How to build a brand to create brand strength, increase profits, and lead the competition?

Often, people talk about differentiation strategies when talking about brand strength. This isn’t wrong, but is it adequate, especially if you can’t always find the perfect difference?

And what do businesses that want to build a brand with strong appeal need to do? Join Metta to explore through the article below.

When did the brand become “powerful”?

Why do some people only make appointments at StarBucks? Why do you trust and follow the advice of Tony Robin or Warren Buffet? Why do you buy something of great value even though “it’s not something so important that I have to buy it this time”?

This is because brands, whether personal or productive, already have a place in the hearts of customers, and they have the “power” to create emotions every time we hear or think of it. The brand is now not simply a commodity, a person, a thing, it has become something associated with who we are, even “honoring” us.

The brand becomes “tangible” in the minds of customers and has an important place in the lives of loyal customers. How to build a brand to make the brand more “powerful” is a difficult problem for all businesses.

A brand is more than just a name

Are you a startup? Or is your product still too new? That doesn’t matter. Because a brand is built intentionally and consistently over a period of time (short or long time depends on the investment of the business).

Branding and brand strength are like laying bricks one by one to build a wall until you can see the whole house in your style, having brand values (pillars), brand image (walls and roof), etc brand associations (trees and gardens).

So, at the nascent stage of a company or a product, it is important to paint a clear picture of the brand’s future and a strategic roadmap to nurture in the right way.

A new brand is like a child who has just raised his first voices. It takes time for him to grow up until he becomes a mature “man” who can express his ideas fluently and be heard by others. Business owners are the parents of their fledgling children, and need to invest in taking care of their child in the right and effective way for him to grow up healthy and successful. That’s the branding process.

Brand power is real

7 years ago, when we were building a brand for a company in the building materials sector, we encountered a sales manager who always asked for discounts whenever competitors were fighting with deep promotions in the market.

The reasons for the price reduction are: the product has similar features to the competition; it possesses only minor differences; need to protect its sales and gain more market share,… This sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

However, as marketers, if we are not calm enough, strong enough, and discerning enough, we can be led into a price war and fall victim to sales anxiety.

We took the time to explain to the Sales Manager the situation and asked them to stand their ground. The market was back to normal after a week.

It turned out that our competitor had exhausted the budget to offer deep discounts. They couldn’t even return to their normal price after that promotion and ended up losing. Know your brand’s strength wisely and don’t ruin it just because a competitor’s short-term promotion is playing dirty!

Building a brand through customer experience

Customer expectations and brand distribution must align with each other. Customer experience activities without brand alignment represent a lack of strategy.

Brands without a customer experience can’t really exist. Because a brand becomes more “alive” thanks to customer interaction. Therefore, the link between marketing and customer experience will contribute to reducing the disconnect between the expectations of the brand set for customers and the expectations of customers in experiencing the brand.

To align brands and customers and create brand strength, businesses should focus on the following three issues:

Customer loyalty level:

– Deep understanding of the brand and its influence on the overall customer experience
– Deep understanding of the customer journey emotionally and rationally
– Aggregate and access all proprietary customer data sources
– Describe the brand story and establish the brand story told through the customer experience

Fast execution:

– Turn brand promises into working principles/rules
– Optimizing and improving customer value-based experience
– Be consistent in creating a customer experience at each “touchpoint”
– Collaborative marketing, branding, insights/research and customer experience

Organizational connections:

– Employees are motivated, fulfilling promises to customers and brands in interactions with customers
Build a sense that everyone has equal responsibility for creating brand power both inside and outside the organization
– High level of cohesion between departments/departments such as Brand, Products, Service, Sales, Marketing, IT and Operations.

Hopefully, the sharing from the above “real battle” experience of the Metta team has brought you useful information about the importance of building brand strength. If your business needs to be listened to and consulted to build a strong brand, Metta is a professional team that can support you. Contact us immediately via email phung.metta@metta.com.vn.

Learn more about our services:

• Branding strategy consulting: Support business leaders/owners and marketing departments to build effective brand strategies for the Vietnamese market.
• Branding solutions: Digitally focused marketing hybrid solutions to build leading brands.
• Brand training: The training course focuses on brand management and branding for SMEs and start-ups.

Written by Metta Marketing Team