Brand Development Strategies | Case-Studies, Ideas & Guidelines for Successful Brand Development
Brand Development Strategies | Case-Studies, Ideas & Guidelines for Successful Brand Development
After all what is a BRAND?
A BRAND is your identity, your company’s face value, a representation of what your services or products stand for. Every company requires a professional services Brand that makes it recognizable by its loyal customer base. Depending on how well your services or products are and by the virtue of how well you are placed in the market, the BRAND becomes a reputation in itself and offers you visibility for years to come.
A BRAND is an abstract identity of a company or organization, in the minds of people. A Brand has all the attributes of the company crystallized into it and carries all the “Karma” of the organization.
Brand Development Methodology
Brand Development is an elaborate process and requires precision methodology to be followed.
Since a Brand is important for gaining traction in the market and staying above the rest, a lot has to be done in creating and developing the Brand.
The entire process of creating a BRAND and strengthening it through various advertising activities is known as Brand Development.
It is a vital process when you are building a new Brand and even when you are trying to overhaul your current identity. A Brand Development process involves three major phases:
1. Understanding Brand Association
Any company or organization requires studying itself first to create a Brand out of it. As a part of the Brand development process, the company has to get its Brand strategy in line with its business objectives. Brand development begins with what exactly the company wants to portray. A Brand name should be associated with something which offers value, something that is good, useful, helpful, etc. Brand Association can be treated like “tags” your company attaches to its identity. These tags develop into Brand Attributes. These tags can sometimes have negative connotations.
Lets consider a Case-study of LEE. LEE Brand is associated with with “Ruggedness”, “Casual”, “Exhilaration”, “Youthful”, “Fashion”, “Lifestyle” etc.
McDonald’s Brand Association tags are – “Convenience”, “Fast-food”, “Hang-out”, “Cheap food”, “Kid’s Food”, “Easy Fix” etc.
2. Creating Brand Assets
Once you have done the research, Brand development will require the creation of assets that will grab the eyeballs. It will include a logo, tagline, website and other collaterals. Brand development is all about studying what design and words will work to truly represent the organization (not only the products and services, but what it stands for, its values and vision too.).
3. Developing Strategy to push the Brand
The third phase that a Brand Development process involves is to push and strengthen the Brand further. It is about creating more opportunities for the company to expose itself to the desired set of customers.
Brand Development Ideas and Guidelines
Brand Development often calls for “Out-of-the-box Thinking”
To create a Brand, you will need to go through several steps as a part of the Brand development strategy. Here are a few of them that can help you kick-start the Brand development process smoothly:
1. Research
Brand development is all about creating an identity for your company. This is why the first thing that you should perform is studying your own organization well. Understand that a Brand is not just a logo or a tagline; it is a representation of everything that you perform. How you perform the Brand development will change the way your customers will perceive your company in both factual and emotional way.
2. Know your target consumers
Another aspect of Brand development is to figure out who are you creating this strategy for. A lot many times you will be fascinated with certain design elements or colors and words. The idea is to first understand who you are developing the Brand for. Each market segment has a different preference; hence Brand development should involve the study of your target audience. Once that is performed, you will get a fair idea as to what things appeal to them or not.
Remember, you cannot claim to appeal to every consumer; hence a target group is important. Hence, a good Brand development strategy to implement is creating buyer personas that are stand-ins for real buyers who will influence or make decisions about your offered services or products.
3. Brand CREATION
Brand development involves the creation of assets as mentioned before. Once you have a grip on who you are selling to and why you are selling, the next step is to take this research and create the right Brand assets. But before you delve into the design bit, create two important things for the Brand development – the Brand story that helps you sell the product or service, and the Brand promise, where you are clear why your company is better over the others.
During Brand development, you will require to create a logo that creates a lasting impression and is identifiable as your company on its own. Take help of your Brand development research, every segment of an audience will respond to a design and color differently.
Next, use a lettering that is clear and delivers a style that fits with your ideals. For Brand development with lettering means thinking what appeals to your target audience, is it for children with cute letters, for youth in casual style, or for grown-ups in a formal manner.
Taglines have become an important part of the Brand development process since these catchy phrases and lines can stay in the head of your customers for a long time. Experiment with few lines and float it within the company. Such a Brand development survey can help you decide which line works and represents your company the best.
4. Lay a groundwork for Brand Marketing
Advertising and marketing play a pivotal role in the Brand development process. Here you will require creating a marketing strategy that will push your product or service to your customers. In today’s digital age, there are numerous ways to promote your Brand to the masses. Traditional mediums are a great place to put yourself out and start building your reputation. Higher visibility helps in reaching out to your target audiences well enough and should be considered significant for the Brand development process.
Brand development strategy should involve a study of the various social media platforms and blogs that can help push your content towards the customers. In this age of the internet, Brand development can really enjoy the luxury of reaching a mass audience in a matter of seconds. Due to the pool of competition over the web, you will really understand how well your Brand development has worked so far. This is true because in today’s age, the customers have less attention span and they switch between things in a blink of the eye.
Before you start promotions on the internet, make sure that your website is fully functional and offers a great deal of information and knowledge. A website with an associated active blog can be just the thing in your Brand development arsenal to help you grow. Setup search engine optimization (SEO) for the website and cross-promote the site on various platforms to gain more traffic and eventually more customers.
5. Launch and Readjust
Once you have a solid foundation with Brand development, it is important to launch your Brand. Do not rush into the launch and at the same time do not wait for longer and think about how it will play out. The best way to learn swimming is to get into the waters. So as a Brand development strategy, launch the Brand via various marketing streams and see the response. Have a target time and strategy to readjust and realign the Brand development process in case the response is not as expected.
Brand development requires a lot of patience and course correction. Remember, nothing works right off the bat, a few adjustments and changes will help you get in the right league soon. Brand development is a constant process, hence there has to be a channel for feedback at specific intervals. A lot many times companies put Brand development in the back seat once they are successfully gathering clients.
6. Stay Competitive and Relevant
Keep a close watch on your competitor’s Brand Development activities and adapt to the changes.
Stay relevant to the market trends. Be swift in changing gears with changing market and trends. Topical Ads are best way to stay relevant in branding
As mentioned above, a feedback for Brand development should be performed at key intervals. Also, keep an eye on the changing market trends and the competition. It might happen that slowly your Brand doesn’t fit into the current market segment. In this case, you will have to get back to Brand development by either overhauling the Brand’s image or make a slight correction and present it to the customers as their new companion. Do not get laid back over the period of time and also do not try to alter a lot with newer Brand development ideas too early. It might confuse your customers and fail as a good Brand development strategy.
7. Connect with your Customers
All the above Brand development strategies will completely fail if you do not connect and interact with your customers. Remember, you are creating a Brand to sell your product or service. So Brand development should try to create a story about your company and how it came into existence just for them. When you can tell such a story for Brand development, the marketing goes to an emotional level. Such a connection ensures that customers not only stay loyal to your Brand but also promote you to others.
Brand development should treat your Brand as a person, as a human with certain characteristics. Such addition of personality ensures that people can relate to it and feel it be someone who cares about them. Apart from the logo and tagline, Brand development should promote the core beliefs and values of the company. Also, ensure that the same is been represented at a macro level within your organization. The core beliefs and values that you portray should resonate through the ranks of your company. A good Brand is the one where the employees too stand proudly by it.
About US
WDsoft is the leading Branding Agency in Pune, INDIA. With an experience of over 10 years we have evolved into a total Brand Development Company in Pune, INDIA. Our tried and tested branding strategies and methodology has helped scores of our clients improve their brand visibility and generate more sales and leads.
