How to build a brand strategically.

If your business is dependent on creating loyal weekly customer a strong brand is a surest answer to your goal, and this blog is all about making you understand the crucial processes which business owners and brand managers must keep in mind when thinking of starting to build a brand for their business, after reading the complete blog-post you will understand that strategic brand management is a lot more than your company's logo.

Every business wants to be the first choice of their customers, and for this dream to come true businesses invest time and money patiently to build a brand which would give them a recognition in the market, building and maintaining a brand plays a significant part in making a venture successful.

There are five important steps that one needs to follow in order to build a successful brand strategically, these steps are as follow-

-first and the foremost step is you need to understand the basic idea of your brand, that is, what is that your venture offers that would attract the customers, what is your promise with the customers and what are your brand values.

-Now you need to understand that what is a brand ? in a lay man's language it is a promise that a seller makes with its customers and maintaining the promise as well as maintaining it is brand management, perhaps you need to understand what is that promise that you are making with your customers or the target audience and the core values behind it that would help you attract the customers.

-Always think your core values as the DNA of the brand, at this step we define how the brand links with your overall business and other brands under your umbrella.

-Brands do not stand tall in isolation, which means you need to put your brands to show whenever you are showcasing the important aspects in your venture portfolio, explain about your brand, your intangible values and the promise you offer.

-You also need to find an analytical way how your brand and your core values would be reflected in your marketing campaigns that would increase the awareness of the brand among your target audience.

Nevertheless it is the core values, transparency and brand's promises that your brand is associated with helps in translating its values to actions. After you are done with all the five steps the next part is the brand positioning.

BRAND POSITIONING
Essentially you must try to understand from all these five above stated steps that what is it that customers think of your brand- identify who those customers are; what benefits they desire also what they fetch in your products and services that your brand is offering and of course identification and research about your competitors in business.

In the process of brand positioning we directly link between the values of products offered and the brand promise. Once you have defined the brand promise and positioned the brand you need to express the brand through the most suitable communication channels, it will result in making an image of the brand which is like-able by your customers and results in increased brand value.

The most known part of the strategic brand management is creating brand names and logos (refer to the blog-post 'what is a brand' on Executive Lion  to understand what actually is a brand ), the logos and brand names help the customers to identify the seller and also helps in remembering the promise that the brand offers, at this step we eventually build brand awareness and work of the marketing strategies accordingly.

Also the most important aspect is that brand awareness should not be just spread in the market  but also in your own organisation. The collective believe of your employees in the brand you are trying to create is a must and this plays an important role in carrying out successful branding campaigns. 
To develop a strong brand one must deliver continuously as well as consistently put the promises offered into customers' mind, if you fail to do so your brand will lose its value.

BRAND EQUITY
The last and the most important part of brand building is to evaluate, this evaluation of brand is called brand equity. It refers to what you get benefited when you develop, promote and deliver an authentic brand promise, as when brand equity increases it results in increasing the company value simultaneously, you also check whether the branding process has been converting into successful sales and customer relations or not, basically you evaluate whether the business is on the right track or not in terms of finances.

CONCLUSION
Building a Brand requires patience and money, if you closely analyze the steps while building your brand, you will for sure create a successful, also brand management requires planning, patience and finances, it is a lot more than just deciding the names and logos, you need to be analytical enough to understand which branding strategy is working for you, and which is not. Brand equity plays an important role as well as it is the step where you create a report card for your brand.

Which is the most successful brand in the fashion industry ? Let me know in the comment section.

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