What is Brand Value?

We understand what branding is. We watch, follow and swear by brands all the time. This post further explores the meaning and scope of ‘Brand’ and it’s ‘Value’, and tries to understand its role in marketing and sales.

Brand value is, essentially, the outcome of our branding strategy. Simply put, Brand Value is the extra money that people are willing to pay for a particular product because of its brand name. So it is the premium that accrues to a brand from the customers.

In a competitive marketplace, there are innumerable manufacturers and vendors selling the same product or service. It is a general tendency of consumers to look for the brand first, and then look for the most suitable product in that brand. This brand value is directly proportional to your brand’s image. How positive is your brand’s image on the scale set by a potential customer makes all the difference! For example, if you are seen as a reliable brand, but not very youth oriented, and the customer is young and looking for something that’ll get him / her popularity among peers, he may assign a low brand value to your brand in spite of your brand being reliable. Thus, it is important to outline the target market, before you go on to build brand value for your brand.

Even though the logo of a brand plays a very important role in its Brand Imagery, it is rarely a factor in deciding its Brand Value. Today we see innumerable companies solely identified by their logos, selling products and services at the price they command, but they are identified because they have worked hard on their Brand Value, and that requires the right positioning, the right marketing strategy and of course quality delivery.

The following are some of the factors affecting your Brand Value:

1. Quality matters: The biggest driver of brand loyalty is quality. Once a person has had a good experience with your brand, he is yours forever! He will be ready to pay the price, if he is convinced he will get the quality.

2. Good Consumer Care: Reliable customer care and great after sales service add to the brand value. Buyers perceive it as value for their money, and are ready to pay a premium for this assurance.

3. Brand Awareness: This is more of a marketing strategy, but is worth considering. You cannot sit at home and expect the customers to come to you. Instead, you will have to go to them, to spread awareness about your brand’s value.

4. Brand owner’s image: Today, most people hold a good image about Bill Gates in their mind. Thus, if he goes on to open another company, it will have a high brand value by virtue of being owned by a renowned and reliable owner.

These are only the most prominent factors affecting your Brand Value. It begins from the moment your product is launched in the market with a brand name as people begin interacting with it, in terms of advertisements, promotions, shelf visibility, etc. Maintaining the Brand Value is a continuous process, and sometimes lays forth the need to renew the brand identity and strategy.

‘Make the logo bigger’ a common request by brands to those making their marketing creatives.

While most creative minds really mind this request, we have decided to be a little more mindful about it.

Since the objectives of a creative cannot differ from those of the brand, let’s explore the real reasons for this request and how the creative team tries to do exactly this – ‘Making the logo bigger’, maybe not on the expensive advertising space, but rather in the minds of consumers!

Find answers to these questions and more in the following posts on BiggerLogos.

What is Branding?

Similar to the term ‘brand’, ‘branding’ is also a much-misunderstood term! Just like a brand is not merely about a logo or a design element, branding is not merely about putting that logo at places visible to public.

Brand is the emotional and psychological relationship between the company and the consumer. A great logo in itself won’t do enough to your brand if the rest of your business doesn’t respect what it stands for.

Branding then, is the discipline of building a brand, i.e. marketing the brand idea or image to make it recognisable by more and more people and acknowledged with respect to certain services or products among others in the same market niche.

In simpler words, it is the process of developing a brand by shaping the target consumers’ perception or current consumers’ experiences in a positive way. The unique and consistent taste of Maggi Masala is a perfect example of branding by product experience, being loved by all, which makes it a top choice in its product category.

Furthermore, branding is also a means to build a good reputation, which is a vital company asset. Not only does it help build a positive image for the company from the outside, but also has a positive effect on the inside, by pushing the team to live up to the brand expectations by fulfilling the demands and maintaining the quality standards.

Which is why, it is important to have a strong and well-defined branding strategy in place to serve as a guideline to make efforts towards developing clearer, consistent and recognisable business identity that translates into higher brand preference and thus, sales. A strong branding strategy should include:

1. Your Voice: The way you speak to the world conveys the way you want to be perceived and the way you want the audience to feel about your products / services. So, anything you write or speak about your company should either differentiate you from others, offer a benefit or reinforce your brand. Every single interaction should carry your brand stylistically and visually.
2. Logo & Portraits: These must capture the audience’s imagination and attention and fortify the perception of your business in their mind’s eye.
3. Colours: Different coloursoften convey different moods and philosophy. Choose the colour that perfectly suits the type of products or services you offer.
4. Typefaces: Typefaces, like colours carry a message in themselves. Choose carefully, and use it consistently. Because you don’t want a life insurance product to look like a Disney game, do you?

Branding can be as simple and as complex as building a trustworthy relationship with consumers by balancing the company’s objectives with consumers’ needs and expectations.

 What are Brand Values?

How to execute Strong Branding?

Find answers to many such questions and more in my next post on BiggerLogos.

Jaipur on Facebook 2012 – Infographic

With more than 95 Crore active users worldwide, Facebook has become a prevailing player in the digital advertising industry. In India alone, there are more than 6 Crore active Facebook users.

As marketers and business owners, it is important for you to understand how your targeted audience/customers are using Facebook, so that you can find the best way to communicate with them to achieve your marketing objectives.

We conducted some research on the usage of Facebook in Jaipur, Rajasthan that can help you gain valuable insights into this largely untapped segment of audience.

What is a Brand and why does it matter?

Many people often confuse a brand to be a logo. Their brand building activities stop at designing a very attractive logo for their company and putting it up where the maximum people can see it. But is that really what a brand is?

If a brand were just about making a logo recognisable, why would some people prefer Coke over Pepsi or Ponds over Fair and Lovely and why would companies be spending millions of dollars on activities that are clearly not deriving direct sales?

A brand goes way beyond a name and a pretty design around it. If you ask for a quick answer to this question from marketing experts they would say,“a brand is the image a company portrays in its customers’ heart and mind”. In fact, a brand goes way beyond the image that a company portrays. In one sense, it is a promise, which the company does with its customers’ of fulfilling their expectations and offering a good experience. In another sense, it is a bundle of attributes – a specific blend of logo, words, typefaces, design, colors, cost, quality, service, etc.

In simple words, it is the emotional and psychological relationship between the company and the customer. Like, whenever you see a logo of a company, you have a specific thought and feeling about the company. Daryl Travis from Emotional Branding says “A brand isn’t a brand to you until it develops an emotional connection with you.”

Logos and names are mere faces of this connection that your customers relate to.

So why do you need branding? Isn’t your product strong enough to create an image of its own?

Of course it is!

But it takes a while before that image is established by itself, especially when you are an FMCG brand or a retailer. That’s because your customer is spread far and wide, and the products does not form a big enough part of a customer’s life for him or her to start talking about it everyday. So, it is you who has to begin the talks, ask questions and form opinions.

India is a market of emotions. Here a lot of purchase decisions are taken based what they ‘feel’ for the product. So, if you can find the way to the heart and minds of your potential customer, the biggest advantage you enjoy is repeat clientele. In a market of several homogeneous products, loyalty is gained by strong brand building through brand imagery that a customer can identify with.

Moreover, when a brand name has a comfortable and loyal image attached to it, a subsequent advantage is enjoyed by its future product expansions as well.

From the organization’s perspective as well, a brand works as the foundation of all its marketing and promotional activities and all decisions are taken in alignment with it. This in a way facilitates the company to build a stronger business identity for itself.

The process of forming a brand is the result of “unrelenting passion, not unending spin.”
John Moore – Tribal Knowledge

It should be remembered that brands are not concrete, but constantly evolving and need persistent involvement from your side. The company’s continuous interaction with its customers helps it understand the customer’s expectations and live up to them.

What is Branding?

What is the importance of Branding in your marketing strategy?

How can you execute strong Branding?

Find answers to many such questions and more in my next post on BiggerLogos.

Internet Marketing: Ways to Promote a Business Online

Internet Marketing refers to the marketing or advertising of products or services over the internet. In the broader scope, internet marketing term not only refers to the marketing over the internet but also includes marketing via e-mail and various other wireless media.

The pace at which social media is gaining popularity among people of all age groups is attracting more and more businesses towards it. Additionally, for the kind of market penetration it offers, Internet marketing is much cheaper and more efficient than the traditional ways of advertising.

Businesses can actually target the advertisements to a specific audience, directly interact with the customers using various social networking sites, send them updates about the brand, products and services via e-mails, provide them with quality information and news via blog posts and much more. Such interactions help businesses stay connected with its audience and build brand loyalty and goodwill.

Mentioned below are the different platforms of Internet Marketing through which a business can actually ‘Make The Logo Bigger’ by promoting it to the right audience.

1. SEO: Search Engine Optimization is a technique to improve the webpage visibility in the search engine results page. It is achieved by optimizing the webpage for targeted keywords and by creating inbound links to the webpage using techniques like Social Bookmarking, Directory Submission, Article Submission, Profile Links, participating in various relevant forums and many more.
2. Social Networking Sites: ‘Word of mouth is still the best form of advertising. With Social Media it has just gone digital.’ Sites like Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Stumbleupon, Digg, Delicious, Slideshare are a great platform for brands to engage and interact with the present and potential customers at a personal level. It is also a great window to receive genuine feedback from them.
3. Blog Promotion: This is a type of Content Marketing which can be used by businesses to share important information about its products and services or the company as a whole, and ask for their opinions.
4. PPC: Pay-Per-Click is a paid way of advertising on search engines. These ads come under the ‘sponsored ads section’, where in business have to pay the search engine every time the ad is clicked. To avoid any extra costs, these ads can be optimized so that they’re only visible to the targeted audiences.
5. Video Promotion: Video Promotion is the latest and the fastest growing medium for Internet marketing, because of its high level of audio-visual engagement and also because Youtube is the second largest search engine in the world. There are several ways in which Youtube can be used for video promotion including In-Stream Ads, True View Ads and View in Ads.
6. Classified Ads: There are various free and paid classified websites where businesses can post their ads targeting a particular region and audience.
7. Banner Ads: This is another type of display marketing in which businesses can display their ads in banner form on relevant websites and blogs to drive traffic to the company’s webpage or any other webpage.
8. Email Marketing: Marketing the products by sending information about them via E-mails to a list of target audience.
9. Affiliate Marketing Programs: This is a type of marketing technique in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate’s own marketing efforts.

For internet marketing to be effective, it is important that the business selects a combination of various marketing platforms and identifies the right target audience for its communication.

Which is a more effective – internet marketing or traditional advertising?

Why are so many businesses shifting their marketing-mix to new media?

Find answers to many such questions and more in my next post on BiggerLogos.