Powerful brands don’t just get created
overnight. They need careful long-term planning, assessment and execution of an
up-to date branding strategy. A powerful branding strategy influences the way
in which your consumers think and in turn respond to your brand.
Here are ten tips on how to build and communicate
a good branding strategy for your business:
1. Identify and analyze the differentiators and
advantages your brand has over your competitors.
The first step for a business
is to identify your key strengths. Then determine the potential competitors
through various internal and external researches and target-market analysis.
Then list and analyze their advantages and the key features over your products
and services. This will help you to get an insight about your competitors’
strengths and weaknesses, how the target market perceives your competitor and
the competitors’ relevance to your target segments.
2. Evaluate
your advantages and find effective ways to communicate your brand promise.
Rigorously evaluate your core
advantages and ensure they are a perfect fit in the target market. Advertising
through the traditional media such as television, radio and print are obviously
the most popular mediums to get the spread the word about your brand. But with
technology and internet playing a major roles in our lives these days, it’s
advisable to use the online medium to reach your target audience, being more
targeted it turns out to be more cost effective. Also think of other
out-of-the-box ideas, which align with your brand’s promise to promote the
brand. Such ideas usually create brand recall in the minds of the consumers.
3. Embed
your value proposition in all your business process.
The consumer will believe your
brand image only if your brand’s image is aligned to your brand’s positioning
and they’re able to see it at every point that they come in contact with your
brand, be it your marketing, pricing, point-of-sales or after sales service.
Thus, your brand proposition not only needs to be reflected in your logo, brand
name and tagline but also needs to be embedded into the mind-set of your
employees right from the lowest level to the top most level in every business
process.
4. Do as
you say.
Your brand’s positioning is
more than what your product or service is about or how unique it’s, or what
stance you want to take in the market. Your brand-positioning message should
convey to the consumers the kind of relationship you want to have with them or
how and when you want them to remember your brand.
This can only be done if you
repeatedly and constantly do what you say. For example, if you’re a business,
which portrays that the customer is king for you, then you need to ensure that
a customer can have access to you 24/7.
5. Know
your customers’ value and check for Brand compatibility
From a business’ point of view
it’s important to know various aspects of the customer’s behavior in your
target market. Like, how often does he purchase an item in your segment, how
much does he spend in that segment, how often and how much is he spending on
your product or service, is he a loyal customer, does he pay full price or does
he purchase during discounts.
This information helps you to
gain sizeable knowledge of your consumer’s mindset, purchase environment, purchase
behavior and requirements. This in turn can help you gauge the compatibility
between your brand’s value propositions and his buying behavior, which in turn
helps you figure out how much to spend on which customer.
6. Invest
in knowing more about your customer.
Make sure you’re constantly
listening to your consumers, because consumers are always trying to talk to
you. Don’t just stop at listening, observe
them in their daily lives, you’ll find many clues about consumer behavior,
which you many not find through focus groups. There are many research agencies that
can help you with this.
7. Connect.
Respond. Involve.
With multiple channels opening
up for the consumer, they can now influence the brand’s image either positively
or negatively. Consumers expect you to respond to their comments and queries, solve
their problems as soon as possible and provide them with an explanation for the
flaws /defects in your products or services.
With communication between
consumers and brand continuously growing, many companies are now using creative
means such as crowdsourcing to involve the consumer in the brand’s marketing
and promotional schemes .
8. Evolve
or Die
Over a period of time, the mind
set of the consumers change. Your branding strategy too needs to evolve accordingly
for your brand to stay abreast of these changes. By updating your packaging,
communication and if need be, the core philosophy of the brand from time to
time, you can keep your brand’s value proposition and image aligned with the
changing consumer’s mindset. For example: RIM failed to listen to it’s
consumers and evolve with the changing market trends, as a result it lost
market share left-right and center and is now fighting an uphill battle to
capture back its market share.
9. Focus
is key.
While budgets are getting
smaller and competition is getting tougher, it’s important not to lose focus on
the branding strategy and the goal you’re trying to achieve through that
strategy.
10. It
takes years to build trust and only a moment to destroy it.
Sales of companies like Cadbury and Toyota took a
huge hit, when a worm was found inside a Cadbury Dairy milk packet in India and
a global recall of cars by the later. Restoring the consumer’s faith in a brand
requires huge amounts of investment, thus it’s essential to deliver on the
brand’s promise in the first attempt. The most successful brands around the
world always go an extra mile to deliver on their promises and then brag about
it.
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