Strategy and Branding. Do they pay of?

Strategy and Branding. Why would you have a strategy? Because you and your organisation do not exist in a vacuum. There are three key reality components that constantly influence your existence.

  • Environment
  • Economy
  • Time

The aim of the strategy is to establish a good navigation between the three.

Strategy purpose is to keep an organization, in reality check hot-spot.

On the perfect spot between three strongest forces, determining the future of the organisation.

The objectives of the implementation of the strategy are to keep the organisation within the sweet spot.
The objectives of the implementation of the strategy are to keep the organisation within the reality check hot spot.

A strategy should be accompanied by the development of the idea. Develop a strategy as a service to the organisation.  What all of that has to do with Branding?

Organization Strategy is also a starting point for Organization Branding

The Strategy defines organization marketing features. Globally defined as:

An Organization Marketing Features

  1. Promotion
  2. Monetization
  3. Social role

Organization marketing features define its Brand. Minimal set of activities around a Brand is:

Brand Activities

  1. Develop and maintain the brand
  2. Invest time and money in marketing
  3. Define the rights and responsibilities of individuals within the group
    1. No, functional segmentation is not segregation

 

A little sublimation of a simple theory. Downloaded from here.

What is Branding and How Important is it to Strategy?

First a little Brand definition:

“name, term, sign, symbol or design, or a combination of them intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of other sellers.

Branding is not about getting your target market to choose you over the competition, but it is about getting them to see you as the only one that provides a solution to their needs.

The objectives that a good brand will achieve include.

Good Brand

  1. Delivers the message clearly
  2. Confirms your credibility
  3. Connects your target prospects emotionally
  4. Motivates the viewer into the buyer
  5. Concretes Audience Loyalty

To succeed in branding you must understand the needs and wishes of your audience. You do this by integrating your brand strategies through your company at every point of public contact.

Your brand resides within the hearts and minds of customers, audiences, and prospects. It is the sum total of their experiences and perceptions, some of which you can influence, and some that you cannot.

Strong Brand

A strong brand is invaluable as the battle for audiences intensifies day by day. It’s important to spend time investing in researching, defining, and building your brand. After all your brand is the source of a promise to your consumer. It’s a foundational piece in your marketing communication and one you do not want to be without.

After Branding

Three facts shape up the transformation of the strategy into the organization activities.

  1. The Brand is the sum of promises that are broadcast to the world
  2. Branding is a planned activity that has a beginning nut not the end
  3. Marketing is the constant navigation of the audience focus

Digital environment

The organization brand and marketing are also present in the digital continuum. Continuum which also permeates the physical. In this activities take place delivering the brand and marketing.

Simple and clear terminology is essential for productive communication. Therefore, I shall first define a few essential terms in the field of digital environment.

You are the context

This categorization is based on the senses with which the audience receives the signals from brand or marketing messages. This is straightforward to classify:

  1. Visual — what you see
    1. Film, Video, Photos
  2. Aural — what you hear
    1. Audio signal, voice, music and the like.

Touch? Touch is a means of emitting information for brand and marketing. Still untapped for marketing purposes.

Your device is the marketing instrument

Physical context prescribes different physical devices that emit brand and marketing messages to individuals in the audience. Simple classification that I have adopted is based on the portability of the device, which in turn is dictated by the screen size:

  1. Mobile portable devices with smaller screens
  2. Personal but portable devices with larger screens (PC)
  3. Multiple not portable devices with the largest screens (Cinema, Billboard, etc.).

Digital Marketing: Marketing which relies on a set of digital platforms, software tools and technologies for the purpose of implementation of the brand as well as marketing activities. We will use only: Marketing. It is very difficult to imagine any kind of feasible marketing activities today not being digital.

Implementation:  of the brand aka Branding and other marketing activities as the activities occurring in the same digital environment. Difficult to and often unnecessarily separated. For effective strategy planning, it is enough to realize that branding comes chronologically before marketing.

Today, for meaningful implementation of organizational Brand, I would advise the following marketing platforms:

  1. FaceBook
  2. WordPress site
  3. Twitter
  4. Instagram
  5. On Line Shopping Platforms
    1. art.com, Ali Express, Amazon,

Note: The new platforms can be added in the future. Note. Above are names that are in fact brands.

Great place for a break

where I will detail their implementation purpose. Social network presence implementation we call Marketing platforms.

A marketing platform is also called digital marketing channel. The owners of social networking platforms would like the audience to believe that their functions are numerous, simple and cost-effective. The reality (for each of them) is different, and here we list the recommended purpose for the use of each of these “channels” in the context of organizational branding and marketing.

How do we measure the usability of a  particular marketing platform?

Marketing Platform, Key Performance Indicators (KPI) are:

  1. Dynamism
    1. The speed of communication with the target audience
    2. Generally, higher speeds are better,
      1. Simply because the market is metered faster and necessary adjustments are made on time.
  2. Branding
    1. The level of usefulness for the organisation Brand.
      1. The higher the better
    2. Some channels are not allowing for the great freedom of expression, thus limiting the Brand prominence.
  3. Monetization
    1. The level of usefulness for earnings by selling goods or services.
      1. The higher the better

Well known Marketing Platforms and our KPI applied to them:

  1. FaceBook
    1. Dynamism: Great
      1. Dynamic communication with potentially the greatest possible audience
    2. Branding: Minimal usability
    3. Monetization: Medium usability
  2. Website
    1. Dynamism: Medium to very small
    2. Branding: Maximum usability
    3. Monetization: Great usability
  3. Twitter
    1. Dynamism: Maximal
      1. Very high-speed communication with a large audience
    2. Branding: Minimal usability
    3. Monetization: very small usability
  4. Instagram
    1. Dynamism: Moderate
      1. Moderate but with a large audience
    2. Branding: Moderate
    3. Monetization: Moderate
  5. On Line Shopping Platforms
    1. Dynamism: Optimal
      1. Optimal communication with a large audience that also depends on demand.
    2. Branding: optimal usability
      1. Just a visual presence in the gallery is enough to promote the brand
    3. Monetization:  Ultimate usability
      1. Example expenses, including all services.

 

Our Conclusion

  • Brand and Market do define your presence. It is not the opposite.
  • There is no marketing channel that is fit for all purposes of particular Brand or Marketing
  • Thus all the organizations today do spread their presence over all or majority of marketing platforms.

As we said

Marketing is a set of activities, whose purpose is to navigate the focus of the audience.

Effective marketing materializes only when it is firstly planned as a part of a strategy and then used by utilizing the marketing channels in a planned and consistent manner.