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Shifting to customer relationship brand management
Many marketers (and their advertising agencies) still cling to mass communication as the foundation or backbone of their brand building efforts. In the new era of big data and powerful technologies for connecting with customers, marketers must shift their focus from building brands to building customer relationships.
Never before have marketers had such powerful technologies at their disposal to connect and build lasting customer relationships. And never before have customers / consumers / users been able to interact so deeply with brands, and each other in their communities, to influence the very development of the products and services they engage with. Yet despite this sea change, most marketing organizations are structured pretty much the same as they have always been. Many have not fully grasped the paradigm shift from building brands to building customer relationships. This may explain the short job resistance of most CMOs.
To succeed in the interactive digital age of Big Data and transformative technology, marketers much shift their focus from counting transactions to maximizing the lifetime value of their customers. This means profitability of brands will be less important than the profitability of customers.
Planting Seeds And Harvesting Customer Relationships
What separates an old-school marketing organization from a customer-driven organization is one is organized around activities that sell brands, while the other is designed around activities that serve customers and customer segments. In these transformed marketing organizations, marketing communications is nearly a real-time dialogue, hyper-targeted to thinner slices of customer segmentation. Enlightened marketers have unimaginable access (from abundant sources) to rich customer data, enabling them to be more deliberate and proactive in their tactics for making a customer driven strategy pay off.
Most marketing organizations are still organized around the principle of selling rather than serving.
Serving customers in highly relevant ways requires you to know them and their behavior essentially on a personal level. Competitive advantage is not about features and functions in ever-cheaper products, rather it will be based in serving customers in ways that are unexpected and highly valued. Customer driven marketing organizations are structured to engage narrow segments with two-way communications designed to build trusted relationships through products or services that customer’s will value most at any given time. The customer is at the center of the universe with brands organized around them rather than the conventional model of customers organized around the brand. NPS, a very used brand equity indicator is based on measuring relationship quality and customer satisfaction level.
Brand Positioning answers the question “Where is my product in this campaign?”
Positioning a brand with exact precision is job one of every marketer, brand manager or brand strategist. If brand positioning of a brand in a category means finding the differentiator, marketing strategy means finding programs to sell that brand to target audience. The link between these two is the relevant brand storytelling inspired by positioning.
The point where brand positioning and brand storytelling intersect is where the real magic happens.
In any category, scarcity is a valued commodity. If your product or service brand is not highly valued and in abundant supply from a variety of competitors, you better have the lowest price. Of course, in a crowded category, any price will be perceived as too high. Let that not be your brand, let the brand storytelling charm your audiences and your brand be perceived as worth the added value.
Find the unique emotional differentiator
I’m of the opinion most of the time brand positioning is ignored because marketers are unfocused and lose themselves in a multitude of competitive functions and features instead of one unique emotional benefit, so storytelling becomes promotional copywriting and ubiquitous ad campaigns.
Telling a compelling brand story to the right audience is much more than ad copywriting and attention getting, it’s building an aspirational story on a brand idea (differentiator).
It’s always better to create “new value” rather than compete for the value created by others.
People have to emotionally connect before they engage with the promise of the brand. This means the brand story must connect and resonate deep within the mind. Of the thousands of brands introduced into the marketplace each year, only a handful will meet this challenge and grow to become the next generation icons in the culture.
Remember: Your brand is your business!
Raluca Vasile, MBA, Msc
Strategy Director
Smartbrand –Sensory Power
Strategic Branding, Communication and Design Agency, specialized in sensory branding
Brands are memorable sensory delights
Everyone knows what a successful brand looks like, but creating a new brand that resonates and has chemistry with the public is challenging to say the least.
1. Branding is about people
Good branding starts with people, they are influenced by entrepreneur’s personality and business vision and principles and ultimately exists because they respond to emotional needs and aspirations of consumers. People need reasons to buy or use, as humans we need to feel part of something bigger. Brands need strong guiding principles at the very heart of everything they do. Consumers are armed with knowledge, education and technology and we play a very active role on the course of these brands.
2. Design is not the only consideration
Good design plays an integral role but design only doesn’t make a brand. Design is one more ingredient that combined with humanity, intelligence and science make for a great and more engaged experience.
The pleasure of recognising a logo and its promise delivered makes it for satisfaction to both the brand and the consumer. The visual language should continue the conversation in a consistent manner.
Event promotion
3. Branding is a two-way process
It’s easier to love a brand when the brand loves you back. Traditional marketers think of the consumers as robotic entities. But when the consumer/provider relationship becomes a two-way street there’s room for greater growth, there’s a sense of consideration and care.
4. Brands matter
Brands are personality and uniqueness therefore they add value, they provoke interest, have tremendous economic and social influence.
5. Brands are a matter of context
The message is not the brand, branding creates context. By investing in the brand and creating appropriate
context, the effectiveness of your messaging, advertising and communications campaign – and, by extension, your budget – is greatly enhanced and the chance of your targeted consumer actually acting on your message is substantially improved. Thus your campaign spend goes the extra mile over that of your competitor’s.
6. Branding is content
Content, such as promotional material, is critical to the success of a branding project, but brands cannot create masses of content and expect their message to resonate. content excellence’ is key to delivering stories that take on a life of their own through the consumer to the level that consumers actively participate in the story from the start.
7. Branding is also a journey
Branding does not follow a clearly defined path, brands need to walk along consumers to find its own destination and a place in the consumers minds and hearts, a special resonance that makes brands unique, alive and memorable sensory delights. The stronger the friendship with the consumer, the more powerful the brand.
Raluca Vasile, MBA. Msc
Creative Brand Strategist, storyteller, blogger, reader, lecturer, speaker, explorer of sensory experiences, curious, fair and thorough German spirit, passionate about healthy food and transformational journeys
