subject: Build Customer Loyalty Through Effective Brand Management [print this page] Your company brand serves as an identification of the promises you make to convey your product/service quality, unique characteristics, and competitive superiority to your customers, as well as being a source for financial gains. So why not make sure your brand is real/real, or fake/real as opposed to real fake?
We are living in a new age, where customers expect you to deliver on your promise. To your customers, your brand is the promise you make to them, and represents the trust they put in your quality and the expectation of superior quality in all your future offerings. Whether you keep this promise or not, consistently, determine the strength and longevity of your brand at each touch point along the customer experience journey.
Since brand management is much more than just marketing your brand, it requires involvement from people at all organizational levels, from your CEO to the individuals who create the products/services and those that interact with customers to provide sales, customer service or technical support on those products/services. This journey, from brand promise creation to delivering the promise offers many opportunities to influence customer advocacy and create brand loyalty.
Creating the Brand
Defining your brand is the first step in brand management. Developing brand definition requires meticulous and in-depth study of your target customers and understanding their needs and expectations. With accurate customer insights you succeed in creating a unique brand that addresses specific customer needs, unfulfilled by competitors. For a brand to be effective, it should be appealing, meaningful, memorable, and evoke strong positive emotions in customers (fun, excitement, security, self-respect, etc.).
In this respect, it is essential that you research organizational capabilities and employee perspectives before defining a brand. Creating a brand vision that you cannot deliver is fatal, If you do not have the time, money or resources support the brand promise (fun, excitement, security, self-respect, etc.), think about what you can do?
Making the Brand
This is the stage where you convey your brand to your employees, customers, and all those individuals that are impacted by your brand. While efforts spanning the organization are essential in the making of your brand, it is the expertise of your brand manager, that plays a major role. An ideal brand manager should:?
Have a great deal of customer knowledge.
Be bold to initiate and implement outside-the-box brand promotion strategies
Ensure the brand meets customer expectations, with packaging, attributes, background, and brand belief (is it really fun, exciting, or make them feel secure)
Be adept at bridging distances between company and customers and building relationships throughout the organization.?
With an expert brand manager by your side, you succeed in creating the unique positioning for your brand in the minds of your customers and competitors as well.
Delivering Brand Promise
Equaling in significance, perhaps more, is delivering on your brand promise not just once, but consistently over time. Failing on your brand promise deteriorates customer trust and brand image. Keeping your promise to your customers requires the following:?
Continuous management of organizational capabilities
Consistent business process and technology improvements
Increased employee engagement through inspiring and people-oriented leadership
Your customers will listen to you only when you listen to them. Engage your customers and listen to them and know their existing and emerging needs. With such strategies, you not only meet but exceed their expectations. Not to say, customer loyalty follows automatically.
