thefunnel

A brand starts with a vision to solve something (a problem), by providing a service, or a product. This vision includes elements such as whom, what, where, how much, unlike others, etc., forming the basis of segmentation, targeting and positioning, from which a position statement, a value proposition and messaging can be created.

In addition to the above, the vision also includes intangible elements, providing an answer to the question. How does the organization go about “delivering a solution to the problem”? This is where culture, values and company personality comes into play. These are generally more challenging to understand, as they are often only experienced by clients during or after a service interaction.

Customers who interact with the organization, then forms an overall perception of value for the company services, interaction and relationship, in relation to other similar solutions or substitutes?

To understand the perception of value, the brand attributes, strengths and weaknesses must be measured. Since attributes can be perceived or real, and all are not equal, the relative importance of these also needs to be understood. Typically there are basic ones that are required to play in a particular industry, and then the ones that drive value. In addition, brand attributes often need to be categorized into, for example, company level, service level, category level, industry segment level, etc. The job of brand tracking is to closely monitor attributes, providing facts, data and support for the organization in strategic marketing (segmenting, targeting, positioning) and all its marketing communication (both internally and externally).

 The summary of all this is a brand system including:

• Brand Essence, Promise, Personality (culture) and Association
• A Message Architecture with Messages, Supporting Messages (or proof points)
• Communication guidelines (including social media)
• Visual Brand Identity guidelines (both print and online)
• Basic Attributes and Value Driver Attributes, grouped into some higher level categories such as the company, service, etc.
• Measurements and tracking of Familiarity, Consideration, Mindshare and the Net Promoter Score

A few nuggets (with my own twist) from an article (Arruda) about personal branding in the Social Media era, that I thought were valuable, but also apply well to company branding and the basics of marketing.
- Don’t be a fake. Strong brands are about authenticity (value proposition)
- Wishy-washy. Don’t try to be everything to all people (segmentation and targeting)
- Think before you act. Have a plan before you engage with social media (planning is everything, plans are nothing)
- Talk, and more talk. If you have nothing better to do than just re-tweeting everything, just stop
- Quality is better than quantity. Better to have a few right followers / participants / visitors than lots of the wrong ones
- Don’t switch tools all the time. It’s not about the tool. It’s all about the content (the latest hype)
- Don’t forget traditional marketing vehicles (you customers might spend most of their time off line)
- There’s a temptation to do everything cheaply with low quality to save some money, after all the Social Web is all about CGC, but what perception will this portray on your products and company. Don’t confuse amateurs with professionals
- Talk about what you can do for your customers rather than what you do (we, we, versus them)
- Don’t measure anything. Everything can be measured (outcome based marketing)

What is the value and how do you measure a B-2-B brand? A common theme in marketing literature is that the value of a brand can be expressed by two factors: Are customers willing to recommend you, and are they willing to pay a premium? Both factors are obviously good to know and have their own implications on your position and marketing / pricing strategy, but before you start to drill down deeper into the recommend factor, you really don’t have any actionable insight. To look what’s behind whether or not someone will recommend you, you have to look at individual brand attributes. Every brand is different, and you can go as deep or wide as possible, but for many B-2-B products it comes down to the following higher level categories: Price, Product quality, Quality of service and support / technical support, Knowledge of the sales organization / representative and product fit to the customer need. Each of these can be individually measured to further understand for what attribute a company is under-performing or performing well. But, that is not enough, because all customers are not equal and every attribute must be further segmented by various types  customer. At a minimum these are customers, non-customers and competitors customers. Depending on the company strategy existing customers might also have to be segmented into key accounts and others. In addition attributes needs to be segmented by product category. All this creates a challenge for marketers in regards to the qualified sample size, but since brand perceptions change slowly for many b-2-b products, it’s better to measure extensively less frequently, rather than do quick on the surface assessment that only provides artificial non-actionable benchmarks.