Brand management is the creation and execution of approaches designed to spread brand awareness and strengthen consumers’ perception of the specific brand.
“Brand is just a perception, and perception will match reality over time.”
Similar to many operations conducted in a business, brand management is an ongoing activity. Through effective brand management, a business-to-business (B2B) or a consumer business (B2C and D2C) lays out its intent to enhance brand loyalty, which leads to significant growth in brand equity.
Therefore, one of the most important parts of ensuring one conducts brand management activities constructively is by making sure it aligns with the brand identity. For getting utmost benefits, this alignment is embedded into aspects such as product, packaging design, color combinations, communication, and any stylistic elements that run alongside the brand.
Understanding of The Process
As the primary objective of brand management activities is solidifying brand loyalty through building positive associations with the brand, measuring the brand performance becomes essential. Without understanding where a brand stands currently, one cannot decide on steps that will lead to its success.
Part 1
A brand manager analyzes the current standpoint of the brand amongst the niche market of the same. However, it is also crucial to consider the internal factors that affect the brand: products, logo design, customer experience, sales strategies, to name a few. During this assessment of a brand, it is important to know its performance amongst the brand’s competitors.
Part 2
With the help of predetermined insights of the brand (mission, vision, values, sales and marketing approaches), a brand manager carefully takes into account the placement of the brand in consumers’ minds. After having insights about the brand, the next step is to know how consumers interact with the brand; this can be done by examining the buyer’s journey and KPIs (Key Performance Indicators).
Part 3
Based on the insights, key attributes are assigned to the brand. These key attributes help a brand have a positioning that differentiates it from the competition, and inevitably becomes a reason behind brand loyalty. Through tangible (logo, colors, product packaging, and prices ) and intangible (values, tone of voice, storytelling, and experience) efforts, a brand manager then performs brand management activities to establish and maintain the brand.
The Benefits of Brand Management
As leveraged by legendary brands such as Nike and Apple, through the collaborative and deliberate efforts of the branding and marketing teams, a brand can reach commercial and impactful heights.
By bringing together a set of current insights, analysis of human interactions, and digital collateral of the brand, a brand manager creates and manages a powerful association between brand elements and consumers. Therefore, increasing brand equity and brand loyalty. This results in allowing the brand to decrease the cost of sales and increase market price based on its credibility.
