Learn how to identify and leverage your brand position to create a competitive advantage with our actionable template
Think of some iconic brands. What pops into your head? Perhaps it's Coca Cola’s distinctive bottles, Apple’s sleek, futuristic presentation, Amazon’s UX (User Experience). These businesses realized and harnessed the power of brand positioning, and as such are easily recognizable and distinctive. Of course, these examples are of some of the world’s powerhouses - with a whole heap of money at their disposal. But any business has the opportunity to carve out their brand position and identity at any time to create a competitive advantage. And if you haven’t already, we’d suggest you start right now.
What is brand positioning?
Brand positioning involves enhancing the positive differentiation your brand offers against competitors and the perception of value in your customers’ minds. While it comprises of elements like your company name, logo, etc., successful brands incorporate…
Personalized marketing, as we know from our experiences as brand-lovers and as marketers, is the make or break of any e-commerce marketing strategy in a competitive environment
Personalized marketing is all about offering improved user experience (UX) by serving relevant content, or targeting key messages in the funnel, based on your customer’s e-commerce activities and behaviour. Personalized marketing unlocks tactics for retailers to form personal relationships with their customers during their online experience (CX), to nurture leads and drive more sales from digital marketing.
During a global 2022 survey of consumers who purchased something online in the past six months, 62% stated that a brand would lose their loyalty if it delivered a non-personalized experience. This is no secret to marketers who have watched a growing trend of personalization customer expectations and e-commerce investment to match.
In fact, the chart below shows current customer experience personalization and…
Updating approaches to your online branding for the digital world
Brand is No.1
I want to start with a bold statement. The online brand is the single most important element to a business or organization. If you think about what online branding actually is; a position that has been carefully established, and a set of customer promises and overall experiences based on communication and service, then not delivering on these promises and what a brand stands for will lead to failure.
In today's digital landscape, strong online branding will allow you a closer connection with your prospective customers, leading to conversion and retention.
Without a strong online brand, a business will experience reduced competitiveness, inaccessible products and services, customer confusion, and dissatisfaction. As your online brand shows its form in all your customer touchpoints, then to say it is everything is really not an overstatement.
What is online branding?
Website(s), search marketing, mobile content, social media,…
How to research and optimize strategic brand development. Creating a strong omnichannel brand identity based on research
Brand identity is often misunderstood as simply picking a color palette and a logo. In reality, this is just one element of brand development strategy.
With every market bulging with competitors, carving out a strong brand identity is critical to differentiation and achieving cut through. The concept of building a strong brand identity is therefore grounded in research, and based on a clear understanding of the business, market, competitive landscape, and brand positioning.
It’s more than simply coming up with a name and plastering a logo across collateral. It is a strategic approach to designing an identity that truly reflects the business. It requires a deep understanding of the business values, what it does, and how it wants the world to perceive it.
What is brand identity?
Brand identity is a collective term for all…
Make your brand identity the central organizing principle for everyone and everything in a company rather than just the products, services, logos and imagery
Brands are assets that create sustainable wealth, both for businesses and wider society. Every successful brand has a clear positioning expressed through its name, logo, and identity. But, more than that, a strong brand identity has the potential to influence all aspects of a brand's omnichannel presence, including its products, services, and staff behaviors.
In fact, McKinsey's nine traits of a future-ready company found that employees who say they are “living their purpose” at work are four times more likely to report higher engagement levels at work. People reach further when their energies are channeled toward a purpose. This shows brand leaders can capitalize on brand purpose to enthuse both their customers and employees.
Brand positioning and identity are integral components of the overall brand strategy. Having a…
How has the definition of branding evolved to reflect the modern business context?
If you type ‘what is branding’ into a search engine, you’ll be presented with two choices:
“making a mark with a branding iron”
Or, “creating a distinctive design to promote a product or service”
Branding in today’s world is not just about standing out, but about creating a truly consistent omnichannel experience across all customer touchpoints.
To achieve this, it means fully integrating brand strategy across every customer interaction, not just about creating aesthetically stable collateral. To outpace competitors in the current business climate, branding requires a data-driven, customer-focused approach to marketing.
Our marketing tools and templates help you build a winning marketing strategy that supports your business objectives and boost revenue.
What's more, all our marketing strategy resources are integrated across the RACE framework to drive the results you need to reach your goals.
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Discover our framework to plan, manage, and optimize your brand positioning strategy in the era of omnichannel consumer branded goods
In its best form, a brand positioning strategy for a company unifies all customer-facing comms and marketing activities. It highlights who the target audience is, and why they need your product (and how you're going to make sure they know that).
More importantly, in today's age of digitalization, with Debenhams and Arcadia Group being bought by online giants Asos and Boohoo, and now GAP planning to close stores in UK, France, and Italy as part of their European review, positioning your brand online is more important than ever.
That's where RACE comes in - a dedicated marketing structure your brand can use to integrate your customers' experiences of your brand,…
If you're planning to optimize your branding or rebranding, we have tools to support your brand development at every stage
Have you ever wondered how brands grow as large and as well known as they do? From companies like Google to Starbucks, their names are known, customers know exactly what services and products they provide, and satisfied customers keep coming back for more. Brand development is how this happens, and it is no small feat. It takes time to cultivate a brand, to the point that a company has universal recognition like Gillette and Coca-Cola.
What does brand development involve?
Now that you recognize the importance of branding, what do you need to create a good brand? In a nutshell, brand development means:
Finding your brand’s voice and communicating your value proposition
Implementing your voice and style consistently throughout…
'Strategic marketing beyond a single campaign metric': Brand evaluation requires deeper analysis of your campaign KPIs
A single brand evaluation metric such as 'brand awareness' can get a bad press as a marketing KPI. It's easy to see why, after all, just because I'm aware of your brand, it doesn't mean your marketing has been all that successful in driving demand or sales for a product.
To give a trite example, I'm aware of Donald Trump, North Korea and Protein World. It doesn't mean I like any of them. Nor does it mean I'd ever buy from them. Oh and before you say 'You can't buy from North Korea Rob you idiot'- I think you'll find you can.
Strategic brand evaluation runs much deeper. It's time to aim for strategic marketing beyond a single campaign metric.
"Strategic marketing beyond a single campaign metric"
Boosting brand awareness isn't pointless, far from it.…
Google has changed search listings related to featured snippets, e-commerce to grow by over 30% in five years, Google urged to rethink third-party cookie blocking, Netflix named favourite UK brand
Google has dominated the news this week following its announcement that it has changed search results to deduplicate listings that appear as featured snippets. Find out how it could affect your strategy by reading the full story below.
New research has suggested that e-commerce is going to account for a fifth of all retail by 2024, as consumers turn to convenience rather than heading to the brick and mortar high street.
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In other Google news, it has been asked to rethink its decision to block third-party cookies by 2022 due to the impact it could have on digital advertising.
Finally, Netflix has taken the top spot away from Aldi to be named as the UK's favourite brand while a couple of brands have taken…
