Many people assume that marketing is about identifying potential customers, hiring an advertising agency, redoing logos, redesigning brochures, getting media coverage, pushing promotions, creating brand awareness, and fund deep discounts to increase market share. Unfortunately, this assumption is obsolete in today’s changing, competitive, crowded, and cluttered market.
In today’s market, customers are getting exposed to thousands of marketing messages in a day and more messages are creating more confusion for them. They are simply not able to remember which advertisement talked about which product and what differentiation. Additionally, they get confused about which celebrity endorsed which product and talked about which benefit. In this kind of environment, when differentiation is diminishing and almost every brand is selling similar stuff with similar kind of campaigns, emotional connection has become one of the strongest differentiators for brands. It has become very important for marketers to establish their brands’ emotional connections and manage relationships not only with customers but also with all other stakeholders in the ecosystem. Let’s have a look at a few important marketing aspects that marketers have to focus on from modernization perspective to differentiate their brands in today’s changing, competitive, crowded, and cluttered market:
Establish a Leader’s personal Brand
An organization’s image is based on accomplishments and the personal brand of its top leaders. Personal branding of top executives especially CEO’s has become an important competitive advantage. If a business leader has a credible, trustworthy and distinctive identity, then various stakeholders in the ecosystem feel comfortable in associating themselves with the respective brand. LinkedIn profile is a powerful platform to share a leader’s story, journey, and credentials. When someone searches for a leader’s name on Google, LinkedIn profile appears in the search. Moreover, a well-planned and strategic public relations strategy would help in getting the CEOs’ compelling articles, interviews, stories out in business publications, their names being nominated for relevant awards and speaking engagements arranged in popular conferences. But the most important point to be kept in mind is that this campaign has to be realistic, a personal brand can’t be built without an authentic substance.
Engage People behind the Brand
A brand experience is the collective effort of the people behind it, id est employees. If employees are emotionally connected with the brand and enthusiastic about their work then they will put in extra efforts to come up with more creative and innovative ideas that benefits business performance. Many marketers think that employee motivation is HR’s job, but they have to appreciate the importance of internal communication, an important part of marketing strategy. It acts as a great way to develop a brand internally, improve employee morale, retain talented employees and direct their energy in a positive direction.
Blogs and videos by leaders, stories of employees doing extraordinary stuff, business achievements, market updates, client appreciations, forums to capture and highlight employees’ valuable suggestions, town halls and fireside chats etc.
can be the regular ways to remain in touch with employees and translate their behavior into a behavior leading to superiority in brand experience.
Connect Communication with Desires
Before buying any product physically, customers buy it mentally. People have desires to succeed,stand out, get freedom, belong to a like-minded group, get into a stress-free state, live in a cleanenvironment, improve themselves, be safe etc. Marketers who are able to understand the deep desires of their target segments can tap into their fundamental motivations and fulfill their unspokenneeds. Communication is the lifeblood of any relationship and communication consists of strategically orchestrated elements such as words, images, characters, music etc. The right words with the right visuals have the power to connect with the right customers at an emotional level and persuade them. When brands’ communication touch customers at an emotional level, it becomes easier for brands to get welcomed by customers in their lives. Marketers need to strategically pick and choose right words, visuals and use these assets carefully to craft a communication connecting with customers’ deep-rooted desires. But they have to keep in mind that these words should truthfully support their brands’ claims.
Build Brand Advocacy
Customers find messages more believable when they hear them from trusted and respected people as compared to advertisements, brochures, memos and press releases. Advocacy means the right word of mouth by the right people at the right time. Advocates not only contribute to the brand’s profits itself but also influence profits by recommending a brand to their friends, followers, and acquaintances. Brands that have the highest levels of advocacy, outgrow their competitors multiple times. Brand advocates can range from existing customers to active participants on social networks, from people working for a cause to product reviewers, from experts to celebrities. Marketers need to identify right advocates and nurture them but they have to remember that brand advocacy has to be authentic as if customers find that advocate is paid and not trustworthy, they could get upset with the brand.
Form strategic Partnerships
Partners strengthen a brand in multiple ways by opening up additional channels to customers, by enabling access to larger customers quickly, or by organizing joint promotional activities like events etc. Additionally, having a few marquee names as strategic partners adds to the credibility of an organization. Moreover, partners can help in broadening an organization’s capabilities leading to innovative products to meet evolving needs of customers and a faster market time. By collaborating with complementary players, a brand can accelerate its innovations, offerings, and it can create new experiences and exponential value. Every industry has its own consultants, futurists, analysts, and watchers who sort out and publish information about the industry, its top performing companies and sometimes even top companies’ top performing brands and products. Favorable rating and recommendation can significantly improve chances of success of an organization and its brands. These ratings and recommendations also uplift and influence the attitudes of employees and shareholders.
Marketers must identify the key players who rate and recommend brands and try to get involved in the process, remembering that great ratings and recommendations are hard to gain and even harder to regain. These efforts though happening within the marketing organizations are sometimes executed in bits and pieces. From marketing modernization perspective, they need to be part of ‘must to do’ initiatives instead of ‘nice to do’. Through a phased approach towards these initiatives, marketers can affordably attain the new capabilities required to align their brands’ growth with business objectives.