Evolution and Development of Branding Strategy Have you ever thought about branding? It is a common term used by various social media companies and individuals. To put it in simple terms, branding acts as an identification of a product or service or an organization. You can say that it is more than a logo or name. The identity that you give has to be based on an unique attribute and must have a compelling story to go with it. Branding strategy helps to enhance the value of services and products by helping to differentiate between the competitors. This is done by creating a mental and positive association and forming an excellent emotional relationship with various customers. Basically, competing on the prices can somewhat increase the sales, but you do need to keep in mind that this is a dangerous strategy for any individual who is quite serious in building huge profits and trying their level best in maintaining the business. Brands gives business the need and necessity of freeing themselves from the often price competitions and brand management helps to increase the value of products and services, thereby helping to reduce the market costs and creating a niche for long term customer satisfaction and loyalty. Creating a worthwhile, successful and sustainable brand would require one to do careful planning and be consistent. It is all about having a strategy. Brand management agencies have a basic definition of brand strategy. They term it as a basic plan for defining the stories and ideas behind a particular brand, structure of the brand and the relationship brand has with the organization and the core identification elements. Now such elements can be a company, tone of voice, product name, logo and color scheme, etc. It lies in having a clear strategy. With a proper strategy, managers would be able to make proper, informed and coordinated decisions not only in marketing but in various departments especially from product development to customer recruitment and service. Now this process of embodying an innovative brand idea throughout a firm is what is known as branding. The beauty of brand management lies in the fact that by telling the customers compelling, authentic stories, you are not only making your goods and services valuable as well as attractive, you are providing your customers with an opportunity to talk about something. Humans are an extensive breed who like sharing and telling stories. So, by providing them with good stories, you gain access to the best and cheapest ways of promotion which is the word of the mouth. Marketing without a proper branding strategy is a costly, chaotic exercise which is literally more than just showing off and shouting about the services and products. One thing you need to realize is that people don’t like or believe in show off. So, if you want to make an impact you have to treat them as grown ups and not as children.
Frankly, with constant exposure to thousands of marketing messages each day, consumers have become quite immune to the fake and meaningless messages related to promotion. They can easily differentiate between the fake ones and dispose them into the mental recycle bins.