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Building a brand has to start with a clear direction. The company must decide what they want to convey to its customers. Ask yourself this, who is your target audience, and also, what do you want to communicate about your product. This is what brings us to brand management.
Defining a strong brand positioning will be the foundation from which to build. It can come from various sources, but its core is the values of the company and its objectives. It has to be something special.
What is Brand Management?
Brand management is the use of marketing techniques to build and maintain a brand over time. This includes managing the tangible elements of your brand, like your visual style guides, and intangible.
This is how your customers perceive your brand - especially done through a verbal style guide. Your brand has a personality and it should stay the same all the time, the only thing that can change is your tone.
Branding is more than just a logo. Brand management is an art, even science, of bringing together all the facets that make up your brand into an identifiable image. The whole, of all its parts, is often greater than the sum of its parts.
Brand management means looking at everything about your brand to determine how it fits with the image you want to project. It means working to keep everything consistent so your target market can recognize you when they see you. It’s following through on promises, whether in service quality or in aesthetics or both.
Brand management is the primary aspect of the success of any business. It is very essential for businesses to identify with their brand. This as a result helps them create and promote a strong and effective brand identity.
Strong brand management helps you build and nature strong relationships with your audience.
- Check out this ultimate guide to branding.
Why is Brand Management Important?
The biggest challenge in managing a business is creating a name in the market. Your brand identity is what helps consumers recognize and also differentiate you from other brands in the market. Building an effective brand strategy is halfway to success. It paves a way for you to develop successful, sustainable, and attractive brands.
Successful brand management requires a company to build and maintain that emotional connection. This can be difficult. However, with proper planning and careful branding, a company can promote its product and create a lasting impression.
We can never understate the importance of brand management because it’s the foundation for success in any business. It is the cornerstone of how brands distinguish themselves in this modern society. Remember, choices are plentiful and emotions are easily swayed.
Brand management creates an emotional connection between customers and a product. When managing a brand you create an identity or image in the mind of a customer.
This brand image builds as a foundation for strong relationships, loyalty, and appeal to new customers. Brand management helps companies major and evaluate the performance of a brand. This way brands can improve and grow by learning from how people interact and understand their brands.
Brand management is important for a business as it allows them to create a positive image of its business. It’s especially very essential for a newly set up company. This is because the image they create about their company plays a crucial role in shaping the future of their business.
Customers are aware that there is a particular company that deals in a certain product. Also, brand management suggests that customers go for this product or service. It gives the customers better understanding of your company, its infrastructure, and the type of services it deals with.
How to Manage your Brand
Since we know it’s important to manage your brand. What is the process involved in brand management?
To understand this process, we look at four elements of key importance in a brand; Brand positioning, Brand Marketing, Brand performance and finally brand growth.
Brand Positioning
Creating a brand identity should be pretty simple. Establish your brand experience and maintain it. The brand’s image should combine the company’s original identity with the image you want to convey to customers. This may be as simple as what your company name is and what kind of design you use for your logo.
But make no mistake, if you want customers to come back and purchase your product, you need to build a brand that gives them a positive experience every time they hear about you or see anything related to your brand. This is because the relationship you have with your customers will give your brand value if you nature it.
Brand Marketing
When you have built your brand, the next step is communicating it to the right people at the right time. How is this done? – Through creating components like packaging, pricing, and customer service. It's time to make your audience aware of your brand. Use marketing strategies that put your brand in front of your potential customers.
Marketing plays a vital role in increasing brand awareness and making the brands popular. So, it is important to make good use of the marketing techniques and tools. Today people want to buy branded products as these have become a necessity in life. The best thing is that branded products provide all the facilities that a product should have.
Companies use different marketing techniques to achieve this. For example, print, television, and digital platforms. This is referred to as integrated marketing. This is done with the help of visual marketing tactics with application of images and graphics, videos, and infographics.
Brand Performance
How is your brand doing versus your competitors? Knowing the answer to this question gives you a measure of brand performance. There are different key performance indicators you can use to measure brand performance. You can measure KPIs through tools like google analytics, google search console, Agora pulse, and Lantana.
You can look at;
Top of mind (TOM), aided and unaided brand awareness.
Brand awareness tells you if people know your brand and can recall it quickly
- Top of Mind brand awareness: the first brand customers recall in a specific product. e.g. Toothpaste = Colgate
- Unaided brand awareness – means customers can recall your brand without prompts. e.g. the biggest soft drink = Coca Cola, Pepsi
- Aided brand awareness: is your target audience familiar with your brand? Do you know these travel booking companies: Booking.com, Airbnb, safaribookings.com, TripAdvisor?
Brand sentiment: Sentiments show how people feel about your brand. This can be on specific products, partnerships, and your brand story.
Sales volume and value – Measuring your brand’s impact on its sales
Customer lifetime value and retention: Metrics like customer lifetime value, Net promoter score, and repurchase ratio. These can be a measure of customer loyalty and retention.
Brand Growth
The last step in brand management is measuring and evaluating brand performance to ensure sustained growth. Brand equity is the measure of the quality offered by a product or service.
To measure and evaluate brand performance, we can draw upon the same set of tools that we used to manage the initial growth of the brand.
Measuring brand performance is crucial for sustainable brand growth. Sales are the ultimate factor in determining the success of a brand, and thus you must measure it.
Managing and Sustaining A Brand
Effective brand management is essential for a company’s success. The greater the consistency of the brand, the more likely customers will be to develop an affinity for it or switch from competing brands. This can have a long-lasting effect on the business.
Brand management is also an important factor in customer loyalty and advocacy. In addition, consumers with a strong sense of brand identity may advocate for your brand.
In short, brand management is the process by which you create a consistent, positive image of your company within your target market. It ensures that all your products and services benefit from this strong reputation. This way they maintain a competitive edge over those of your competitors.
The key is to identify and define what makes your business and products and services unique. You will then connect that with what you communicate with your audience.
With solid brand management, consumers become loyal and go out of their way to talk about your business because they believe in it. This results in a boost in profits because you don’t have to invest as much in advertising or marketing to bring new customers into your shop.
Effective brand management helps a business stay one step ahead of its competitors. Also, it helps manage the stickiness of consumers to a specific brand. It is an important aspect of a successful business and a great way to lay a productive foundation for growth.
To create a brand one has to be at the helm of that brand, have involvement in its day-to-day mechanics. This helps in building customer loyalty, which leads to business growth. Businesses must have a focus & objectives for their brand.
