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Brands are everywhere, right? But sadly, not all of them will be successful in the digital or conventional world. Brand recognition and brand positioning are just two of the many factors involved in the process of creating a brand and making it survive within its specific niche through strategic brand management.

Strategic brand management is the process of building measuring and managing different brand elements to create a brand that has a long lifespan in the market. Sounds easy enough, right? Well, brand management can go sideways if we focus our attention on the wrong areas.

At Inspiral, we always encourage taking care of your brand as it is your most valuable asset. Let us learn a little bit more about brand management strategy and how you can follow some easy steps to make sure your brand gets the treatment it deserves.

Brand management is a process, not a one-time thing.

When we create a business and, therefore, (hopefully) a brand, we want to reach a series of specific goals. Otherwise, why create it in the first place, right?

Managing a brand is a process that covers different communication channels and areas such as digital marketing, traditional marketing, social media, SEO, and content marketing, among others.

The main goal is to have a unique brand and present it consistently throughout the different communication channels. Remember: products and services are pretty much the same, but your brand and the way you promote it can be the differentiating factor.

Before going any further, it is important to clarify that brand management is not the same as branding. While the first one is the process of actually creating a brand (coming up with the name, logo, a copy, color palette, etc), the latter is the process of keeping that brand in the public eye and mind.

With strategic brand direction, you can achieve:

• Brand recognition: also known as brand awareness. Let us call it: the first noise you make for people to notice you.
• Brand positioning: when Google rewards your brand with higher SERP ranks.
• Brand reputation: when you manage to establish and associate your brand with adjectives like trustworthy, reliable, or honest.

Make sure to follow these 4 steps to create a solid brand management strategy.

Get rid of the “it is free” mentality.

We have talked about this in the past, more specifically in this article about some of the challenges businesses face when going online

These digital days come with tons of resources we can draw upon to create a business or a brand. Many of them are free like creating a Facebook/Instagram profile, creating a basic landing page or website, uploading a Youtube video, creating a logo, and so on.

But these resources being “free” does not mean you will never have to pay for them. Nothing is actually for free. The bill always comes, and somebody has to pay it. Make sure it is not your brand.

Meaning that if you want to get the best out of these resources, you will have to spend money. Otherwise, you will have mediocre results. For a brand to be seen as trustworthy, you will have to put some dollars into it with a great website and some social media profiles that look good and professional (just to mention a few).

You need to present your brand professionally enough across all the different channels. Do not public low-quality pictures or videos, avoid copy-paste content, and make sure to have a singular voice when talking to your audience.

Focus on communicating the why instead of the what.

When creating content for your audience, instead of focusing on what your product is or does, try to shift the focus to why your product works or why it is here to change people’s lives.

You do not see companies like Apple or Microsoft talking about what their products are. Sure, your brand is not like those giants, but the idea is the same. When your brand interacts with the public, it should be with a human touch.

It is about creating a community where events, data of interest are shared, ideas are exchanged, a debate is generated, etc. Brands are not cold objects. The digital world is also a living ecosystem. A network where real people invest and spend many hours of the day, and this is essential to understand if we want our brand to stand out from the rest and deserve interaction with others.

It is okay to humanize your brand but do not overdo it.

You must interact with your audience, that is out of the question, but how should you carry this interaction? You always hear about the importance of making your brand feel more “human”. We are all for it, but let us not take it to an extreme.

While this exchange with the community is fundamental, it is also essential that our brand maintains a posture, if you will, of decorum. If your business, region, country, or environment is going through a bad situation, avoid putting your brand in a position of helplessness, need, or despair.

A brand has to inform, share, educate and, of course, entertain. In brand marketing, showing solidarity does not mean sitting with your customers and crying with them, nor complaining about everyday problems.

In a complex world full of problems, customers are looking to connect with their brands to receive a satisfactory “emotional delivery” that helps them connect with pleasant sensations, solve problems, receive the good news, and be in a good mood.

It is not about ignoring everything that is going on out there but more about bringing solutions and comfort to your audience by acknowledging the outside problems.

At Inspiral, we encourage businesses to take special care of their brands. Make sure to manage your brand in a way it can survive the different stages of the market.

Nobody wants to be that brand that was very famous at some point, but no one really remembers what their name was.