Friday, June 29, 2012

Brand Awareness / Brand Positioning

“Remain at the forefront of a customer’s mind…if you aren’t, someone else is.”
                                                                       - Joshua Garity
Brand recognition is often the deciding factor when customers are choosing between two or more products/services. Advertising cannot wave a magic wand and make people buy products or services they are not yet ready for. It involves a crucial process of familiarizing the customers with the brand. This is why we see the same advertisements on newspapers and television commercials and hear the same on the radio over and over again. The aim here is to create brand awareness.

        Brand awareness is the measure of the consumers’ awareness of the existence, importance and availability of your brand. It is closely related to brand recall which is the readiness with which a given brand springs to mind.
Following are some famous examples
Kitna Deti Hai – Maruti
Chutki Mein Chipkaye – Fevistick
Jeevan ke sath bhi, Jeevan ke baad bhi – LIC of India
I’m Loving it - McDonalds

















Creating positive brand positioning requires creating a positive image of the brand. When operating in a competitive market with similar businesses selling similar products and services, there are often very few factors that differentiate one product or service from its competitors. Therefore, the product or service that maintains the highest positive brand awareness usually gets the bigger market share. 

Positive brand awareness reflects the effectiveness of marketing communication. Thus, the initial goal of advertising campaigns is simply to make the target market aware that a particular brand exists. At the end of the day, branding is a major reason why people pay more for one product over another.

In our opinion, to increase brand awareness a business needs to advertise not only when business is under performing or before a new launch but also when business is at its peak albeit with some lesser spend than in aggressive stages.

Brand Positioning at different stages of business growth
·        A young naïve business entity needs to register with its target audience and hence creating awareness is of prime importance. Greater the budget bigger the impact and vice versa. If your voice of the brand can reach the last levels you ought to get a bigger opportunity.
·        When business is strong there is a steady flow of money to support an advertising campaign.
·        A strong client or customer base reduces the pressure of advertising extensively for new projects.  Although the end result is to sell the product or services, the path that leads there begins with awareness of the brand.
·        Existing customers often forget about other the services or products on offer. Effective soft selling can be used to increase your business with them.
·        When business is strong and stress is low, you can be more receptive to innovative marketing ideas. Creative advertising creates emotional responses and registers deeper in the minds of the customer. This emotional connection will help them remember your brand.

There are successful companies who do not advertise but are very successful. They have developed their business through customer service and word of mouth. This form of advertising is called social interaction and it involves great time and effort to measure success. Normally smaller brands with a local or regional reach can rely on their product/service worth and instead of spending on the advertising through various media can concentrate of personal branding involving time and physical efforts.

Whatever the choice of creating awareness, an organization needs to promote globally and maintain a constant presence in the minds of the buyer. In order to survive and excel, it becomes crucial to differentiate your business from your competitors who are on the hunt for the same customers as you are, based on your budget and assuming the deliverable do not lack on qualitative and quantitative parameters as the case may be.

To find out unique ways of keeping your business on top of your clients’ mind, contact Blossoms on mktg@studioblossoms.com or call +91 98230 64636

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