"What is a strong brand?"
Find questions to:
LO1: "How to build a brand?"
LO2: "How to communicate a brand?"
LO3: "How to maintain a brand?"
1. How to build a brand?
A memorable brand can reinforce your difference from competitors and can help to encourage customer loyalty. But developing a lasting brand involves a lot more than simply redesigning your logo
- Identify what qualities, values and experiences customers associate with your business. In order to build a credible brand, you will need to establish what these are. Remember, a brand is more than a just a name and logo.
- Don’t ignore customer perceptions in order to project a desirable, but untruthful, image. If the claims you make about your business and its offer don’t tally with customer experience, they will go elsewhere. But if your business delivers what your branding promises, you will gain trust and retain custom.
- Think about every part of your business – if your customers’ associations with your brand are negative or very different from the image you project, you may need to change your offer, your customer service strategy or even the way you run your business.
- Involve your employees – they will have their own idea of what your business stands for and whether it is delivering on its promises. Besides, you will need their co-operation if you are going to change your operation.
- Create a set of consistent brand messages that focus on the qualities, values and experiences that customers associate with your business, its products and services. Keep these simple and easy to communicate.
- Develop a distinctive visual brand. This must reflect your overall identity — if you are upbeat, your visuals should be bright and engaging. If you don't have the necessary skills, employ a designer to help you.
- Apply your branding, including your visual brand and brand messages, to all of your materials — from packaging and signage to stationery, your website and marketing materials.
- Get legal protection for your visual branding and any distinctive phrases you use to describe your business or your offer.
- Remember that everything your business does is linked to your brand in the eyes of the customer. This includes the way your employees dress and behave.
- Communicate your brand to your employees and explain why and how you arrived at the brand identity you are promoting. You will need their support for your new branding to be effective.
- Promote your new or revised branding through a marketing campaign that includes press releases, PR and advertising, special offers and promotions to customers.
Do:
- identify your core values
- promote a consistent message
- involve your staff
- remember that everything you do is linked to your brand
- ignore customer perceptions
- overcomplicate your message
- make untruthful or exaggerated claims
The various ways in which power is handled and trust developed with stakeholders contributes to the overall brand image of a company. In considering competitive positioning and develooping market advantage, it is also useful to remember that stakeholder interests will change over time. Companies that are aware of these main factors will have a clear understanding of the windows of opportunity available in a specific moment as a result of certain favourable factors and sensible management of stakeholders. These companies are the ones most likely to succeed durin this century by taking advantage of flexible product/market strategies.
Companies have to consider issues which may have an impact on their product or service they offer. Stakeholders have a major impact and can be dealt with by being proactive, accomodating or reactive.
The surrounding environment offers opportunities and threats to companies. Positive corporate image is also an important aspect in building a strong brand with a good positioning strategy within a particular market segment.
Competititve advantages for a stakeholder-based strategy according to Coti (2004):
- create team spirit
- create synergy and win-win attitude as a result of networking with organisations that cooperate with an enterprise to achieve particular objectives
- allow smaller companies to accelerate learning if their customers include demanding and/or supportive larger companies
- help to create the conditions for an organisation to become a good citizen in an increasingly global market
(Marketing Strategies. A contemporary approach, page 110-112)
2. How to communicate a brand?
It is important to follow trends and the technical progress. There have been many changes if we are looking back about 10 to 20 years. Communication channels are changing and one of the most important possibilities to communicate is via the internet.
Marketers have to face several evolutionary trends in different marketing areas:
increasing fragmentation and segmentation of makets, relationship marketing and direct marketing, information technology - the development of new communication technologies and database applications and communication - increased fragmentation of media audiences, multiplicity and saturation of media channels. An answer to the social and business conditions of postmodern society.
It is important to think of long-term sustainability when communicating with consistuancies.
New media changed the way to communicate with stakeholders dramatically. Apps, e-Mail communication, internet, etc. are gaining more and more importance among the communication channels. The internet has fundamentally changed the classical communication procedure, because of the three specific and coexistent characteristics that differentiate it from any other communication channel:
- interactivity: internet offers multiple possibilities for interactive communication (direct interaction between individuals and SW application)
- transparency: published information can be accessed and viewed by any internet user (unless it is protected)
- memory: information can be stored on the internet (until it is erased)
3. How to maintain a brand?
The brand should be interesting at all times, this means that companies have to go with changes, follow actual trends, always renew the product or service to changing customer needs and always keep the customer informed. It will not work to have only one marketing concept over several years, it is required that the campaigns and also probably the communication channels will be adapted according to changes in the market segment. Companies should also consider cultural differences, changes in legislation or other restrictions and of course keep on researching.
Examples for "long-lasting" brands are e.g. Coca-Cola, Nivea, Kellog's, Manner, Tempo, Milk, Ferrero, Ford, Volkswagen, General Motors, General Electrics, etc.
SOURCES:
URL: http://www.marketingdonut.co.uk/marketing/marketing-strategy/branding/how-to-build-a-brand
URL: http://local.epinion.vn/SitePages/Capabilities/Services/Campaign-Evaluation.aspx
Ranchhod, Ashok and Gurau, Calin. Marketing Strategies. A contemporary approach. Harlow, second edition, page 110-112
URL: http://www.brandengagementcenter.com/intelligence
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