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brand management

FAQ: What is Brand Management?

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In business and marketing, having a strong brand helps boost sales and earn customer loyalty. Consumers tend to trust established brands with good reputations above unknown entities. Building a reliable brand often requires careful, informed brand management as part of a marketing strategy. But what is brand management, and how can it help businesses?

Brand Management

Brand management is the strategic act of building and maintaining an image in the long term. Additionally, it is a multi-step process that never ends as long as the brand remains active.

Most strategies start with defining the brand. This takes into account more than just the product or service being offered by the company. Defining a brand also means identifying core values and the brand’s image. 

After defining the brand, the next step is brand positioning. Who are the ideal customers, where can they be reached, and what is the best way to appeal to them?

Finally, you need to deliver and sustain the brand. This means advertising, but also customer engagement, outreach, and growth. As companies grow, their brand opportunities also increase. A strategy helps provide a clear path forward in these instances, as well as what to do in the event of a crisis.

This is a crucial component of a comprehensive marketing strategy. However, most companies are not able to have an in-house brand manager to handle this task.

Hiring Brand Manager

It is not uncommon for companies to seek outside help for brand reputation management. An experienced brand manager can provide guidance in building a brand, as well as how to sustain it. Professional brand management can help small businesses establish trust among customers while also growing the company. For small businesses, this is an effective way to gain recognition and earn customer loyalty.

Why Target Is An E-Commerce Business As Much As It Is a Box Store

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As one of the largest retailers in the United States, Target is known for its extensive selection of products at competitive prices. Whether it be clothing, electronics, or groceries, Target supplies just about everything. Originally founded in 1902 as Dayton Dry Goods, Target has become a popular destination for shoppers with over 1,900 stores across the country. While it may have started as a traditional big-box retail store, it’s just as much a thriving E-commerce business. Target has discovered the best of both worlds: Satisfying customers both in physical stores and online.

Big box stores and E-commerce has becomes major players in the retail industry. Each offers its own shopping experience with different conveniences. In recent years, especially since the pandemic, E-commerce has become all the rage and revolutionized the way we shop. Both have their advantages and disadvantages, but Target has managed to find a way to have its hand in each space. 

Target: E-commerce Or Big Box Store?

Target has established itself as a key competitor in the E-commerce space, despite it being known as a box store. The company invests heavily in its online platform and offers the same selection of products online as it does in-store. Target has implemented technologies into their online store such as curbside delivery, same-day pickup, and benefits through Target Circle for an improved shopping experience. 

Additionally, Target’s E-commerce store features exclusive online products and deals as an added benefit for Target shoppers who prefer to browse online. By combining its brick-and-mortar stores with its E-commerce platform, Target has the ability to satisfy each of its customers’ preferences. 

E-commerce Examples: The Rise of Online Shopping

In recent years, E-commerce stores have become the preferred method of shopping for millions of Americans. Some well-known E-commerce examples include retailers like Amazon, eBay, AliExpress, Etsy, and many more. 

Technology has made online shopping so much more convenient and accessible compared to shopping in-store. The widespread availability of the internet and mobile devices has helped E-commerce gain traction significantly. It enables customers to shop from anywhere, at any time, and even allows them to compare prices across multiple retailers. Additionally, the increase in reliable delivery options allows customers to receive their purchases quickly, further driving the growth of E-commerce.

Moreover, E-commerce offers unique opportunities to businesses looking to expand their online presence. E-commerce has been instrumental in the growth of thousands of businesses. Advanced payment and security options have helped make transactions more secure and increase customers’ faith in online shopping. E-commerce is expected to continue growing in the years to come as technology develops, further revolutionizing the way to shop.  

E-commerce Impact On Traditional In-Store Shopping

The rise of E-commerce, however, has made a significant impact on physical stores. The convenience of online shopping has allowed customers to browse products without leaving their homes. 

For instance, this newfound trend of showrooming has increasingly affected in-store shopping. Customers can try on clothing in-store but purchase the items online for a lower price. This has put immense pressure on in-store retailers to lower their prices and offer exclusive in-store experiences to compete with E-commerce. Many in-store retailers have adapted to this shift by integrating online and offline shopping experiences, just like Target. 

Regardless of this shift, there are still many customers who prefer a traditional, in-store shopping experience. The social aspect and the ability to touch and try on products are factors that online stores cannot replicate. While E-commerce has disrupted the box store landscape, retailers are finding ways to adapt to the changing needs of their customers. 

Build a Solid Foundation For Your Business

How you market your business is integral to how well your products and services sell. With the right resources and organization, you can build a solid foundation and transform the way your business runs. 
At Web Contact Development, our team of marketing strategists can help you figure out where to start. Contact us today for more information about the services we provide.

3 Pro Tactics Venmo Uses To Be The Company For Payment Apps

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In this digital age, it’s never been easier to split the bill at a restaurant or pay your share of the rent. With apps like Venmo, you never have to worry about writing a check or taking out cash again. Payment apps allow you to conveniently send money directly from one person to another. All it takes is a few taps on your smartphone to quickly and easily transfer money between anyone in your contacts. 

Venmo has particularly revolutionized the way we handle financial transactions. Its user-friendly interface and ability to merge your contact list make it easy to use. Venmo helps eliminate the need for cash completely. Plus, it ensures your privacy with its encryption technology to keep your financial information safe. 

While there are plenty of options out there for easy-to-use payment apps, Venmo has managed to be a fan favorite. Let’s see how their clever marketing tactics helped them keep this status.

How Venmo’s Marketing Compares To Other Pay Apps

Venmo has a range of features that keeps consumers loyal to the company. Beyond its core functions, however, Venmo has been known for its clever marketing tactics that keep users interested. These strategies have made Venmo one of the most recognizable pay apps available to consumers.

1. Social Media

Venmo has a rather strong social media presence compared to other payment apps in the industry. They heavily utilize popular platforms such as Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook to hit their target audience. 

To relate to its predominantly Gen Z and Millenial users, Venmo often posts humorous, relatable content on its social pages. Its Instagram page is particularly known for its bold, colorful graphics. Meanwhile, its Twitter is known for funny one-liners that younger generations can easily understand. 

Venmo’s social media strategy keeps the marketing game exciting while keeping its brand in mind at all times. This has helped build a sense of community for users around the app. 

2. User Experience

Venmo’s app is extremely intuitive and easy to use. Its modern interface makes it simple for users to understand how to send and receive money. Venmo’s marketing campaigns often emphasize the app’s ease of use with catchy slogans. They’re famous for saying, “send money to friends in just a few taps,” and “split the bill without the awkwardness.” 

Highlighting the app’s simplicity has allowed Venmo to draw in a larger and more diverse audience, thus increasing revenue. The company is constantly improving the app’s interface and acting promptly on feedback from users, helping to further enhance the user experience. 

3. Partnerships and Collaborations

Venmo has managed to remain super successful in leveraging partnerships and collaborations to build its brand awareness. Teaming up with popular restaurants and retailers to offer exclusive discounts to its users allowed Venmo to better market itself to its audience. 

In 2019, Venmo launched a collaborative promotion with Chipotle where users had the chance to win up to $500 in Venmo payments. All they had to do was sign up for Chipotle’s rewards program with the number associated with their Venmo account. Venmo has been able to increase user engagement with the help of promotions like this and position itself as a lifestyle brand. 

Benefits Of Using Online Payment Apps

Online payment apps offer many benefits to users compared to traditional payment methods. They eliminate the need to carry around cards or cash. Instead, payment apps allow you to conveniently send or receive money from anywhere in the world. This sets Venmo apart from its competitors, making it convenient, reliable, and safe for its users.

Key Venmo Features

Venmo has many unique features that make it stand out amongst the competition. Here are some of the popular qualities that have further helped Venmo market itself as unique to other payment apps.

No Fees

Venmo doesn’t charge unnecessary extra fees, unlike other payment apps. It’s free to make an account and send money from your Venmo balance, bank account, or debit card. 

Make Payments Despite Your Balance

If you have insufficient funds in your Venmo balance, you can still make payments with no problem. Venmo allows you to connect your bank account to your Venmo account. So if the amount you are paying is more than your Venmo balance, the money will simply come out of your bank instead. 

Offers Debit Cards

Users who frequently utilize Venmo and manage their Venmo balance can opt for a Venmo Debit Card. This card is directly tied to the funds in your Venmo balance. 

Adds a Social Aspect

You can enable your Venmo transactions to appear public to friends you follow in the app. (The dollar amount you sent/received, however, will remain private). When you send money through Venmo, you can add a caption for your transfers. Some users type exactly what the money transfer was for. But, oftentimes, people use it as a fun way to interact with their friends by typing funny captions. It’s a fun and unique way of interacting with people on a social platform – a feature that Venmo revolutionized.

What’s Your Brand Strategy?

Every company has a brand. Having a proper strategy in place, like Venmo, will help you build a better image and connection with your customers. Developing successful brand strategies is just one of the many marketing services that Web Content Development has to offer. Contact us today to learn more about our online marketing services.

How Red Bull’s Wacky Events Helped It Reached a Global Market

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Energy drinks are generally known to contain large amounts of caffeine, sugars, and additives. These have the potential to increase blood pressure, and heart rate, and have negative effects on the nervous system. To many, this may seem like a good reason to avoid them. However, the global market tends to react differently. A good portion of that recognizability is thanks to Red Bull’s marketing efforts.

Dominating in Global Markets

Red Bull, an energy drink popular throughout the world, is marketed mainly to the younger generation. They place emphasis on sports, adventure, and rugged, outdoor life. Not only this, but their advertising is iconic, and continues to dominate global markets.

 

Additionally, they sponsor various events around the globe each year. Their wild events range from surfing to snowboarding, to a doodle art competition, to SxS racing on the beaches of Wildwood, NJ. It’s clear that Red Bull has its finger on the pulse of their audience’s interests. Their sponsorships, carefully crafted and managed, are a big reason why Red Bull continues to be a successful product.

 

Red Bull tailors the majority of their advertising to younger generations. Their aggressive, unique approach to marketing focuses more so on a way of life than their actual energy drink. The beverage is featured in their ads, of course. But the focus is usually on energetic athletes or everyday people participating in extreme sports. 

 

By devoting great attention to the activities rather than its product, Red Bull takes their position in the world of sports and play. They sell their product by way of their brand, not the other way around. 

 

How Red Bull Approaches their Global Marketing Campaigns

 

Whether you’ve ever drank a Red Bull or not, you are likely familiar with their catchy slogan: Red Bull Gives You Wings. This marketing gem spans the world in most, if not all of the company’s advertising efforts. It creates brand awareness in a way the actual product cannot. Translated into any language, the slogan illustrates the boost of energy you will get from drinking their product. 

 

Along with sports sponsorships, concert and event penetration, and traditional advertising methods, Red Bull is well known for its publicity stunts. Easily their most viral stunt was the sponsorship of the Red Bull Stratos Jump. 

 

On October 14, 2012, Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner went 24 miles up in a helium balloon over New Mexico. There, at the edge of the stratosphere, Baumgartner jumped out, free-falling in a pressure suit. At the time, the whole world was watching. And Red Bull had their logo all over Baumgartner’s suit as he plummeted 128,000 feet back to the ground, breaking two world records. 

 

Advertise Locally, Think Globally

 

New or smaller businesses shouldn’t expect to sponsor such grandiose publicity stunts as the stratosphere jumps right off the bat. Instead of targeting global markets, businesses can get great results by marketing locally.

 

When you advertise within your community, you build brand recognition amongst the people in your radius. Clearly, it is much simpler to gauge local customers’ needs than it is on a larger scale. And you don’t have to reach the upper limits of gonzo marketing to target your preferred audience. 

 

Obviously, all things hinge on your business and your brand’s personality. However, one lesson local businesses can learn from Red Bull’s strategy is to be out there in the community. Get your product or business name into the public’s consciousness as much as possible. Every little bit helps.

Elevate Your Brand To Great Heights

Marketing strategies are different for every company. Small businesses need great, innovative ways of getting their name out. Contact us today to learn more about how the dedicated team at Web Content Development can help your small business!

Digital Brand Management: 4 Trends to Watch For

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Building a brand’s digital presence has become so important in this digitized world that businesses can no longer ignore it. This increased importance has led to the need for proper digital brand management. Ensuring a brand is well-positioned and presented in a digital space can often be the difference between success and failure. Measures like these are especially in a competitive online world. Embracing emerging digital brand management trends can help businesses increase their perceived brand value in this digital world.

 

Brand management plan on notebook

Optimized Digital Customer Experiences

Many of us now interact with our favorite brands online and so it is important that businesses provide the best experiences in the digital space. The need for optimized digital customer experiences has become more important in a world where customers now demand businesses have great digital customer experiences.

Doing this calls for businesses to adopt an individualized approach to digital marketing rather than a segmented customer approach. Businesses have to think about matching their services to individual customers to ensure improved convenience and a better customer experience. Regardless of how a customer interacts with your website, business and brand, the business should provide convenient sales and customer service options.

Omnichannel Marketing

With the rise of social media, most businesses have had to integrate new marketing channels into their marketing strategies. Although traditional omnichannel marketing approaches entail chasing multiple sales channels, we are beyond that. Now businesses can and should take advantage of advancements in data collection and analysis to provide marketing that optimizes offers, content and messaging across all their marketing channels. This can be better achieved by using previous data of a customer’s interaction with the business and brand.

Clear and Consistent Brand Messaging

Clear brand messaging encompasses what your brand is all about. In other words, it should provide customers with an insight into what your business stands for. It also helps customers better understand your products and services and it is often a huge determinant of how customers end up perceiving and experiencing your business and brand.

Creating a clear brand message involves figuring out your brand identity, knowing exactly who you are and expounding on your business’s core beliefs. When developing your brand message, you also need to think about your intended audience and potential customers. After all, these are the people who will be engaging with your business and its brand message. The messaging should be clear, inspirational, influential, and most importantly, unique. Building your brand messaging is an integral part of building your brand and is one of the things to keep in mind when learning how to build a digital brand. 

Visual Search

Visual search as a brand management strategy is gaining relevance. Customers now have the ability to upload images as well as search for images on various search engines. Quality branded images can be used to increase a brand’s search engine presence. Businesses can take advantage of these developments by uploading high-quality images which have alt-text to make them more discoverable. This can lead to brand discoverability and recognition in the future.

Digital brand management is becoming crucial in a digital world where customers want to interact with their favorite brands online. Even when building a brand, businesses have to think about how they will manage these brands in the digital space to ensure success.

The Best Branding of 2021

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Brand recognition has never been more important than in 2021. Consumers have unlimited choices and are constantly interacting with branded content. To be successful, your brand must stand out. To do this, you will need to reinvent yourself using successful branding trends continually.

Marketing and branding trends are helpful, but they also go out of style over time. Likewise, they become irrelevant to your product or target audience. Commonly used branding trends include quirky art in logos or putting a face with the name. These trends make branding recognition much more accessible and help ensure your customers will keep your brand fresh in their minds long after they have purchased something from you.

Why Is Brand Recognition Important?

Brand recognition is the ability of consumers to quickly identify specific companies simply by looking at their logo. It helps a business gain higher profits by building consumer loyalty. That encourages repeat purchases, allowing companies to grow their shares of the marketplace. Once your customers become familiar with your brand’s logo, they will remember the services you offer whenever they need them.

Brand recognition is an essential factor when introducing new products and services to your customers. This awareness can impact a consumer’s decision and will encourage them to become repeat customers. That, in turn, increases your brand’s market shares and profits.

Another reason why brand awareness is critical is that it allows you to achieve various business goals and objectives. This recognition aids in expanding your target audience while increasing the daily traffic to your company’s website and developing brand affinity.

What Is Great Branding?

Great branding includes:

  • The promise of a great experience – Consumers want to purchase high-quality products from companies that value them. 
  • Clear brand values and personality – Consumers prefer to patronize companies that reflect who they want to be.
  • Strong brand recognition – Consumers buy from companies they easily remember.

So how can you ensure your brand’s marketing strategies are better than your competitors? Take the time to research current trends and see how you compare to your competitors in these areas.

Younger markets, including Gen Z and Millennials, often want their favorite brands to take a stand and offer something positive to the world aside from their products or services. They like the brands they follow to be environmentally friendly, economical, and passionate about important causes. 

That’s why one of the most important marketing trends in recent years is for brands to take a side on social issues. You can even make your cause a part of your brand’s identity. There are many business models that the owners built around brands that stood for a substantial issue. Here’s how the three best brands of 2021 put this into practice. 

Warby Parker

Warby Parker’s mission statement is compelling and clear: “to offer designer eyewear at a revolutionary price while leading the way for socially-conscious businesses.” Consumers can feel good about their purchases because Warby Parker donates a pair of glasses to charity for every pair sold. The brand’s blue-and-white logo is modern, stylish, and recognizable.

The company focuses on core values, and that is something other brands should learn from. The owners of Warby Parker believe that companies should serve more than their customers and shareholders. To prove their point, they started donating one pair of eyeglasses to someone in need for each pair that the company sold.

Oreo

Despite increased awareness around healthy eating, Oreo remains profoundly relevant. The brand’s presence on social media is both artistic and playful. Its slogan, “filling your world with joyful moments,” captures the simplicity and nostalgia of childhood. Limited releases with everyone from Lady Gaga to the NBA engage key demographics and make a classic cookie new.

While Oreo may have changed its marketing strategies and package design over the years, one thing has remained consistent: its flavor. The classic chocolate and crème filled cookies remind us of a simpler time and are a nostalgic snack we can enjoy at any age. The Nabisco brand uses multiple outlets to market Oreos, including social media, TV commercials, and eyecatching store displays.

Dunkin’

Dunkin’ recently implemented free donut Wednesdays for its DD Perks Members. This promotion rewards loyal customers while ensuring they keep coming back. Dunkin’s 1970s-era orange-and-pink logo remains a ubiquitous mainstay. At the same time, the company is engaging a younger demographic through social media. The company’s collaboration with Tik Tok star Charli D’Amelio makes it the trendy coffee choice for Gen Z.

In recent years, Dunkin has simplified their menu, offering a small variety of new foods and snacks that pair well with its famous coffee blend. They also tried out a snacking menu where sweet and salty items like donut fries or Munchkin Dippers were available to purchase for just two dollars.

Learn More About the Elements of Great Branding from Our Marketing Experts

At Web Content Development, we offer a broad range of marketing services to ensure your brand becomes recognized more often by consumers. We can assist you with social media marketing, reputation management, and provide you with unique content for your blog. Contact us today by visiting our website or giving us a call at (800) 316-9664.