Brand managers are a key fixture to the success of any business.
Especially when you consider that younger groups like millennials — who were once dubbed one of the most brand-loyal generations — may actually be a little more fickle than we once thought.
When it comes to winning over millennials and other consumers like them, you not only have to have a relevant, high-quality offering, but you also need to have a brand message that resonates with them.
And, as this Forbes article titled, “Brands Need to Step Up their Game To Win Over Millennials,” points out, only 7% of millennials identify themselves as brand loyalists from a recent study.
But that doesn’t mean that you can’t win customer loyalty from these consumers.
Michael Osborne, CEO of SmarterHQ and the author of the Forbes article believes that millennials still “... notice when a brand takes extra effort into understanding their needs and wants.”
And that’s where brand managers come in. If you can clearly relay a more powerful message than your competitors, you’ll win over the hearts and minds of old and young customers alike.
But it’s not an easy job — the marketplace, no matter the industry, is always changing.
We’re going to try and help anyway. Here are seven things brand managers can start doing today to make their job easier.
This tip goes beyond just learning about your target audience and the overall position of the market.
You should never stop learning and educating yourself when it comes to your career.
Not only will paying attention to branding and marketing news, blogs, articles, and magazines help you better understand the consumer market as a whole, but you will pick up on new tips and tricks to try yourself. Reading about a successful start-up may spur innovation and thought-leadership from within your own company during stagnant times.
We should always be trying to better ourselves by not being content with our current knowledge and skillset. Instead, push yourself to improve every day and you’ll feel more confident in your role.
Digital Asset Management (DAM) is something that every brand manager should implement as a foundational technology for marketing processes, if they haven’t already.
As a brand manager, you are tasked with ensuring the consistency of both the messaging and appearance of your products.
Everything from social media posts to billboards and t-shirts should convey the message that you’ve worked hard to create.
By partnering with MediaBeacon, you can streamline and simplify the process of accessing and using these assets.
Gone are the days where you must reach out to someone for approval to request an asset, and then hope you can actually track down the right person or folder or desktop who can provide you with the image and information you need.
MediaBeacon is digital asset management software that is compatible with businesses and enterprises from all industries, including retail and apparel, media and entertainment, food and beverage, and more.
With MediaBeacon, you’ll be able to accomplish the following objectives, as well as many, many more:
To get started on expanding your marketing and branding capabilities, contact us today!
And, if you’re interested in a free demo, please fill out this quick form.
You no doubt have an elevator speech when it comes to the product and/or services you represent as a brand manager — but do you have a compelling pitch for your brand?
If the answer is yes, can it be improved? Can it be even shorter and more concise? More convincing?
The ability to confidently articulate what your brand is all about — not just the products or services your offer, but what your brand cares about and values — is an absolute game-changer.
There is no doubt that you are familiar with your brand, but by simplifying the way you understand the brand, you can create more clear and concise branding messages on a larger scale.
A good elevator pitch is especially important for smaller businesses and startups — although brand managers from companies of all sizes will benefit from a crisp, clean elevator pitch.
We live in a time of trolls.
For whatever reason, there is a small — but very loud — group of people who have made it their mission in life to make others feel bad.
In a perfect world, these people would not exist. But nevertheless, they are here and we have to live with them.
The best way to deal with them is to try and take the high road, which of course is easier said than done.
Marcos Bravo, a brand manager at Tooploox, had this to say in an article by Planable about dealing with ‘trolls’ and ‘haters’.
“It’s the troll/hater mood that reigns these days. Doesn’t matter what you try to do, you will always get some level of hate,” says Bravo, “You can fight it or take the high road and in all honesty, you shouldn’t care about these characters…”
In today’s world, it’s impossible to please everyone. So, when the trolls come out, just ignore them as best you can.
But, sometimes you’ll run across people whose complaints or critiques are actually warranted. Whether it’s a bad Yelp review or a bad encounter with a customer service rep, taking these types of feedback seriously can help you fix these mistakes.
As mentioned at the beginning of the article, consumers like when you go the extra distance to understand what they want.
By taking constructive feedback seriously, you’ll be able to improve your brand.
Remember learning about SMART goals way back in high school – most likely in a personal finance class of sorts?
Well, that lesson is still very relevant today — in all facets of life.
But for brand managers, the SMART goal format can do wonders for you and your team.
A quick refresher, SMART stands for:
Creating these SMART goals will help make your life easier because it brings everyone together and moves them towards a common initiative.
Think of your team or organization as a sports team. On any given sports team, the goal is to win the championship (unless you’re one of these 5 teams).
Successful sports teams have that all-in approach, where everyone is willing to do their part to ensure that the team meets their goals.
Having a goal for your own team will help make everyone more productive, more focused, and more disciplined.
When everyone is on the same page, work gets done faster and more efficiently, and the results end up being higher in quality.
Whether they are daily, weekly, quarterly, or yearly, creating consistent goals for your team and your brand will help ease up the stress of your day-to-day.
Team goals also allow you to experience the benefits of the talented people around you and allow them to advance their careers as well. Remember, you’re not in it alone.
Taking the time to get to know how the sales process works for your brand is a crucial part of understanding new ways to message your brand to customers.
Talking to your sales and customer service teams will help you get a better understanding of what’s working well for your brand, as well as areas that need improvement.
Let’s say your sales team is finding that many customers come to them asking a very similar question to the one posed by the customer before them. This is an opportunity for you to potentially address this question in your next branding campaign or strategy.
Let’s look at Slack — the messaging and chat app that thousands of businesses use today — as an example.
Prior to hitting it big as a tool for businesses to communicate, Slack was actually a fairly popular video game called Glitch. The main premise of this game was focused on both exploration and socialization.
However, the game was not very profitable, meaning that it was time to place their resources on a new project and pivot.
Taking the idea of communication and socializing — which they knew their users liked — they created Slack, the chat app designed for coworkers that we have come to love today.
This is a great story of how you can take your current offering and improve it based on the information you gather from sales and customer service.
If you haven’t set aside time to work with everyone involved in the sales process, then it is time to do so. The insights gained from interacting with those who interact firsthand with your customers and building relationships will be invaluable to understanding your target audience and how sales professionals operate.
Brand Managers will work across many different departments — even just over the course of a single day.
By building strong relationships across these teams through effective communication, you’ll be able to improve the likelihood of successful projects that involve different departments.
Not only does this involve making sure you’re clearly articulating information to your team, but that you are also making yourself available to be contacted.
Make sure that you are as visible and available to be seen as often as you can. If you’re concerned that not enough people are coming to you to ask questions, go and ask questions yourself.
Attending meetings with creatives will allow you to observe their workflows and if you are present, you can directly answer any brand questions that come up.
While you can’t be present at every single meeting, at least making yourself available during the day will allow other departments to ask questions while they are still relevant.
Furthermore, brand consistency starts internally, so make it clear to your team that they need to be available for branding questions from their colleagues in other departments.
By making yourself available to be seen, you’ll reduce confusion and increase clarity throughout your organization in terms of how to achieve the branding you want.
