What You Should Know About Brand Management

No matter whether you own a large corporation or a small business, you will want to create a brand for your company. Why? Because a brand (with all of its attributes) helps you set yourself apart from your competitors and stand out on the market.

But branding is not just about creating your brand and running with it. There’s a lot of maintenance that goes into having a successful brand – and that’s what brand management is for. Hence, here’s a complete guide to brand management and the best practices you can use to maintain your own brand.

What is brand management?

To put it simply, brand management is all about marketing, advertising, and distributing your products or services in a way that defines and sustains your brand image. When done right, brand management can be extremely effective for increasing the perceived value of a brand or product over time. In other words, it’s a way for you to regulate the price of your products or services while improving their value in the eyes of your customers.

Successful brand management can lead to better brand loyalty both among your customers and among your employees. Your audience will start associating your products and services with positive imagery which will strengthen your brand image and reputation. By having a solid brand management strategy, you can maintain brand equity and increase the value of your products or services.

It’s important to note that brand management is not just about marketing or advertising your brand. The distribution of your products or services is very important for successful brand management which is why different departments could be involved here (including marketing, sales, and even customer support).

The credibility and reputation of your brand also heavily rely on your brand management strategy. With good brand management, you can significantly increase the loyalty and trust levels of your audience. This is why when your brand management is poor, you can expect your brand image to suffer from it.

One more aspect of your business that is directly impacted by brand management is development. Effective brand management helps you innovate your products or services as well as your brand itself. It’s not just the fact that your brand’s perceived value will be improved but also the fact that your brand itself will grow and develop.

Why do you need brand management?

Along with helping you maintain your brand in different ways, brand management can also be beneficial to you for other reasons:

Communicating Product Value: With proper brand management, your marketing department can better communicate the value of your products or services to your customers.

Understanding the Pipeline Better: At the same time, your sales department will have more opportunities to easily interact with your prospects. This, in turn, will allow the sales department to better understand the pipeline of leads to better communicate the value of your brand to these leads.

Clearer Expectations for Customers: Both your prospects and your current customers will have a clearer understanding and expectations for your brand and your products or services.

Creating Enthusiastic Brand Advocates: Over time, you will be able to create a team of enthusiastic and loyal advocates both among your customers and among your employees.

Increasing Sales Through Advocacy: Through this advocacy, you will be able to increase your sales. It’s not surprising considering how effective word-of-mouth advertising can be.

Growing Brand Awareness: Advocacy and proper branding will also help you grow your brand awareness and get more recognition.

Improving Company Culture: Your improved brand image will start attracting top talent. This means that you can hire more experienced and skilled employees who will, in turn, improve your company culture.

Building Lifelong Customer Loyalty: Instead of having one-time customers, you will have more returning clients who will be loyal to you for a long period of time. Likewise, you might even decrease your turnover rate as more employees will prefer staying at your company and working for your brand.

Anthony Strong, an expert from a writing services website ratings site, explains, “Brand management can influence the success of your business in both subtle and not-so-subtle ways. It all depends on how effectively you can use it to pursue your goals. At the same time, you shouldn’t forget about the possible issues that could arise if you make a mistake.”

What are the key brand management principles?

When it comes to brand management, there are many different things you should keep in mind, but by far the most important of them are these three key principles:

Brand Recognition: Brand recognition is about how well your brand is recognized by your audience. Your prospects need to be able to identify your brand by hearing its name or looking at its logo. Other brand-related elements that could be considered include slogans, product packaging designs, and your brand’s color scheme. Most of the time, brand recognition is concerned with visual elements, but there can also be audio elements involved (e.g. jingles in TV ads). Brands with good recognition don’t even need to have their brand name said for the audience to recognize the brand.

Brand Loyalty: Brand loyalty is about the devotion of your customers to your brand. Customers loyal to your brand will favor your products or services over those of your competitors. Interestingly, with good brand loyalty, your customers could be choosing your products over others even if other products are superior in some way (e.g. price, quality, features). Brand loyalty is particularly important for customer retention and word-of-mouth advertising.

Brand Equity: Brand equity is about creating and communicating the value of your brand through its reputation, perception, and impression. In other words, it’s all about your brand image. The way your brand is perceived could impact the way your products or services are perceived. For example, if customers associate your brand with quality, they will often consider all your products to be of high quality as a result. It’s an interesting dynamic and can greatly help you increase profits by raising prices while maintaining the perceived value of your products or services.

Understanding these three brand management principles will help you create a more effective and successful brand management strategy. These principles can help you set objectives, utilize different marketing techniques more effectively, and measure the results of your brand management.

What are the key brand management practices?

Once you understand the key brand management principles, it’s important to understand the key brand management practices. These are techniques commonly used in brand management by companies of all sizes and types:

Positioning: Brand positioning is about defining what your brand represents and what your company strives to achieve as well as how this relates to your competitors. In other words, it’s a way for you to decide in which direction your business is moving and how this outlook shapes your brand image. Most of the time, brand positioning is affected by the industry and the market.

Marketing: Brand marketing is exactly what the phrase suggests. This is both your overall marketing strategy and your individual marketing campaigns and initiatives. All of these need to work together to help you manage your brand and achieve the objectives you have set.

Measurement: Brand measurement is about measuring the results of your brand management activity. By measuring results, you are better able to understand what needs to be changed to improve in the future and how well you have performed so far. Brand measurement can also help you see how your brand is positioned compared to your competitors.

Innovation: Brand innovation is about developing and growing your brand. It’s not the same as simply introducing innovations into your company but rather about reinventing your brand image. By working on brand innovation, you will be able to always stay relevant in your niche and ensure your brand’s longevity.

All four of these are essential to managing your brand successfully. In a way, they are like a four-step system for you to follow when planning your brand management strategy. Always remember that brand management is a complex notion and requires you to address a variety of sides that all relate to your brand and impact the success of your business.

How does brand management work?

So, how exactly does brand management work? Brand management is applied both by big companies and by small businesses to achieve a variety of aims mostly through marketing. However, brand management can impact all sides of your business and often has a lot of influence on your customer engagement, competitive edge, and overall company management.

Brand management allows you to maximize the results of your branding activity. However, it also works for you on a bigger scale and helps you improve your brand’s presence on the market. You want to look like a company that has a strong position on the market and is able to compete with other companies in your niche.

Brand management allows you to stand out by having a distinctive image and creating certain associations with your products or services. This is particularly important for new companies that are trying to break into the market and fill some kind of niche. It can be difficult for small businesses especially, so brand management should be an important part of your overall business strategy from the very start.

But even as you have established yourself on the market, you still need to maintain your brand image. That’s why brand management is often a continuous process rather than a one-time initiative. You want to increase your brand awareness over time to grow and expand your business and reach new markets and audiences.

Because of its nature, brand management requires constant monitoring, so that’s when you need to be using brand measurement. By regularly analyzing your performance, you will be able to make the necessary changes to your brand management strategy to solve issues, prevent potential problems, and maximize your results.

Brand management also helps you stay consistent with your messaging. If you decide to introduce a new product or service, brand management is necessary to shape a particular image of that new offer and to align it with your overall brand image. In other words, brand management ensures consistency and familiarity that customers so often desire.

At the end of the day, brand management is the key piece in the puzzle for the reason why big brands have seen such outstanding longevity. Think of such brands as Microsoft, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Nike, Lego, Ford, and so many others. All of them became such giants in their respective industries thanks to clever brand management.

What are some examples of brand management?

To better understand how brand management works in practice, it’s worth looking at some notable brand management examples that demonstrate how brands manage their image. You can look at both big, established brands and smaller brands that are just getting started. In the latter case, look at your competitors to see how they are trying to establish themselves in your respective niche.

As mentioned earlier, brands with good recognition don’t even need customers to hear their brand name to be recognized. This is definitely the case for Coca-Cola. In 1971, the company aired an ad with a jingle called “It’s the Real Thing” where people from different backgrounds all promoted the brand. The jingle is still recognizable today and is associated with Coca-Cola.

Another example of outstanding brand recognition is when your brand’s slogan is easily recognized and associated with your brand. For example, Nike’s “Just Do It” or McDonald’s “I’m Lovin’ It” are both great examples as nearly everyone recognizes them. Powerful slogans can even transcend cultures and can be recognized on an international level in different countries with different languages.

Sometimes, brand names are associated with particular words or phrases which creates a great opportunity for you to adopt a particular object or thing for your brand logo. For instance, GEICO Insurance is instantly associated with the gecko, a small type of lizard. As a result, the brand uses geckos in its advertising campaigns.

Successful brand management creates value both for your brand and for your products or services. This is clearly demonstrated with the example of Apple. Nowadays, the brand is associated with quality, stylishness, and innovation which is why there are so many loyal Apple users that often actively advocate for the brand. And yet, when compared to other similar products on the market, Apple’s tech is not always the superior option in terms of quality, value, or price.

Some brands also stand out thanks to the people working at their company that pretty much become the face of the company. There’s the legendary Steve Jobs from Apple and the more recent example of Elon Musk from Tesla who often gets called a real-life Iron Man. These people don’t just position themselves as prominent leaders at the head of their respective companies but also as the humanized versions of their brands. This is also one of the reasons why major luxury fashion brands have celebrities as their brand ambassadors.

What role do employees play in brand management?

It’s worth pointing out that your employees actually play a very big role in brand management. On one hand, there are many elements controlled by your company’s actions, but on a smaller scale, it’s your employees who are doing the work. Here are three ways how your employees can impact your brand management:

Protecting and Defending the Brand: Brands have a particular public image that they want to uphold and employee actions could easily influence this image, even in separate cases. When big brands receive negative feedback on social media, they often fire the employees responsible for the bad experience a customer had. However, your employees can also be the protectors and defenders of your brand. When your employees are active advocates of your brand, your brand’s overall image will improve as well.

Increasing Brand Visibility: If your employees are actively advocating for your brand, they are pretty much using word-of-mouth advertising to promote it. This, in turn, helps you increase brand visibility. To encourage brand advocacy among employees, you can either nurture brand loyalty among your staff and let them find ways to advocate themselves or you can offer a referral program to them.

Improving Trust Levels: Likewise, internal brand management through your employees can help you improve trust levels. Through your employee advocacy, you can reach more audiences and get more engagement with your brand. Moreover, you can also shape a particular brand image that will be trusted by more potential customers. This will, in turn, lead to potentially increased sales.

While brand management is often perceived as something external, you shouldn’t forget about the importance of internal brand management which happens through your employees. As mentioned earlier, good brand recognition attracts top talent which, in turn, improves your company culture. But beyond that, it’s both about the individual value of your employees as well as the unified value they bring to your brand.

Wrapping up

At the end of the day, branding is not complete without brand management. Once you have created a particular brand image for your company, you will need to maintain it through various means. Use the tips in this article to help you get started and successfully build your brand’s recognition and influence in your niche.