Branding is thought to be an expensive activity. Everyone thinks that branding is ads in TV or radio or magazines. In this digital world, there are plenty of ways to reach people and create brand awareness. And the digital content is not as fast perishing as the TV or radio or print media. Name 5 top brands that make shirts or pants or shoes. Now tell me how those brand names got registered in your mind. At least one of those 5 will not be your customer; still that brand name is registered in your mind.
Effective Campaigns
Planning effective campaigns is the key to create brand awareness. This helps you to cross the first hurdle. This ensures that the brand name reaches the mind of unknown people in unknown area. This is usually achieved via social media, blogs, email campaigns, linkedin etc. In this you do not exactly know the customer/prospect.
There are a lot of companies that throw money to do costly campaigns including deep discounts. This is also a way to create brand awareness. But this needs a large war chest to fight the competition. Also the investors will not keep on funding for this kind of activity.
Building Brand Loyalty
Once you have the customer, your efforts need to be focused on creating brand loyalty. This means that the customer must feel so close to you and come back to you again. They should not come to you for discounts but for the brand. This can be done only when the product or service gives great value to the customers.
Brand Awareness, Brand Loyalty, Brand ambassador
When your customers feel so happy about the product, they will go the extra mile to tell others. This is when they become your brand ambassadors. Nothing is better than being in this situation. In fact I have personally referred zoom.us video conference software to so many people as I saw a huge value in that product. The way whatsapp or skype grew, is thru this mode not by costly ads.
Partnerships
Many products work with other well known products to get visibility. Whenever you see 2 software companies provide integration with each other, they strengthen their brand values by that relationship. The reach out possibilities are doubled. Partnering with locals will help you to create the initial trust as the locals know the terrain and mindset better than you.
ASK YOURSELF:
- How many of my relatives and friends know about my brand/product?
- How many times you hear from sales team that the sale happened thru referral?
- How many times an unknown person talked to you about your brand?
- How many web impressions your brand makes on a monthly basis?
If you ignore branding, you make 2 mistakes. 1) the hard work done by your product team is not properly reflected to reach the market, and 2) you give room to others to pave in roads in your own customer space.
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