Brands Must Nurture and Develop       

Brand Advocates       

In order to Succeed        

Brand value is very much like an onion. It has layers and a core. The core is the user who will stick with you until the very end." - Edwin Artzt

    Brands must make promises to their customers.  We must promise relevant, differentiated benefits. In the standard lingo of marketing, a brand must provide unique value propositions. In the old brand model, Agencies were often fed piles of client cash for nothing more than campaigns to build awareness. 
     In the new world of brand engagements, with web 2.0, with social media and with the developing next generation of the web, the awareness alone is hardly even an offering.  It's like trying. By itself, awareness gets a brand almost nowhere. 
     Brands must deliver on promises buried within the value propositions. Leading brands have a highly compelling brand promise and insure that the promise is delivered at each point of customer contact.  In todays social web world, those contacts multiply constantly, each contact point requiring the consistant communication of the unique & relevant values.

2011 Branding Focal Points.  How to Create Brand Advocates. 

(Kudos to BrandStrategyInsider for the guts of this list)

1. Learn everything about your customers.

2. Stand for something important to your customers.

3. Interact with your customers.  They are your partners. Respect them.

4. Grow with your current customers. Meet more and more of their needs.

5. Innovate. Don’t rest on your laurels. Anticipate your customers’ needs.

6. Become adept at social media. Know that it is not the “end all” in marketing,

7. Know that mass marketing is gone forever.

8. Outstanding service is the “cost of entry” today. Deliver it consistently.

9. Don’t forget about your customer facing employees.

10. Have fun in what you do. Love your work. Enthusiasm is contagious

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According to the Conference Board’s rigorous “Managing the Corporate Brand” study, the following factors are critical for brand strategy success:

Organization Support

•    CEO leadership & support
•    Distinctive corporate culture that supports brand promise
•    Ability to obtain support from a broad spectrum of employees
•    Alignment of brand messages across functions

Brand Presentation

•    Strength of brand identity system
•    Effective use of visuals/imagery
•    Ability to capture the brand in a slogan
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As you move forward in building your brand, keep these points in mind:

•    The goal of brand equity building is to move consumers from brand awareness to brand insistence.
•    Awareness, relevant differentiation, emotional connection, value, and accessibility drive brand insistence.
•    Creating awareness is the first step in building a strong brand.
•    Strive to maximize brand impressions and accessibility.
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      And these are just the old school basics.  How we work our Brand Clients to make engagement and advocacy happen has changed in wholesale ways in the last 5 years.  Awareness is simply a place to start the engagement process, in and of itself...it is almost nothing.
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     Interest is the first true step on the path toward Relevant Differentiation. Only through that process can engagement follow...
...more later.
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Contact a PMG, ltd partner directly for a discussion of your brand needs.
BrandPro@Parallaxltd.com 
877-994-2726  ext. 701
Parallax Marketing Group, Ltd.   877-99 iBrand   877-994-2726