A brand is not just a name, product, or service. It is the soul of a business! It is the impression of a business that links, interacts, and creates a bond with customers, employees, suppliers, and stakeholders.
It encompasses everything from the initiation of a normal business to its extension in various dimensions. It carries the reputation and associates it with various other businesses in the industry. It is also the face of the company that is navigated by the search engines to reach the appropriate customer and client base. In other words, it is the mark that distinguishes your company from start to end.
When people see a brand, they find it to be a set of visual and verbal cues but, for any organization, it can be referred to as –
Business, Reputation, Association, Navigation, and Dimension
“A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn a reputation by trying to do hard things well.”
Branding is a long-term process that requires high commitment throughout, especially in its initial phase. Nurturing and monitoring it over time to build a strong image is called Brand Management.
It maintains the voice of the company through all the channels, whether retailer, editorial, or advertising. It creates a clear view of the company on the traditional as well as a digital platform so that the customer’s purchase process is maintained. It includes two components,
The process of brand management might be challenging but the result is always furthering. Some of the benefits you attain are –
To evaluate your branding efforts and eventually succeed, you must include some factors. These specialized factors will help you break free of the ordinary norm and come up with a unique way to promote your brand. The components that build up these ideas are easy to understand and even easier to implement.
Brand Awareness is the likelihood, with which the customers link a certain brand with a specific product. It is the familiarity that people have with your brand when they are out for purchase or to acquire any service. It goes hand in hand with brand recognition and brand recall. Sometimes brand awareness is even improved to grab the attention and make it easy for consumers to spell, like in the case of Coca-Cola, now known as Coke.
Brand Recognition is the identity of your brand that customers recall while making a purchase, like the color, logo, tagline, slogan, packaging, etc. It plays a very important role in instantly keeping a top place in people’s minds and when they are out to purchase, it signals their minds.
Brand Equity is the differential impact, perception, and impression of the brand on the consumers. It defines the value and strength of any brand that becomes the consumer choice in the marketplace. Thus, the brand often links their products with the situations to associate with their customers in the memory and help them make choices whenever they make a purchase. The equity is often measured with the increase in sales volume, price premium charged, return to shareholders, and several other parameters.
Brand Loyalty is the consistency of the customers that are engaged with you over any competition. It is measured by brand trust, price sensitivity, commitment, the mouth of the public, and so on. This involves the efforts of customer service more than the marketer, as the satisfaction of the customers also plays a huge role.
Quick Tip – Brand Loyalty is not Customer Loyalty, it is the loyalty of the brand to provide its customer with the right kind of product with the right kind of service and be available for them at every point.
Simply following the traditional strategies won’t be effective as there is a lot that has changed in the business world in the past few years. With globalization, the competition has become hardcore and it needs some groundbreaking ideas to set the stage at large.
USP is the strategy that makes you different from your competitors. The most opinionated and deliberated USP influences branding, marketing, messaging, and copywriting, making your business stand out.
Before creating your USP, you should understand your products and see if it fits correctly in your market. You can ask yourself some questions and check where you belong.
Is my product durable?
Is it cost-effective?
How is it different from my competitors?
Is it innovative?
Will it last long in the market?
Does it focus on what customers value?
When you are clear with your question, you will be able to come out with the USP for your brand. Using the USP to market and promote your brand will instantly help you show the face of your company to the audience and grab their attention in the marketplace.
Quick Tip – USP is not the offer, discount, or facility that you give to your customer. It is the message that you wish to convey to the consumers so that they choose you over your competitors.
Shift your focus to a comprehensive approach rather than just an evaluative approach. Evaluation is not a complete strategy instead, just part of the strategy. Most businesses concentrate on the link between marketing campaigns and the firm’s brand value, while others investigate the relationship between the brand and the premium price of the company’s products. Only a few focus on the trilateral relationship i.e. interaction between marketing campaigns, brands, and sales.
You need to make a basic plan followed by a sustainable plan so that you can evaluate and then re-evaluate the strategy using the trilateral relationship.
Brand Assets include all the tangible characteristics of branding that the audience can see, perceive and remember. Crafting the elements and maintaining their consistency throughout can be a tough task, so it is important to organize your assets and restrict access to maintain the consistency of your brand. Moreover, a routine check is also necessary to avoid overlooking.
There are many assets but the main ones include Brand Name, Brand Color, Website, Brand Message, and Marketing Channels like Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and others.
After exploring the principles and the strategies, you must be clear about the amount of effort you need to put in to make your brand promising. But it is also important to understand that while handling business there are a lot of aspects to be taken care of like production, service, sales, and shipment because of which brand management becomes a very difficult task.
So, there are a couple of choices that businesses can take to uplift their brand while reducing pressure.
Businesses can internally use software to maintain and organize different brand assets. The most exceptional features of the software may provide access to style guides for logos, pictures, and font and they can also take care of the copyright and security issues that are of great concern.
There are many B2B companies that take responsibility for branding your assets. The most specialized ones help you from scratch to meet your needs so that you are free to handle other issues well.
At ANS Commerce, we help companies to expand their brand position with increased sales. We help businesses focus on their core while providing them with all the other services like performance marketing, marketplace management, warehousing, and fulfillment. We provide e-commerce consultation via. technology interventions for the brandstore so that they are aware of the current gap and can adopt the best industrial practice to funnel improvement. We also serve businesses with our integral product, Kartify which lays the base for setting up an online presence. For any assistance, you can request your DEMO now!
