Market conditions for branding

In branding, the core skills you need to have yourself.

However smart we are, however much energy we have, we need the know-how and the tools to be really successful.

Brand marketing is at the heart of sustainable business success.

When you need leading edge, practical business tools that guarantee you success, the place to look is in the largest global B2B corporations that use these tools to train their own marketers to be world-beating, without the unnecessary expense of hiring consultants.

The Mud Valley™ brand marketing community specialises in developing these tools, and making them available to you.

Watch & Wait (while you think about joining the smart, fast-growing Mud Valley™ brand marketing community) – click here.

Or hurry to take advantage of our specially-priced lifetime offer, and gain access to your own world-beating materials at massive discounts - click here.

……….now back to what you were searching for……….

Key points

Branding is relevant to all markets, but there may be commodity areas of each market where all products and services are interchangeable, and the only issue is price. You can choose to accept this, or you can try to differentiate yourself in some way. This is where branding comes in.

Any market can become a commodity market if the suppliers choose not to differentiate themselves, either through their products/services, or through their brands. Equally, any market can become a branded market if the suppliers choose to differentiate themselves - consider, for instance the coffee and tea markets (highly branded raw materials), toilet paper (a highly branded functional product) and what Egg, Smile and Virgin have done to financial markets in the UK.

Customers can even generate branded markets without the suppliers making any effort to differentiate themselves. In the Soviet Union, it was rumoured that the factory numbers became brands as certain factories where considered to produce better products than others.

Therefore, the first thing to recognise is that you have a brand whether you like it or not (if people have an opinion about you). It may not be an attractive brand and it may not be consistent, but it is nonetheless a brand. The question is whether you choose to invest in it and to leverage it.

In a situation where you suspect you are selling an undifferentiated commodity, there is a three stage process you should consider:

1. You should conduct brand equity research to identify the strength of your brand. Are your customers loyal and, if so, which and to what? Do you have a consistent brand? Are you delivering against a strong market positioning?
2. If the brand equity research suggests that you have a strong brand, you should ensure that it is clearly defined to your staff, your business partners, and your customers, and delivered consistently. You may also wish to develop new products/services to further evidence the strength of your brand
3. If the brand equity research suggests that you have a weak brand, then you need to start from the beginning, if you want to benefit from the profit opportunities a strong brand can offer you. Are your employees committed to delivering a consistent brand experience? Do you have your customers segmented according to demographics, behaviors, situation and needs? Have you defined your brand for each customer segment? How should you deliver your brand consistently to each market segment?

This may look expensive, but it need not be. Basic brand equity research will tell you where you stand. There are some simple marketing research techniques which will segment your market and identify core customer needs. Much of the rest can be decided internally within your organisation.

One final technique you should consider if you have a weak brand is the "assumptions reversal" process:

1. What are the generally held assumptions about the market place? List the most obvious
2. Reverse these "givens" and what do you have?

This technique is particularly useful if you want to attack a market leader. Indeed, it may be the only basis on which you can attack a market leader successfully (unless you have enormous amounts of money at your disposal).

The key issue is to have the courage to be different, because this is the basis of all branding success.

For further information, please contact enquiries@mudvalley.co.uk

© 2004, Mud Valley ™ brand marketing community.

Watch & Wait (while you think about joining the smart, fast-growing Mud Valley™ brand marketing community) – click here.

Or hurry to take advantage of our specially-priced lifetime offer, and gain access to your own world-beating materials at massive discounts - click here.

Related answers