Brand building and brand awareness: where does a good, sustainable brand come from?
Summary:
The importance of the brand: A strong brand creates an emotional bond with customers, it is in the mind at the moment of choice and the impact on sales is undeniable. It is important to build a strong brand.
Brand formation: A brand evokes emotions and images that influence customers' choices. The company's strategy and its implementation are important.
Brand building: Branding is based on communicating the company's competitive advantages. Communication and customer experience are key. It is important to be consistent and long-term.
Target group: Choosing a target group is a strategic decision. It is important to deliver value to the selected group.
Building a sense of identity: Advertising plays a major role in creating a memorable and emotional bond. It is important to find the right points of interest in the lives of the target audience.
A strong and reliable brand is an important part of a company's capital. When customers have a relationship and emotional attachment to a company, service or product, they are more likely to choose it at the time of purchase. It also makes it harder for a competitor to get in the way, for example by enticing them with price. The value of a brand develops over time - building a company's brand requires patience and long-term work.
What is a brand and how is it created?
A company's brand evokes emotions and images. What kind of associations does it give us? Perhaps we think of memories, perhaps we perceive a brand as exuding quality or elegance. A brand is a combination of expectations and images that consciously or unconsciously influence our choices when we purchase products or services. The best-known brands have their own identifiable identity.
Brand visual identity, marketing communications and advertising are the outwardly visible signs and characteristics of a brand. More important, however, is what lies beneath the surface. A strong brand comes from within: from the strategy and execution of the company, from how the company differentiates itself from its competitors.
Building awareness and branding is important because it increases the effectiveness of all advertising. The impact of a brand on sales is undeniable. A strong brand has higher growth potential, higher returns, better margins and a better starting point for building market share and activating sales.
Brand building: do it this way
While a brand is created in the minds of customers, it is all about the company and its business. Branding is therefore not about building a separate image or a shiny shell that is disconnected from reality, it is about communicating strategy outwardly in line with the competitive advantages of the business.
Communication and marketing communications are the tools of brand building and the outwardly visible things. However, it's the company's operations, customer experience and the reality of everyday interactions that matter.
The worst possible situation for the development of a brand is that the customer gets an image and expectation from the communication, which is not fulfilled in reality.
Brand and target audience - find the right audience
Target audience is a strategic choice and one of the most important success factors for a company. Who is the product or service for, what value is being delivered to them and what is the value proposition? For example, a paint retailer needs to address renovators and decorators with its brand and messaging, whereas the target audience for food products can be much broader.
The target audience is defined by functional issues, but also by emotional and value-related issues. What does the company or product stand for, and what kind of people are attracted to these elements?
Which target groups do you want to build your brand among?
When building a new brand, be prepared to search for and branch out your target audience. You should start by communicating and advertising to a wide range of people who will gradually become the most potential audience.
If a company is looking for growth, reaching a broad target audience and growing the pool of interested parties is particularly important. If you can create an emotional bond with a large number of people and then identify the most interested and potential target groups, targeted measures will make it easier to close the deal.
Brand advertising should by no means be left to a launch campaign. The customer's memory is unfortunately short, which is why regular reminder advertising to the "general public" is important.
The role of brand advertising: stop and create an emotional bond
In building brand awareness, advertising plays a major role. The main role of brand advertising is to create a memory and strengthen the emotional bond. What are the starting points for building brand awareness in the right direction?
The most important thing is to find the right points of interest and relevance in the lives of your target audience. At the same time, the points of interest must be natural and specific to the company and the brand.
A good example could be IKEA's marketing communication during the pandemic: it was natural for the furniture retailer to talk about the security and importance of home at a time when lockdowns were commonplace around the world. But if a company is too quick to seize on a phenomenon to which it has no attachment, the connection will be tenuous and people will only get a sense of the message that has been pasted on.
We're in the midst of quite a fuss and a mass of messages. But simply stopping and getting a moment's attention is not enough for a purposeful brand builder.
People use different media throughout the day and are constantly bombarded with different messages. Encounters need to be meaningful to be memorable. It is from these memories that the brand relationship grows and strengthens.
What will be remembered? What should a brand offer people who encounter brand advertising or marketing communications?
A story built on a foundation of customer insight and vision that is present in the day and in the lives of customers speaks best. Good advertising delights and also offers insights. Also, make sure that the connection between story and brand is maintained, so that the audience doesn't remember the story of an insightful or touching ad but not the advertiser.
Make sure you do your groundwork
The more the marketing budget eats into a company's input costs, the more critical careful planning becomes.
In practice, this means, among other things, defining target audiences and gaining a deeper understanding of the value base and consumer behaviour of potential customers, so that you can find commonalities with the everyday lives of your target audience and the right grip on how your brand communicates to them.
If you have the courage to invest in customer insight, you are more likely to make the right media decisions and investments. Scarce resources call for more careful progress and thoughtful experimentation, rather than relying purely on intuition or personal preference.
Three tips for a brand builder's media selection
Building brand awareness and achieving top-of-mind status requires advertising. What should you consider when it comes to making media choices for brand advertising?
- Consider media that has a strong relationship with your audience.
The old truth is that the media itself is the message. The relationship people have with the media they consume will always influence how they receive advertising.
- Make sure you advertise in trusted media.
If you buy contacts "blind" without knowing which media your ads will appear in, you could be taking a big risk in terms of reputation management.
- Know where your target audience is looking for inspiration - and advertise there.
For example, interior design content is often read for inspiration and tips, and that's where the effectiveness of the ad is multiplied. Magazines specialising in different themes and digital media contextual targeting work particularly well for this purpose.
Brand effectiveness - investigate, track and measure correctly
Brand building and awareness development takes time. Influencing perceptions requires sustained effort, presence and a good customer experience. Naturally, a long-term measurement system must also be put in place to verify the results.
Use a survey to assess your brand's position in the market, for example on a six-monthly or annual basis. You can use customisable questions to measure, for example, the change in perception you want.
The impact of marketing on your business should be considered as a whole. Gather together in one view the key objectives and the corresponding actual figures for the whole year. Track and populate the table throughout the year, for example quarterly.
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