If a brand is not effectively managed then a perception can be created in the mind of your market that you do not necessarily desire. Branding is all about perception.
Wouldn’t it be nice to have people perceive you the way you would like them to perceive you? That is what branding and brand management are all about.
Brand management recognizes that your market’s perceptions may be different from what you desire while it attempts to shape those perceptions and adjust the branding strategy to ensure the market’s perceptions are exactly what you intend.
So you may now have a better understanding of what a brand is and why awareness about your brand does not necessarily mean your brand enjoys high brand equity in the marketplace. You might even understand that brand management is all about shaping and managing perceptions. You may still be asking yourself, however, why you should care about branding in the first place.
The Benefits of a Strong Brand
Here are just a few benefits you will enjoy when you create a strong brand –
- A strong brand influences the buying decision and shapes the ownership experience.
- Branding creates trust and an emotional attachment to your product or company. This attachment then causes your market to make decisions based, at least in part, upon emotion- not necessarily just for logical or intellectual reasons.
- A strong brand can command a premium price and maximize the number of units that can be sold at that premium.
- Branding helps make purchasing decisions easier. In this way, branding delivers a very important benefit. In a commodity market where features and benefits are virtually indistinguishable, a strong brand will help your customers trust you and create a set of expectations about your products without even knowing the specifics of product features.
- Branding will help you “fence off” your customers from the competition and protect your market share while building mind share. Once you have mind share, your customers will automatically think of you first when they think of your product category.
- A brand is something that nobody can take away from you. Competitors may be able to copy your products, your patents will someday expire, trade secrets will leak to the competition, your proprietary manufacturing plant will eventually become obsolete, but your brand will live on and continue to be uniquely yours. In fact, a strong brand name may be your most valuable asset. Brands help people connect with one another.
- Have you ever witnessed the obvious bond between people using the same brand of product? If a person wearing a Benetton T-shirt finds another person wearing a Benetton product, she will have instant rapport with her and immediately begin talking about their experiences with the brand. How is it that we can feel such a connection with complete strangers? The answer lies in the psychological connection people have with a particular brand.
- A strong brand can make actual product features virtually insignificant. A solid branding strategy communicates a strong, consistent message about the value of your company. A strong brand helps you sell value and the intangibles that surround your products.
- A strong brand signals that you want to build customer loyalty, not just sell product. A strong branding campaign will also signal that you are serious about marketing and that you intend to be around for a while. A brand impresses your firm’s identity upon potential customers, not necessarily to capture an immediate sale but rather to build a lasting impression of you and your products.
- Branding builds name recognition for your company or product.
- A brand will help you articulate your company’s values and explain why you are competing in your market.
People do not purchase based upon features and benefits – People do not make rational decisions. They attach to a brand the same way they attach to each other – first emotionally and then logically. Similarly, purchase decisions are made the same way-first instinctively and impulsively and then those decisions are rationalized.
The Three Cs of Branding
By William Arruda
May 20, 2003
The benefits of having a strong brand are tremendous. Strong brands charge premium pricing; they thrive during economic downturns; they attract great employees, partners and customers; and they can extend into new business areas with ease.
In addition to being able to boast these enviable benefits, strong brands have something else in common. They all exhibit the “three Cs” of branding.
The three Cs are – clarity, consistency, and constancy. Does your brand pass the Three C Test?
