Your brand identity is what makes you instantly recognizable to your customers. Your audience will associate your brand identity with your product or service, and that identity is what forges the connection between you and your customers, builds customer loyalty, and determines how your customers will perceive your brand.
Most companies would agree that branding is an important element to their business growth. But how many companies actually focus on brand management? A study shows that branding often falls to someone in Marketing. The question then is, how many other tasks does this someone have?
The paradox of brand management
The extent of brand management in a company is diversified and there is no right or wrong on how to execute this. However, there are some key ingredients that are necessary and there are many pitfalls that determines the success of brand management.
Without the necessary focus, managing a brand will quickly become a left-hand task. Before you know it, your brand is abused by your colleagues, your brand voice is lost, and your brand personality is having a crisis.
Regardless of size and resources, a brand is a company’s most valuable asset. In a study by Millward Brown, they found that strong brands commanded 13% price premium over weak brands.
In other words, the stronger your brand, the better are your chances of getting a good price and increase revenue – Brand management matters!
Also read: How to choose a system for your brand guidelines
Take control of your brand
We now live in a world with a heated pulse where journalists, influencers, and social media users (just to mention a few) influence virtually every narrative. With proper brand management you'll take control of your brand identity in the eyes of the world. It's about using your branding and brand assets to communicate value and build loyal relationships with your followers, fans, and customers.
In short, your brand needs a brand manager to ensure its success. Don’t let your brand be like Kanye.
Brand management is the investment you do in building your brand. Making sure you achieve the desired visibility and market position. Important elements in achieving just that, is brand consistency, clarity, differentiation and more.
Create branding guidelines
To get there you need a strategy, a plan and rules - and you need to stick to it. Simple? Not really. Brand building start internally and first rule of building a brand is to make sure your management is on board. If they do not see the importance will they dedicate the necessary resources for you to manage your brand efficiently? 86% thinks that presenting a brand consistently is important, but only 49% indicate that they succeed with consistency.
So, let’s assume management is backing you 100%. How do you make sure your brand management is implemented throughout your entire organization and delivered to your market as intended?
A large part of brand management is to establish valuable brand identity guides. Elevate your brand to the next level, with beautiful, branded guidelines that will allow your organisation to have access to your brand and assets 24/7.
Digital guidelines connects your brand with your employees
Make sure your brand guidelines covers internal branding. Your colleagues are your biggest brand ambassadors. If they are not onboard with your brand strategy, how can you succeed? It is crucial to ensure your colleagues knows their role in your brand strategy and how important they are to the success of your brand management. And just as important, where can they find all the information they need without asking you?
By creating digital brand guidelines, your brand is available 24/7. Just as important, it's easy to connect your brand rules to actual brand assets - Establishing a usable brand that everyone understands.
Also read: Internal branding connects your brand to your employees
Digital brand guidelines ensures efficient and dynamic workflows
The marketing space changes fast. Avoid bottlenecks by ensuring you have the proper tools in place to secure seamless workflows for efficient brand management. Digital guidelines allow easy access to brand assets, templates and information and allow self-service workflows. Nobody is well served with you spending all your time on email requests from your colleagues. Reduce the bottlenecks and spend your time on valuable long term activities instead.
Digital brand guidelines secures brand reliability and validity
You need to ensure that the information you provide your colleagues with is always updated. If the information they have is no longer valid, and they keep using it, your brand will quickly suffer damage. And your marketing department will undergo a reliability downturn. With digital brand guidelines you got this covered.