Mercedes, Nike, Toyota, Apple, Coca-Cola, and McDonald’s. What do these brands have in common? Without a doubt, all of them are powerful brands in their respective fields.
Many elements go into making a brand. It includes the product, positioning, voice, and the audience. It also includes the emotional connection a brand builds with customers. It determines how they perceive your brand. It could be good, bad, or indifferent.
Brand Development What Is It?
Think about brand development as everything you do to establish brand equity. Brand equity refers to the impact a brand name has on the mind of consumers. It aims to influence how people perceive your brand which later on translates into commercial value.
What this means is, if people have a good perception of your brand, then they are more likely to buy your product.
Why You Need a Strong Brand Development Strategy
Trying to develop a brand without a strategy is like walking in the dark. You do not have a roadmap or blueprint to guide your activities in developing a strategy.
Start by understanding the company mission, vision, and positioning. With these, you can develop a brand personality, brand voice, and visual expression.
You must know Who you are and How you will speak to your audience. What visual elements like logos, fonts, and colour palettes represent you? What are your beliefs? What is your purpose?
You also seek to answer the question, why. Why are you in the business? More importantly, why should your customers care about you?
Now, let’s discuss why you need a brand development strategy.
1. You Get To Know Your Brand Better
How do you sell your brand if you do not truly understand what it is in the first place? Remember, loyal customers, look beyond your products. They want to understand why your brand exists.
But how can you tell them if you also don’t know? Make sure you can answer the following questions and know them by heart.
- What are your core values?
- What solutions will you provide?
- What do you want your customers to think about you?
- How are you different from your competitors?
Upon answering all of these, you’ll be able to craft strategies that will help mould your customer’s perception of you.
2. It Helps With a Better Understanding of the Target Audiences
When coming up with the strategy, focus on who you need to be talking to. Develop customer profiles so that you can narrow down your target audiences. Research is a critical process because you will need the data to determine what your next step is.
Look at factors like what motivates your customers to buy. See how they interact with your brand. Check the psychological factors that allow them to connect with you. Ask yourself why customers will buy from you and not your competitors.
Let’s take the example of Chipotle. It targeted millennials by creating a fictional web series, complete with its music, website, and trivia. The company also released a video game on the iPhone. The idea was to generate curiosity about food and its sources.
They knew what would appeal to their target audience. It was about the experience and ability to participate in the campaign.
3. It Allows You to Establish a Brand Voice
Creating a robust brand strategy goes beyond mere conversions; it involves fostering loyalty through genuine conversations. Your brand voice is the emotion or personality that accompanies all your communications. What kind of words and tones does your brand use?
What other unique personality traits set you apart from competitors. Look at it as a true embodiment of your personality. Think words like passionate, quality, authentic, dependable, fun, and understanding.
McDonald’s is about family, sharing, happy times, and good food. Mercedes has established itself as dependable, elegant, sophisticated, and elite.
Toyota is every man’s car. You may have seen the phrase ‘the car in front of you is always a Toyota’. Whether this is true or not, it is a phrase that many people associate with the brand.
4. You Attract Customers and Build Loyalty
The business landscape is competitive. Customers have access to so many brands and products. Capturing their attention can be very difficult. It gets worse when you’re trying to build loyalty.
Building customer loyalty to your brand will take years. One of the main components in building it is making sure that you bring high-quality products or services consistently. When people know that they can expect the best from you, they’ll easily keep coming back for more.
A strong brand name also works to connect at an emotional level. They make sure that they release relatable content to be able to achieve this. Once you capture them at this level, you stand higher chances of keeping them. You can achieve more leverage in the industry, thus putting you ahead of the competition.
Have you ever wondered how Coca-Cola managed to become one of the world’s most recognizable brands? Here are some tactics they have and continue to use.
- They have remained consistent with their branding and visual expression. We all know the red and white colour and the recognizable font. It ensures they maintain top of mind awareness amongst consumers ·
- The brand appeals to what is important to customers. They push branding, not just their product. It is all about the lifestyle, togetherness, and family
- It takes advantage of popular culture to maintain relevance. Coke’s main selling point revolves around sharing and happiness. Look at the advertising language. Words like happiness in a bottle evoke warm feelings, which are likely to sway customer perception.
5. You Improve Chances of Conversions
Imagine we have two sneakers. One is a knock off and another has the Nike logo. They could have similar features and are both relatively functional. But why is it that people have no problem paying the higher prices for Nike shoes?
The answer is quite simple. There is a strong association that customers build with such brands. The companies have managed to build a level of credibility. The credibility exists amongst their customers and the entire market.
For customers, it goes beyond just the product. For some, it’s the prestige that comes with having these products. They also have greater trust for the products, even if they do not have proof that they are more superior. It all comes down to the power of branding. To grow brands and increase conversions, some firms engage call center outsource companies to help them out. The most common factor between Mercedes, Nike, Toyota, Apple, Coca-Cola, and McDonald’ is that all of them engage call center outsource companies.
6. A Brand Development Strategy Helps With Decision-Making
A proper strategy incorporates tons of research and data collection. You look for information about the market, customers, competitors, and business environment. The insights you get will guide all the decision-making processes.
Let’s take the example of coming up with a marketing campaign. You achieve better targeting because you understand the customers’ pain points.
You communicate with them in the language that they understand. Furthermore, you provide solutions for their needs because you know what it is. Your chances of getting conversions become much higher.
Final Thoughts
Business professionals must have a brand development strategy. It helps position you in the competitive business world. Customers need more than a good product. You get more loyalty if they build a deep connection with your company.
Your strategy is the road map that will help you achieve your brand development goals. It is a long-term vision of where you want your business to be. Start by understanding your brand well. Next, research the target market to identify what they need so that you can provide a solution.
Remember. Even the recognizable brands had to go through the process. They will probably tell you that it took years to achieve brand recognition. But, with the right tactics and enough patience, it is achievable.