5 essentials to consider when putting together a brand strategy.
For many companies, their brand is the single most valuable asset they own. A pair of shoes gets bought for hundreds of dollars when Nike puts its logo on them. Clothes with Gucci or Armani on them sell like hotcakes. It is no surprise that businesses invest so much time and money and spare no efforts to establish a strong brand.
But a brand is not just a logo or a name. It represents the emotional connection customers have with your business or experiences they associate with you. A good brand strategy is one that can actively influence how people perceive your business. It is the big plan which defines what you are trying to achieve, how you set yourself apart from your competitors and provides a direction to your company’s marketing and advertising efforts.
Here are some of the elements that can help you strengthen your brand strategy for long-lasting effects:
- Patricia, a marketing researcher with GoDissertationHelp, shares, “History of a company can play an important role in its corporate brand strategy. Adidas embraced its history and used it systematically to revitalize its brand. If a brand has a long-lived and rich history, inputs from the past can be curated and made relevant for the present and future customers.” She adds, “LEGO and Tiffany are other big brands that rediscovered their history and used it for their long-term brand strategy and benefit from it.” To do this, management needs to:
- uncover history,
- promote organizational structures and processes to make sure people remember it,
- curate history to keep it relevant in the current context, and
- embed history in future strategies.
- Brand strategist Diana points out that theory and evidence suggest that venture capital (VC) backing affects the growth of new technology ventures positively. Entrepreneurial firms in nascent industries often face the dilemma of diversifying into different product-markets or not, leverage a brand asset across multiple product categories or not, and how many brand assets to develop. VC-backed ventures create more brand assets with a wider scope and deploy them across multiple products. She says, “The idea here is to try and get funding from either cool VCs (with promising teams that specialize in a niche) or rich VCs (with heaps of cash). When your startup gets funded by a successful and famous venture capitalist, you get an advantage in terms of media attention too.”
- Jaime offers assignment help Australia service to MBA students specializing in agricultural marketing. He shares, “Traditional brand strategies do not work for agricultural products. Agricultural enterprises need to actively connect with high-tech projects related to them and cooperate with universities and research institutes working on agricultural research to develop their brand image.”The demand for a wider variety and higher quality of agricultural commodities and value-added products are increasing – especially in higher-income groups in urban areas. Creating a brand for a commodity can help an agricultural business set itself apart from its competitors. Branding an agribusiness includes highlighting why your product is cheap and best (for value-seeking customers) or how it is innovative or novel in its own way (for niche customers).
- Digital marketer Shari Ludwick says that global brand building today is not possible without considering the digital sales channels like Google, Facebook, Amazon, Alibaba, and Tencent. She emphasizes, “Digital platforms help in penetration of markets that were unreachable until now. Any business can now global in the digital age. You need a mix of online and offline advertising to leverage digital buying in favor of your brand.”Niche brands can benefit from global branding as their target market opens up to include more customers who can pay premium prices for niche products. Positioning yourself in micro-segments globally can do wonders for your brand.
- Paul offers assignment help to programming as well as Computer Engineering students. He observes, “The Internet of Things (IoT) allows endless opportunities for brands to listen to their customers’ needs and respond to them at the right time, with the right message, and on the right device. Virtually all industries can benefit from IoT. Brands can benefit from employing Big Data and Predictive Analytics to guide their marketing and advertising strategies. Using real-time customer data and designing a data-driven marketing plan are fields where the future of brand strategy lies.”
Business operations and the reach of businesses are changing rapidly. This is the time where branding experts need to pay attention to the tried-and-tested formulae and also experiment with the new-age innovations to set their companies apart. Well-established companies can use their history to stand out while new-age tech firms can leverage their VC funding in their brand strategy.
Agribusinesses can talk about their quality and price. Almost all industries can reach out to a wider customer base through digital sales channels and respond to their customers on a timely basis through IoT devices. Use these elements to refurbish your brand strategy and grant a unique position to your company in the local and global markets.
Lucy Miranda
Lucy Miranda is a freelance writer & editor. She is devoted to her family, work and friends. She is a News Enthusiast and a Bookworm. She loves Swimming and dancing too. She is interested in educational, marketing and blogging issues.