social media monitoring initiatives within their company. While 36% didn’t understand the benefits of doing so, 33% pointed at the volume and/or complexity of data as a challenge in monitoring content properly. We posed the question to Ivancic about how Ferguson’s team keeps up with demand for different types of content across multiple channels and what tools or strategies they are using that are yielding the results they need. “Each decision that is made to either participate in or abandon a social media trend or platform is rooted in strategy based on intelligence and data-driven brand insights. The foundation of our social media strategy is our content framework and social playbook, which details the best opportunity to reach our customer where, how, and when they want to receive their content. Meeting them where they are, and joining the natural conversation as a thought leader continues to drive results and community for our business.” ### Step #3: Allow social media monitoring to guide your overall marketing strategy Leadership should never be making marketing decisions in a vacuum, and it takes having a proactive approach to brand monitoring in order to collect the necessary data analytics and consumer insights to make informed decisions. However, only 23% of survey respondents actually take a completely proactive approach, while 75% attempt to be proactive, but find themselves reacting to brand mentions and attempting to manage perception after the fact as well.[\*](#methodology) In exploring how proactive social media marketing can benefit a business, Ivancic confirms it is much more effective to take a proactive approach. “Our goal on social media is to foster a loyal community for our customers to create lasting relationships that help drive purchasing decisions. Through social listening, we are able to gain valuable insight that is provided back to the business around topics of conversation happening organically about Ferguson that allow the sales and strategy teams to make better informed decisions as they develop a go-to market strategy.” ### Step #4: The importance of leveraging specialized marketing agencies While the survey reveals that 73% of respondents have dedicated resources to social media marketing, a significant 27% do not. Not every business has the staffing or resources to fully manage a comprehensive marketing strategy in-house. Branding is an especially complex discipline that encompasses marketing tactics across business processes. Ivancic breaks down how Ferguson maintains in-house resources, but still relies on outside partnerships to drill down into specific marketing tasks. “We handle social media in-house through a number of strategic roles. We do defer to an outside agency partner to support in areas of expertise including but not limited to social listening, influencer marketing, and social-first content creation.” ### Step #5: Expand brand listening beyond the scope of owned digital real estate Surveyed companies who found the most success with brand listening currently monitor or track mentions, hashtags, posts, or comments related to their brand on social media (74%), while 68% take it a step further by tracking variations of their brand or company name.[\*](#methodology) Ivancic expands on this, highlighting the importance of following conversations happening not only on your own social media and websites, but also brand mentions happening on pages that you don’t own. “We keep a finger on the pulse of all conversations happening on social media platforms as it relates to both owned and earned mentions. This is tracking and monitored daily, and quarterly reports are provided to the business to inform on sentiment and trending conversation.” Brand strategy management tools and services Capterra provides our community with a directory of industry-leading internal [brand management software](https://www.capterra.com/brand-management-software/) tools even small businesses can leverage in their efforts to incorporate brand listening across social and online channels. If your organization needs additional expertise and support, we also provide one of the most comprehensive directories of branding agencies to get the third-party service provider support necessary to spruce up your marketing efforts and support your growth goals. ## You can’t afford to miss what consumers are saying about you Poor branding practices can undermine even the best designed overall marketing strategy. With the help of Kaitlyn Ivancic, we’ve broken down some powerful strategies for crafting an effective brand listening and monitoring strategy that includes leaning into the specialized services of marketing agencies that focus on brand marketing support. For more insight into branding strategies that your competition are relying upon to excel in your industry, check out these other resources:  - [Branding Tips for Small Businesses](https://www.capterra.com/resources/branding-tips-for-small-businesses/) - [Brand Storytelling: Crafting a Narrative for Your Small Business](https://www.capterra.com/resources/brand-storytelling/) - [What Are Branding Agencies and What Do They Do?](https://www.capterra.com/resources/what-do-branding-agencies-do/) - [4 Signs You Should Hire a Branding Agency—A Small Business Leader Explains](https://www.capterra.com/resources/why-hire-a-branding-agency/) * * * **Survey methodology** \*Capterra 2023 Brand Monitoring Survey was conducted in February 2023 among 299 U.S. respondents to learn about company brand reputation or monitoring practices, needs, and challenges. Respondents were screened to have marketing, advertising, communications, or PR job roles or functions and include respondents that work for companies that practice and do not practice brand monitoring tactics/strategies. Sources 1. [Market Guide for Brand Strategy Agencies](https://www.gartner.com/document/4874031?ref=solrAll&refval=409413537&), Gartner 2. [Kaitlyn Ivancic](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaitlynivancic/), LinkedIn * * * Looking for Brand Management software?Check out Capterra's list of the [best Brand Management software](https://www.capterra.com/brand-management-software/) solutions. ### Was this article helpful? * * * ## About the Authors [### David J. Brin](https://www.capterra.com/resources/author/david-brin/) David is the Managing Partner for the Code Ninjas franchise responsible for the Baton Rouge, LA market, where he facilitates the education of youth in programming, game design, and STEM education fundamentals. A lifelong learner, David combines a passion for strong business practices and solid marketing strategies honed throughout his 20-year career in the food and beverage industry with his desire to share those best practices with other business owners to create content for Capterra. When... [### Carolyn Santa Maria](https://www.capterra.com/resources/author/carolyn-santa-maria/) Carolyn Santa Maria is a senior editor at Capterra. Carolyn has been working in content for more than five years as an editor. With her keen eye for detail, technical experience, and cross-team collaborative expertise, she has developed new content types, briefs, and processes for a variety of different projects and teams. She has edited a large variety of content, including research reports, white papers, eBooks, email marketing campaigns, and many other types of technical papers. 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