Managing your Brand

If you are in Business, you have a Brand. If your business was a person, your brand would be its look and personality. Getting your brand exposure would be like introducing yourself to new people and trying to build a new relationship. Your brand has a constantly evolving identity… and it’s your job to help it grow and improve.  Unfortunately, many small business owners neglect this responsibility and lose the opportunity to scale their business.

This is what our team at VIMAR Digital Marketing call Brand Management.

Creating a new brand is an exciting thrilling experience, but it’s not enough.  As your business evolves through growth, direction changes, team changes, your brand must follow suit. This blog article covers the basics of brand management and will equip you and your team with the tools you need to manage your brand.

What is involved in Brand Management?

Brand management is the process of managing your brand reputation and improving your audience’s perception of your brand in a way that builds brand awareness, brand value, and brand loyalty.

While brand development is the process of building your brand, brand management is the process of monitoring and maintaining it.

As your Brand is in the public domain, it faces challenges of external factors like social trends, marketing competition, economic climate and virtually every narrative possible to online stories.  As your business story continues, managing customer perception is a challenge.  You need to have a steady reliable communication flow with loyal followers and possible new customers.  So be active, be consistent and stay in control of how you communicate your business offerings.

When Your Brand is managed successfully you should witness;

  • Increased Brand Loyalty
  • More Awareness of your Brand
  • Increased Repeat Sales
  • Better Customer Satisfaction
  • Allow your business offerings to evolve

For many reasons, brand management extends far beyond your digital marketing. Brand management should be intertwined with your overall business vision and be transparent in each department such as finance, sales, and customer service.  It is often discussed in terms of brand ‘touchpoints’ as every point where a customer can be in contact with your business.

Although many aspects of increased brand equity are intangible, when brand management is successful, it clearly improves the business overall bottom line. So, it’s so crucial to your business that you must treat it as an asset.

Your Brand is an Asset

Your brand has a variety of tangible elements that an audience can see, experience and build a memorable relationship with.  Brand asset management is the process of crafting and maintaining these tangible elements as well as keeping them consistent throughout your branding.

This would typically include:

  • Organizing your brand guidelines (both digitally and physically)
  • Training your team on how to demonstrate and use your brand assets

Take the time to review the following topics in regard to your Brand;

Brand Name

Your brand name is the primary identity of your company.  As many elements of your brand evolve through time, it is very unusual for your Brand Name to change.  Of course, there are circumstances where it is necessary or appropriate, but that’s for another discussion. If you haven’t protected your name legally through trademark protection, we encourage you to do so.  Taking legal precautions at an early stage can significantly reduce the severity of legal challenges in the future.  Legal and licencing essentials need to be declared in statements and usage agreements.

Your brand name will also likely be reflected in your website domain and social media pages. Keeping this Brand Identity consistent will help customers discover and follow all your business activity.

Logo and Colour Palette

Your logo and colour palette embody the creative depiction of your brand. These resources are important parts of your branding as they tap into various elements of your marketing strategy.  Creating a unique logo and attractive colour scheme takes significant development and can should also evolve over time as your business grows.  Keeping a logo fresh and relevant is important when growing your customer base over time. Even your colour pairings are a huge identifier for brand awareness.  When designed properly using experienced designers, they can help you attract and convert customers.  This is also true of your packaging design and appearance.  Product packaging is often the major form of brand differentiation in a crowded market place.

Typography and Graphics

Typography and Graphics are essential elements for your aesthetic feel of your brand.  Fonts and text-based imagery need to co-ordinated to the brand style. All these should be outlined in a brand guidebook.  Consistency across printed and digital platforms is important. For example, your letterhead design shouldn’t be drastically different to your social media channels.  Content should be well organised as it is often the majority of interaction that customers have with your business.  This is especially important with photography.  Get some professional photos of your location, team and products. There is a place for using premium stock imagery but over-relying on simple stock footage is a sure way of losing your unique identity that you’ve worked hard to create.

Digital Marketing Channels

Your business website, social media, and paid advertising are some of the most common interactions your customers have with your brand.  Digital marketing needs to be strategic and integrated with your brand values.  It is also important to note that your key staff members also have social accounts and their online presence can have positive/negative effects on your branding.  All marketing channels open a variety of opportunities to expand your brand presence.  Although each platform has a different audience, your brand should still be recognisable to your core target audience.  Consistency is key.  Get out there and spread the word about the business.  Allowing your customers engage with your brand will increase the connection.  Key relationships can emerge through digital correspondence.

If your managing a brand, let us know how your main challenges.  Comment below or get in touch with our team to discuss how we can help you out.  Our Artistic team can develop a complete Brand refresh and/or design a new a complete new brand guidebook for your start-up.

Be VISIBLE Be VIVID Be with VIMAR