When people seldom confuse marketing and branding, they forget about the standard business practice to have separate departments for marketing, branding, and sales. The friction between the three either results in creative conflict, or a never-ending blame game.
The most important factor when it comes to brand impact can be experienced by imagining yourself as a consumer.
We did a small survey with ~110 randomly chosen people and asked them what aspects they would consider before buying something as small as a bar of chocolate when they had a craving.
These are the attributes, arranged from most important to least important, that people preferred in the survey
1. The type of chocolate (dark, milk, nutty, wafer, etc)
2. Past experience with the same brand
3. Size of the chocolate
4. Packaging (colors, brand mark, etc)
5. Price
6. Advertisement seen/ Recommendation from an acquaintance
7. Amount of calories
People who think about calories or advertisements before purchase are a minority. Aspects like past experiences with the brand and packaging matter in customer decisions- both aspects of brand value and hence, investing in these will build a brand in a manner advertisements can’t. Advertising is a process often used for the ant popularity of your product/service, to bring instant but random sales.
Hence, advertisements can be compared to steroids for financial metrics- temporary and insignificant to productive growth.
Read on to know more about brand impact analysis through various aspects of brand-building rather than marketing exclusively through processes that build brand loyalty instead of giving sudden sales spikes.
Brand as an Asset
“The brand is rightfully considered as the most important corporate asset,” is something you would hear at a board meeting. This fact not only proves its long-term quality but also differentiates branding with marketing. Marketing is short-termed and usually, it is the marketers who confuse the brand impact with sales generated.
“The brand is rightfully considered as the most important corporate asset,” is something you would hear at a board meeting. This fact not only proves its long-term quality but also differentiates branding with marketing. Marketing is short-termed and usually, it is the marketers who confuse the brand impact with sales generated.
After a business is branded, it gains power and thanks to the writers at Marvel, we know, “with great power comes great responsibility.”
Let us use a hypothesis to understand this better. For a business you started, your priority could be either brand building or profit-making in the primary stage.
It cannot be both. Why? Well, brand building is a process that takes the investment of time whereas profits can be gained exclusively by pouring monetary investment in the marketing process. You could either push your product in the market or expand the brand to have a profitable market later. Or you could have a balance of both with half the impact on each.
To understand this even better, imagine a ball in your hand. You must have imagined a small palm-sized ball, right?
It’s a basic human instinct. The bigger the ball, the lesser the grip.
It cannot be both. Why? Well, brand building is a process that takes the investment of time whereas profits can be gained exclusively by pouring monetary investment in the marketing process. You could either push your product in the market or expand the brand to have a profitable market later. Or you could have a balance of both with half the impact on each.
To understand this even better, imagine a ball in your hand. You must have imagined a small palm-sized ball, right?
It’s a basic human instinct. The bigger the ball, the lesser the grip.
Branding, Marketing, and Sales
Marketing is advertising your product whereas branding is advertising leadership- something that instigates favorable customer behavior.
This will eventually show up as sustainable profits by having a loyal customer base rather than a random sales-only approach.
There are a million quotes that say things like “patience is a virtue” and as cliched as this might sound, but their overuse itself proves a point. In this era of “get-rich-quick” schemes, even more so.
Authors of The 22 immutable laws of branding say, “Ask not what percentage of an existing market your brand can achieve, ask how large a market your brand can create by narrowing its focus and owning a word in the mind.” This is where most people fail. They do not have faith that their product or service could create a market. If the current version of your product can’t, then strategy conversations with our CBO definitely can upgrade that. More on that later.
The Business of Branding
From the experience we have had, the questions business owners have for branding studios usually are on the lines of does the brand affects the financial statistics in any way at all? or even if the brand is an asset, how to measure something intangible like brand impact?
To answer these questions, let us introduce you to the concept of, (take a deep breath) ‘perceived risk of purchase’. Once again, the eived risk of purchase.
Experts believe that a customer chooses your product/service after they ask themselves these four questions:
Marketing is advertising your product whereas branding is advertising leadership- something that instigates favorable customer behavior.
This will eventually show up as sustainable profits by having a loyal customer base rather than a random sales-only approach.
There are a million quotes that say things like “patience is a virtue” and as cliched as this might sound, but their overuse itself proves a point. In this era of “get-rich-quick” schemes, even more so.
Authors of The 22 immutable laws of branding say, “Ask not what percentage of an existing market your brand can achieve, ask how large a market your brand can create by narrowing its focus and owning a word in the mind.” This is where most people fail. They do not have faith that their product or service could create a market. If the current version of your product can’t, then strategy conversations with our CBO definitely can upgrade that. More on that later.
The Business of Branding
From the experience we have had, the questions business owners have for branding studios usually are on the lines of does the brand affects the financial statistics in any way at all? or even if the brand is an asset, how to measure something intangible like brand impact?
To answer these questions, let us introduce you to the concept of, (take a deep breath) ‘perceived risk of purchase’. Once again, the eived risk of purchase.
Experts believe that a customer chooses your product/service after they ask themselves these four questions:
- Will the product perform to my expectations and the price charged?
- Would there be opportunity costs if the product/service fails?
- Is the product/service safe to use?- Healthwise and environmentally?
- Does it fit my personality and values?
- And a few other subconscious questions and we’ll just let them be.
- Now, these answers solely depend on the actual strength of your business idea and the quality of service or product you provide. But in a market with a curated amount of alternatives of equal or higher quality, the brand helps a customer choose from a bewildering array of choices.
- The best example to support this comment could be Coca-Cola. When Coca-Cola launched Diet Coke, Pepsi Cola already had its Diet Pepsi in vending machines and stores.
- It was the power of the Coca-Cola brand that made the customer pick it up off the shelves.
Of course, marketing does its own magic but when marketing talks about the ‘how’ of sales, branding establishes the ‘why’ of the company, which leads to loyalty and repeat customers.
Branding in the Balance Sheet
It is difficult to isolate the impact to brand, but when you look at successful businesses, there is always a common factor, you guessed it right, The Brand.
Perception drives behavior that drives performance and perception is built through brand identity, not sales.
David Aaker in his book titled ‘Brand Leadership’ rightly says, strong brands command a price premium. It becomes evident that every great idea is an individual brand with a unique brand personality and it should develop its own measures for success. But you have to invest heart in defining a vision.
David Aaker in his book titled ‘Brand Leadership’ rightly says, strong brands command a price premium. It becomes evident that every great idea is an individual brand with a unique brand personality and it should develop its own measures for success. But you have to invest heart in defining a vision.
A positive brand impact will drive good revenues, but better sales have no guarantee of a better brand.
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