The Ultimate Guide to Brand Management

Posted July 7, 2018

Did you know 42 percent of Americans have far less trust in brands than they did 20 years ago?

In this environment, how do you build a brand your customers can trust?

Well, what helps is an excellent brand management strategy. Here’s our ultimate guide to brand management, to help you build a brand your customers will come back to, time and again.

What Is Brand Management?

Brand management encompasses all activities geared into transforming a business from just a commercial outfit to an organization with a mission.

This involves the creation of a brand, crafting of a brand promise, selection of product and service offerings, and overseeing brand reputation.

Leave Branding to the Professionals – From the Onset

A huge mistake many business owners make is tackling the branding aspect of their new businesses. And who can blame them? After all, they are the ones who know the intricate story and goals of the business.

If you want your brand to quickly grow into a reputable brand in the region, you have to let branding experts take over the task, right from the early days. Sure, you might be running on a shoestring budget, but that’s not reason enough to do branding yourself. Allocate funds to professional branding.

A branding expert will put the basics — the logo, colors, tagline and everything else — right. This effectively prevents some unnecessary blunders, such as giving the logo a refresh a few years down the road, because the original one the business owner designed doesn’t tick all the boxes.

Stay on Top of Online Reputation

Back in the days when Nike, Apple and some of the world’s most popular brands were founded, the internet wasn’t a thing. Companies turned to television, billboards, and print to get the word out.

But with the invention of search engines in the mid-1990s and the social media boom of the 2000s, the internet suddenly became a huge branding tool. Companies were able to easily and cost-effectively reach millions of new audiences.

With good comes bad, though.

Today, the internet is a double-edged sword that can build and kill your company with the same enthusiasm. If your business does something wrong, maybe a customer service rep is involved in a feisty exchange of words with a customer, the incidence could go viral on the internet in no time, and if you’re not proactive, permanently hurt your brand reputation.

It’s for this reason you should stay on top of your brand’s online reputation. Use social listening tools to monitor what people are saying about your brand in real time and take steps to correct any negative mentions.

Live Up to Your Mission

Your mission is the heart of your brand. It’s what you want to achieve with your business. Given that a whole 57 percent of consumers won’t buy from a business that doesn’t share their values, you have to demonstrate that you indeed follow your mission.

If you’re a furniture manufacturer with a mission to sell sustainable furniture, for instance, your practices, right from the product design to social responsibility causes, must reflect your love for the environment.

There’s Much More to Brand Management

Brand management is a wide function that goes far beyond the strategies we’ve fleshed out here. It’s also a fast-changing world, so you have to be on your toes to stay ahead.

Got any questions regarding brand management? Thoughts you’d love to share? Join the conversation in the comments section below! You can also contact us.

brand, brand management, brand services, branding

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