Consumer identification with a product is critical to the success of an organization in the current world of competition. They now know that brand management, while improving brand image, goes straight to the top and bottom lines of a business. The present article discusses brand management and its implications for financial performance of various firms.
Brand management is the processes and actions employed in the nurturing, enhancement and protection of a brand’s image, quality and worth. It compromises different aspects like the creation of your place within the business’s market; image; and-message. Managing a brand well facilitate repetition of brand communication and experience which is important in the repeated patronage of the customers.
Another clear advantage of brand management is its effect on customer loyalty. Brand awareness as stated by the author implies that when customers put their confidence in a given brand, they are likely to purchase the brand frequently and also would encourage others to buy the same brand. This means that customers remain customers over a long time hence coming with regular sales and less expenses incurred in getting people to become customers.
Brand management can therefore explain why a product may attract a higher price than similar products in the market. Amorphous brands that are associated with high quality or luxury can afford to set high unit price of the product or service they offer. Apart from this, it increases the profit level by expanding the profit margin and earning greater brand value. Responsible brands such as Apple and Rolex are classic examples of how such firms can afford to set high prices.
It is well understood that, in today’s competitive world of business, brand management offers a competitive advantage. One of the benefits of having a well-defined brand identity is that a business can successfully stake out its unique position relative to. Thus, to gain and maintain customer attention as well as sales brands need to communicate unique selling propositions (USPs).
Brand management should be done in order to achieve greater market share. The amount of customers a brand gains increases as people become familiar with and confident in it. This could lead to increased sales revenue and thus increased market share which is always a good thing for the firm’s bottom line.
Lack of brand management weakens the brand. One event like a bad advertisement, a faulty product and the like can bring a very bad image to the brand. This frequently leads to lost sales and reduced clientele hence a decline in profitability.
This is especially true when a brand is not very well defined or poorly managed; typically, brand owners end up paying more money to promote the brand so as to regain consumer trust or recognition. Lack of proper brand management slows down expenditure causing flattened gross margins.
When there is a disaster, it is the brands which have a consolidated management plan that are ablest to overcome public relation issues. Some companies which have established brand management can arrange to inform their stakeholders and reduce impact while others that did not establish brand management may end up being worse off financially.
Brand management is not only a task for the modern period but has become a major challenge in this digital age. That is why today components of online reputation management, social media presence, and digital marketing are inherent elements of brand management. Whether employed individually or integrated into a single marketing communication campaign, these tools can contribute to increased revenue and the increased ‘visibility’ of companies which use them.
Facebook and other similar web sites have a great potential as instruments for brand management. By that, lively interesting and actively involving content helps to make people a loyal and committed community that will visit certain sites and make purchases. The research reveals that customer perception of brands can be managed through the brand’s social media interaction and a positive brand image developed.
The integration of the SEO factors into brand management drives improved web positioning. By fine-tuning the content related to the brand to the search engine algorithms, the firms can then get more traffic to their sites, thereby converting them to sales, and thus more revenues.
However, its Boots that to fully see the direct influence of brand management on the bottom line, it is essential to measure several variables. Measures such as CLV, brand equity, NPS and other KPIs are indicators that may help determine the impact which brand management activities have on financial numbers.
Brand management is therefore not just a marketing task but it is a core business strategy that has a direct impact on the firm’s P/L. Organizations should dedicate more resources to strategic branding since branding helps in customer retention, charging higher prices, getting competitive edges and growing revenues. In FSU global brand management can be considered as the most important strategic area that will bring significant benefits to those organizations that focus on it most of all since in the ever-changing market only properly managed brands will bring good financial results.
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