In a world where buying and decision-making processes are completed before customers arrive at your store or send you an inquiry (shoppers conduct online research before purchasing), brand management is more critical than ever. And there is no reason to believe that this will change in the future. 

However, building a brand is difficult, and marketers face many challenges regardless of brand size. 

The larger your brand, the more complex your target audience, and the greater the breadth of your communication and associated assets. 

But if you’re just getting started, you must communicate the value of branding to employees and stakeholders, set brand guidelines, and create a brand strategy from scratch. 

Further, brand management execution requires considerable time, budget, and resources, which add to the existing brand management challenges. 

This article will take you through the crucial aspects of brand management and how to build a successful brand management strategy for your organization.

What is brand management?

Simply put, brand management is managing your brand’s reputation in such a way that it attracts the loyalty of your target audience and helps build your brand awareness and equity. 

Brand management, distinct from branding which entails identifying brand requirements and crafting a brand, is pivotal. When executed adeptly, brand management can aid in distinguishing your business from competitors, permitting you to command higher prices for your offerings, amplify your revenue, and foster a base of enthusiastic supporters who champion your brand, all facilitated by effective employment of brand compliance software.

But before putting together a brand management strategy, you need to understand its essential elements.

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How is brand management different from marketing? 

Isn’t brand management really just marketing the brand?  Well, brand management and marketing are completely different yet interconnected elements that can contribute to the success of a growing business.  While marketing is broad, brand management is often a subset of it. Let’s take a look at the differences between the two: 

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Essentially, think of marketing like a car and brand management as the driver steering the brand towards a positive image and building brand loyalty. 

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5 Reasons why brand management is important for your business 

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1. Helps establish your identity 

In simple words, brand management involves all the tasks that give your brand a distinct personality amidst all the competition in the market. It helps in creating a standout position that clearly communicates to your target audience about who you are, what you stand for, and why they should choose you. 

It might involve creation of a unique yet attractive logo that can instantly catch their attention. It can also involve the psychological connection that must be created to be remembered by a certain set of audience. Overall, brand management sets a stage that helps your customers to identify you and buy an experience that they truly enjoy. 

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2. Instills trust amidst your audience

Do you remember walking into the supermarket and going straight to pick that product we’ve been using all our lives? Why don’t we ever pick its alternative instead? That’s simply the trust we have on the brand and it’s offering. This is exactly what brand management is all about. 

For every business, brand is your personality but loyalty is the currency it runs on. If you want to build a brand where your own target audience becomes your advocates, it is essential that you build trust amongst them. By trust, we don’t just mean bringing in more products and services, rather taking time to deliver on an experience that truly speaks about your brand. 

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‍3. Builds consistent communication with your audience

Retaining your audience's attention is becoming hard enough for brands in the digital world today. It is essential to ensure that every little communication that goes of your brand needs to remain consistent with your brand essence. Maintaining a consistent line of communication creates a narrative that keeps your brand’s essence alive. 

It is brand management that ensures that your target audience across different marketing mediums still feel glued to your brand’s personality and values. This messaging and communication creates higher brand recall and recognition amongst customers. 

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‍4. Adds to your competitive advantage  

Making your brand standout in a competitive market like today can get difficult. It’s not just about just creating a logo but creating a strong presence for your brand that can make it stand out in the crowd. 

Imagine walking into the beverage aisle in the supermarket and picking Coca Cola? Brand management can help you build it. It involves all the tasks that lead to creating a brand that they can simply recognize and trust.  Brand management can help you create a brand that makes your brand a go-to choice in a crowded market. 

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‍5. Influences your target audience 

Managing your brand is a crucial part of brand management. It helps in influencing and creating a positive association between your products and your target audience. It helps in establishing a well-rounded brand that can adapt to the market changes and bring about new innovations that make your customers willing to invest in a product or service as they perceive it. 

Apple is a classic example of how effective brand management can influence your target audience. Apple is known for their products that come with sleek design, cutting-edge technology, and other innovative products. Even though they currently have a large product line, people still associate Apple for its quality and innovation, even though it commands premium prices in the market. 

What are the elements of brand management?

A brand is composed of tangible and intangible components. The intangible components consist of aspects that extend beyond brand marketing and include all departments that interact with your customers or employees. Let’s look at some of these components below. 

• Brand awareness is a measure of how familiar your target audience is with your brand. It’s an important component as it’s not possible for customers to engage with your brand if they’re not aware of it. 
• Brand equity is how your target audience values your brand and is based on their experiences and associations with your brand. 
• Brand recognition refers to how well a customer can recognize your brand through your brand colors, logo, tagline, etc., without looking at your brand name. 
• Brand reputation is how the general public perceives the character, status, and quality of your brand, and it can be influenced by internal factors like customer service, product quality, etc., or external factors like word-of-mouth marketing, reviews, or press mentions. 
• Brand loyalty refers to how consistently your customers purchase from your brand or engage with it. While marketing can’t directly influence this factor, your customer service department can. 

In short, intangible brand management components mostly include elements that indirectly influence a brand impact and bottom-line.

On the other hand, tangible brand management components include brand assets and the brand asset management process, as these are the parts of your brand seen by the outside world. 

Brand assets are recognizable brand elements which help customers quickly identify a business. They include brand names, logos, color palettes, packaging, typography, mascots, and slogans. 

Brand asset management, as the name suggests, is the process of managing your organization’s brand assets. Here are some aspects of the brand asset management process: 

• Organizing your brand assets. 
• Using digital asset management tools to store and access brand assets. 
• Instructing your team on how they should access and use your brand assets. 
• Conducting routine checks for brand inconsistencies. 

Now that we’ve understood the fundamental aspects of brand management, let’s look at how you can develop a brand management process.

How to build a strategic brand management process

Coming up with a brand management process is similar to constructing a house — you need to start with a solid foundation before you can start building your brand. 

So, we’ve divided the brand management process into different stages according to the different stages of brand building and outlined the steps you should take in each stage before coming up with a solid brand management process. 

Prior to brand launch

In this stage, your goal as a brand manager is to do a thorough analysis and establish what you want your brand to be. At this stage, you need to include external stakeholders, photographers, designers, and copywriters to create a strategy that is understood and approved by everyone involved in marketing and branding. Here’s how you do it. 

• Know your market: Study your competition and consider how you stack up against them, what obstacles you face, and how you can set your brand and offers apart.
• Understand your customers: Get information on your target audience, triggers that motivate them to make a purchase, and the problems you can solve for them. If you don’t know this information, it’ll be impossible to create a brand identity and brand position.
• Create a visual identity: Once you’ve understood your target audience, you can start creating a visual identity which includes logo, brand colors, typography, packaging, etc.
  

Launch your brand 

Now’s the time to get feedback on your process and measure its success. Let’s look at the steps this process involves:

• Coordinate with coworkers and other necessary stakeholders: Include internal and external stakeholders in your launch timeline so everyone is fully aware of your brand and when it’s first launched.
• Finalize your brand assets: Decide what brand assets are necessary based on the packaging. Include details on all elements like formats, size, colors, fonts, alternative, etc. to avoid confusion.
• Ensure availability: Remove old and irrelevant assets from circulation and make sure that it’s only the most recent ones that are shared frequently to ensure consistency. 

Preserve your brand 

Here’s what you should do to nurture your brand while keeping up with market developments and client needs.

Design direction: For each stage here we want to create a similar infographic that shows what a brand should to create a successful brand management strategy. Adjust the number of squares, icons, etc., and include only the lorem ipsum part. We don’t need the text below it.

• Align your brand with all relevant parties: Ensure that everyone is always informed about your brand and related assets. 
• Engage with other departments: Include your coworkers and important stakeholders in your brand management, and work together to ensure that everyone is adhering to the same plan and is aware of what comes next. 
• Analyze your performance: Review your work constantly so you know which area you’re succeeding in and where you need to improve. 

5 tips to create a successful brand management process

Here are a few tips for creating a successful brand management process. 

• Use a brand asset management system like Artwork Flow to keep all communications, visuals, and messaging compliant with your brand guidelines and regulatory requirements set by authorities and provide guidelines on how employees must use brand assets.
• Enforce a formal review process for all assets to review, approve, and collaborate on assets. Again, this can be done using approval workflows on creative collaboration solutions like Artwork Flow. 
• Define which channels you’ll use to distribute your assets so you can understand where to focus your brand management efforts and how you measure performance. 
• Monitor your brand perception through internal reviews, external customer surveys, queries, and complaints to understand where you can improve. 
• Incentivize and reward brand advocates through VIP programs, paid partnerships and discounts to encourage more brand engagement and boost brand reputation.

Wrapping up 

Brand management helps you manage the brand reputation in such a way that attracts your target audience and enables you to build brand loyalty. 

However, this is easier said than done, as brand management comprises tangible and intangible components. 

But the above steps and tips should help you create a brand management strategy in every stage of your brand launch. 

About Artwork Flow:

Artwork Flow is a brand asset management and workflow automation software that helps you collaborate seamlessly and accelerate the web-to-shelf workflow of your packaging design. 

To learn more about how it can help you, check out our case studies or contact us for a free demo.