People involved in marketing will have to quickly adapt to the changes, in accordance to the market requirements. With fast digitalization, some of the marketing methods which used to work just before a couple of years have now become useless or redundant.
The consumer landscape, and the ways in which we communicate, with our clients and customers, have also changed dramatically. The ever-changing market conditions will not allow you to do what you always did, and expect better or the same results.
For business success today, it is necessary to know your consumer, and have an open-minded approach towards their changing demands. It becomes imperative for you to seek new outlooks, do media experimentation, and try out unexplored modernism.
However, the need and relevance of branding strategies still exist, and the changes are no so rapid. At the end of day, each business will want to retain their customers for life.
What is brand management?
Brand management starts with bringing about complete awareness of the term, ‘Brand’. It integrates developing, making, and maintaining of a promise. In other words, it means defining, positioning, and delivering a brand.
Brand management is about creating and sustaining your brand name. Branding keeps your customers committed to your company. It differentiates your products from that of your competitors.
You can also say that, branding is merely getting your target market to select you over your competition. Rather, it is to get your prospects perceive that, you as the sole provider who offers the perfect answer to their problem, or need.
Objectives of a good brand
- To clearly deliver the message
- To validate your credibility
- To emotionally connect with your target prospects
- To motivate the buyers
- To amplify user’s commitment
For successful branding, it is necessary to understand the needs of the target consumers. This can be done by integrating brand strategies at every possible public contact.
What is proper brand management?
Constant maintenance and control is the vital part of brand management. Proper brand management makes sure that every promotional part, touch point, and usage of message and logo, supports your business goals. This helps to strengthen the brand’s impression on your consumers.
If the brand is not managed properly, even the best business empires can crumble. Brand management is challenging, especially when your product are sold through multiple channels including agents, resellers, or distributors. In this brand saturated world, marketers have to avoid common mistakes, while managing your brand name.
Branding mistakes to avoid:
Generic building
The major benefit of the internet is that you get access to a lot of artistic things like icons, photos, images, and other multimedia files. You get to see so many different types of branding elements being used for the visual appeal of a business.
Careful consideration of company logos and taglines is important for developing any branding strategies. Several organizations simply use phrases that are copy pasted from the net, and the stock images that fit.
Such mistakes will never allow you business image to sync with long term customer relationships, making it difficult for you to maintain the brand name in the market. Do your research, and be specific. The efforts will definitely prove to be worthy in the long run.
Ignoring analytics
In this digital age, branding can be quite complex. Digital media also allows for data tracking, and you can download the reports instantly. You can use the information for conducting analysis. It will also help you cut down on laborious marketing research or surveys.
You can use the analytics tools to get complete detailed data, ranging from user demographics to their website usage statistics. It might not sound like necessary, but it can make your business strategizing, a lot easy.
A strong brand name is priceless, as competition to attract consumers is getting intensified everyday. Therefore, you need to spend time in researching, identifying, and structuring your brand marketing strategies.
Making messaging mistakes
Messaging is the voice of your brand. An effective message is the one that captures the audience and forces them to act, whether they are shopping at the local store, or browsing on your site, or simply checking out your product. Sometimes, even the seasoned marketers struggle to develop a great message.
Many communicators overlook the simple rule while starting the message. The rule here is that, the starting point should address the core values of the customers. If you are not working towards what people actually care about, then even your most genuine message will not hit the target.
Ignoring consumer’s value
Marketers develop their messages, in accordance to their brands most vital features, instead of understanding what is crucial to the customers. Therefore, you will need to take time and understand your consumer values, and then align it in your messaging.
Core values of consumers can be attained via online surveys. For example, you could include the survey at check-out page (and offer an instant discount).
You might think that the product or service cost is what drives your customers. Surprisingly in the surveys, it was seen discovered that ‘safety’ and ‘family’ are two aspects the consumers value the most.
Here, you can shift your business messaging from ‘lower-rates’ to ‘keep your family safe, and that too within your budget’.
That subtle change will make the difference.
Depending a lot on buzzwords
The more popular the catchphrases become, the less effect they have. It does not mean you cannot use trendy phrases. Use them sparingly with words that distinguish your unique punch line. For example, a small restaurant attains an effective message by including ‘Yummy’ in a subtle and smart way, but don’t overdo it too much either.
Boring and exhausting messages
A short message is necessary to move your business word around. Simple taglines must come through loud and clear. It must give an idea to people about your product or service. Provide a catch message to fuel interests, but don’t drag it too much and bore your prospective customers.
Disregarding the excitement factor
Everyone’s life is spent in auto-pilot mode these days, and people make decisions on the basis of their emotions, habits, and instincts. It is vital to wake people up, and motivate them, through your messaging.
Use action verbs to build excitement and energy. For example, an event planning message can include, ‘Fabulously planned and remembered always’ or ‘We create and you celebrate’.
Mistakes to avoid, while managing social media platform
The worst advice would be to use same ad across all the social networking sites. Although the overall layout of your campaign message needs to be consistent, you cannot possibly use a single message in all the platforms. Social media is omnipresent for all brands, and businesses realize their potentials to attain wide exposure.
About 72% internet users are active on social media, and brands cannot overlook this opportunity to reach audiences in cost-effective way. However, engaging audiences is not very challenging if done systematically, but brands do make those mistakes.
Having dormant accounts – Many businesses follow the trend and open accounts on majority of social sites, before they are ready to devote their time on it. Consequently, the profile becomes stale and inactive. Prospective consumers may discover the inactive account and get the negative feel. To avoid this blunder, setup you profile on social media platforms, only if you are ready to spend time to maintain it.
No social media guidelines – The big mistake brands make is allow employees to handle the social media accounts. There are no such guidelines stated, so if several employees manage the company profiles, the brand messaging will be inconsistent. Establishing social media policy will help the employees who are working on networking sites. They will have guidelines on how and when to respond to consumer’s queries and concerns.
Remove negative comments – Consumer experiences differ, and sometimes they post negative feedback. Brands are desperate to remove the negative comments, because they feel that it may tarnish their reputation. The consumer, who posted the feedback, will possibly realize it missing. They may voice complains more publicly like public tweets.
Here it the rule:
No One Can Remove the Feedback except the Person, Who Posted the Original Tweet
Another issue is that if prospective consumers find only the positive feedbacks, then they may get suspicious. Brands must not hide negative testimonials, but instead, respond to them respectfully.
Apologize and be ready to resolve the issue of the unsatisfied consumers. It will other encourage prospective consumers to look at your brand name as the one, who cares.
Ignoring consumers – Businesses may not respond to negative or positive comments. Here, the customers will feel neglected. Never engaging with consumers, who seek to interact, can be detrimental to your brand. Just start with simple words like Thanks or Sorry can make them feel good.
Online reputation management
Dealing with online reputation is highly complex in this world of neutral online media. Here is a list of weaknesses that need consideration.
Wrath – Anger or rage can ruin your reputation. Many of the never-ending conflicts seen online, especially on social media, are due to wrath. Therefore if you see something that you do not like about your company, take some time before responding. Your passionate response will seem ridiculous to you as well, after you cool down.
Greed – When monitoring your brand reputation, take care to give credit, where it is due. Never try to grab all the praise. Nobody desires to work with unsatisfied fame hog.
Pride – Pride can be damaging if you are into managing your online business status. Humility allows for enhancing your reputation.
Envy – Envy prevents you to appreciate another person’s good points. It may be anything – A big client, new business venture, or professional honors. Never let envy hinder your ability to perceive other person’s good qualities.
Bottom line
By avoiding the mistakes discussed above, brands can assemble different marketing strategies to give their business a strong identity. Brand management helps to manage the tangible as well as the intangible aspects of the product or services. Let me know about your thoughts by your comments.
Dwaipayan Chakraborty 
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