Branding Strategy to Practice Before Preaching!
'Brand' is termed as the prestige of your company. The procedural and pre-planned strategies for the betterment of a brand are determined as the brand strategies of the company or an organisation.
Strategies begin by setting goals. Your brand defines what you exactly stand for – the commitment or promise you make, and the personality your brand conveys. In the layman's notion, a brand is merely a logo, brochure or a tagline, but one should know that it is much more. It is considered as an intangible asset on which a company stands firm in the competitive market. Brand strategy is a vast concept that helps establish your product in the core and significant market, and to build your brand that will grow and mature in a saturated market scenario. It directly supports the business strategies to ensure consistent brand behaviours and brand experience in all points of channels of communication. Without clear and compelling brand strategy, your company is just another. You cannot have a strategy without clear objective. Mere execution and tactics are not strategy, and nor is restating the goals. Developing brand strategy can be one of the most challenging steps in the marketing plan process, but a rather vital step in creating the company.
1. Branding Purpose
You decide and work your brand strategies out, and so you must be determined about its purpose towards your brand. Your brand purpose must be more specific and evaluative, in that it serves as a differentiate variable between your brand and competitors. The pre-planned purpose of your brand strategy will surely help your brand product to outperform in its significant aspects. The agenda behind the whole course of branding strategy must be clearly defined and accepted in the appropriate manner. These purposeful brand actions will be paramount to build and uphold authentic relations with audiences and investors.
A simple instance: Lamborghini never runs advertisements on television because they think that the people who can afford their cars aren't sitting around and watching TV.
2. Competition Awareness
To know your competition always holds as a positive trait. Tuning up with the establishment of brand strategies holds the importance to enhance your brand. Your branding strategies should bring you to a higher level, and make it strong to stand against the bottle-neck competition of the market. Take competition as a challenge to improve your own strategies and create greater values in your overall brand https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tV7Zo9UNiVo
3. Collections of Brand and Premium Products
For premium products, some companies think they should give endless choices, but just the opposite is true. Not many choices must be given to the customers, if you want your product to be perceived as a premium product, especially during the original launch of the product. More choices in the premium products may create buying decisions to be challenging, which may undoubtedly affect the purchase decisions. Fewer the choices, lesser the confusion in the minds of the customers. As in concern with the luxury brands, it is mostly couture fashion; the outlook defines the image of the brand, just like the cherry on the cake. Coca-Cola has many products under the brand, but the company mainly focuses on their money product 'Coca-Cola'. The Indian brand Thumbs-up, Sprite, Fanta and Minute Maid are also their products, but they spend less money on these products, compared to their premier product.
4. Consistency
The concept of consistency has become a central normative and empirical statement about enriching high performance in the organisation. As in the practical scenario, the consumers prefer buying from the brands they know. Once a brand or product gets recognized by the consumers, the biggest challenge for them is to interact with consumers consistently. The consistency aspect has a direct relation with the trust and loyalty of the consumer. The untimely changes in the brand may result into a decrease in the trustworthiness of your brand, leading to hasty actions by the stakeholders.
5 Change is a must
At times, marketers may struggle to change and set the pace of brands. In Brand Strategy, consistent change is the paradox of time. Doing the same thing repeatedly ceases to have a powerful impact over the market. The brand is brought to life through innovative changes and shifting aspects of products. Rebranding is necessary to keep your brand product fresh, relevant, and to be maintained in the forefront of the customer's mind.
Changing the perception of your brand is not any easy task, and nor it is any cheap. The company must have enough dedication, determination and commitment to make it happen, not to mention a lot of other resources like immense time and finances. It is relatable to say that you reap as you sow. Thus, the expenses made to make changes rewards you with great successful scenarios in the future.
Some companies change their logo to match with current times and generations. Some companies change their brand ambassador, based on the popularity of their brand or the celebrity. Some big products make changes in their product packaging design during festivals, offers or new year's occasions.
6 Emotional Touch
It is the era where the development of the company brand is directly linked to the consumer's emotional level of satisfaction. An emotionally satisfied customer tends to increase your brand image by verbal promotions through the various online and offline mediums. It is crucial to attach the strings of the brand with the customer's emotional level of satisfaction in today's highly structured environment, where products and services are distinguished from each other.
Take the example of Nokia. Nokia failed because they didn't establish an emotional touch with consumers. The CEO of Nokia failed to understand that the Asian and European market was waiting for the next Nokia phone, but Nokia hastily launched a Windows platform phone, without Bluetooth and expandable memory. The product and platform were unfamiliar for the existing consumer base.
7 Make it easy for customers
When any company launches new product publicly that time they also launch guide with them. Yes, brand often thinks about their consumers first and they don't want to make them confused with the first impression. Smartphone box has always usage guide in it so it's easy for customers to know about it. The Same way a router comes with set up or installation guide so user doesn't have to rely on external sources. Let's take the example of TiSpy – parental monitoring app and how they make the process easy for customers. They've written a detailed guide on how to use the app, on their website, and also launched a detailed video. This branding technique helps consumers understand more about the product without asking anyone. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdcsM9bTJSE)
8 Involvements of Resources
Every industry requires the benefits of a well-planned brand strategy to build a polished and an aspiring brand in the market. The implementation of the brand strategies shall be done by the living assets i.e. Human resources of the company. Resource involvement is ascertained by the job satisfaction of the employees; the personal attachment towards their job and colleagues which influence their acceptance and willingness to perform at work. Employees are considered as the most powerful living asset of the brand, and hence must be well treated. And, employees shall be trained and prepared to be the greatest existing resource within the organisation.
The strongest brands increasingly find ways to collaborate – they offer services that deliver seamless synergies, fitting nicely into consumer values, behaviour and lifestyle.
