Brand Management Tips for Designers

Everything You Need To Know About Branding and Brand Management

If you own a business, you probably already know that at some point you will need to invest some time into branding. Branding plays an extremely important role in marketing your business, giving your clients  something to remember your design firm by. Without a good brand strategy, it is possible that your company will easily be forgotten and left in the dust. However, along with a brand also comes the need for brand management.

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If we want to understand what brand management is, we first need to understand what branding is. Anytime a company or business brands a product, they create a promise to their customers. Nike, for example, brands their products with the slogan "Just Do It". It is simple, it is memorable, and it communicates a message to the audience as to what their product is all about. In creating their brand, they have given their audience something to remember them by - and remind them what they do! Branding is much of the reason why large companies such as Nike, McDonalds, and Hallmark are so successful. Your company may not be as big as these ones, but small business branding is still just as important.

Understanding what a brand is, we can now understand what brand management is. When it comes to small business branding, developing a good brand can capture your customer's attention and make you memorable. It is important to remember that people can have positive or negative memories. Just because your business is memorable, doesn't mean that people have a positive memory of it. It is your job as a business owner to make your brand name memorable in a positive way. This is where small business branding management comes into play.

Brand management, as the name states, involves the management of the brand. It involves managing both the tangibles and intangibles. The intangibles are usually related to the emotional connections that people have with your product or service and can usually be related back to your branding tagline or logo. Hallmark's tagline, for example, is "when you care enough to send the very best". A tagline such as this develops an emotional connection between the customer and the product. And when you have an emotional connection, you have a loyal customer.

Aside from the intangibles, brand management also involves managing the tangibles. If you want people to associate your brand with positive memories, you need to create positive memories. You can do this by providing excellent customer service, ensuring timely delivery (if applicable), offering fair prices, providing high quality products, and simply doing anything that you can to ensure your customer is happy with your business.

Small business branding is extremely important in gaining and maintaining customers. Through branding and brand management, a business can convey a message, establish an emotional relationship with customers, and establish connections with loyal customers. Keep in mind, however, that a successful brand is only as good as your management techniques. If your management techniques are poor, a negative memory will be associated with your brand - and a negative memory can be even worse than no memory at all.

By Silvia Pencak
Photography by Michael Ransburg

Silvia Pencak is The Magnetic Look Expert and Mentor. For over 7 years Silvia kept building successful venues in Europe and Canada. She became known as the expert in building a powerful brand and is often asked for advice in management, marketing and organizational areas of building a personal and business brand. Over the years she started to notice that power of branding, authenticity, relationship building and marketing efforts can make or break a successful business. Silvia shares her expertise online at http://MagneticLook.com to help other women entrepreneurs build successful brand and extraordinary lifestyle and to support those who don't settle for a mediocre business and average lifestyle. Join Silvia and others for the Stand Out and Thrive Teleseries http://standoutandthrive.com

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