What is Strategic Brand Management Process?

Creating and maintaining a strong brand is essential for success in today’s competitive business landscape. A strategic brand management process helps companies achieve this by providing a framework for developing and implementing a cohesive branding strategy. Let’s understand more about it.

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Table of Content

• What is Strategic Brand Management?
• What is Strategic Brand Management Process?
  • Identifying and Developing Brand Plans
  • Designing and Implementing Brand Marketing Programs
  • Measuring and Interpreting Brand Performance
  • Growing and Sustaining Brand Equity

What is Strategic Brand Management?

Strategic brand management involves designing and implementing marketing programs and activities to develop, measure, and manage brand equity. It involves developing a comprehensive strategy to build and sustain a strong, positive perception of a brand among consumers.

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It aims to establish a strong emotional connection between a company and its customers by developing a unique brand identity. Let’s understand the strategic brand Management process.

What is Strategic Brand Management Process?

The strategic brand management process refers to the activities and steps involved in creating, developing, and maintaining a brand’s identity and reputation in the marketplace. It comprises the following four steps:

1. Identifying and developing brand plans

2. Designing and implementing brand marketing programs

3. Measuring and interpreting brand performance 

4. Growing and sustaining brand Equity

1. Identifying and Developing Brand Plans

The strategic brand management process begins with clearly understanding what the brand showcases and how it should be positioned with its competitors. This is achieved through brand planning, which involves using three interlocking models.

Brand Positioning Model

It guides how to market the brand effectively to maximize its competitive advantages. This involves identifying the brand's unique features, benefits, target audience, and needs and preferences.

Brand Resonance Model

This involves creating a sense of loyalty and emotional connection between the customer and the brand. It promotes repeat purchases and positive word-of-mouth recommendations. It describes creating intense, active customer loyalty relationships.

Brand Value Chain

It is used to track the brand's value creation process. This allows companies to understand better the financial impact of their brand marketing expenditures and investments and identify areas for potential improvement.

2. Designing and Implementing Brand Marketing Programs

It is essential to establish a strong brand position in customers’ minds. It is essential to develop brand equity and foster deep customer loyalty. This process involves three critical factors:

Brand Element

The initial choices of the brand’s visual, verbal, and sensory elements, including the brand name, logo, slogan, packaging, and overall design, should be combined to reinforce the brand’s unique identity and value proposition.

Marketing Activities

The marketing mix and supporting programs that promote the brand and create a distinctive brand image. The brand should be integrated into marketing campaigns. Moreover, communications create a consistent message reinforcing the brand’s values and benefits.

Other Associations

Other indirect associations, such as the company, country of origin, distribution channel, or other brands, may be linked to the brand. These associations can be leveraged to enhance the brand’s reputation, value, and customer appeal.

3. Measuring and Interpreting Brand Performance

An effective brand equity measurement system is essential for managers to manage their brands profitably. Implementing such a system involves three key steps: conducting brand audits, designing brand tracking studies, and establishing a brand equity management system.

Determining or evaluating a brand’s positioning often benefits from a brand audit. Once marketers have determined the brand positioning strategy, they can implement marketing programs to create, strengthen, or maintain brand associations. Brand tracking studies collect information from consumers on a routine basis.

Experts do it through quantitative brand performance measures on several key dimensions, which marketers can identify in the brand audit or other means.

4. Growing and Sustaining Brand Equity

Maintaining and expanding brand equity can be quite challenging. Brand equity management activities take a broader and more diverse perspective of the brand’s equity understanding. For instance- how branding strategies should reflect corporate concerns and adjust them. Also, if at all, over time, geographical boundaries, multiple market segments, etc.

Defining Brand Architecture

Brand architecture refers to a company’s overall strategy and guidelines for managing its various brands. It involves deciding which brand elements should be used consistently across all products sold by the company. Two key components of the brand architecture are brand portfolios and brand hierarchies.

Managing Brand Equity over Time

Managing brand equity involves taking a long-term approach to marketing decisions. This means recognizing that changes to a brand’s marketing program can impact consumer knowledge and future marketing efforts. It also involves proactive strategies to maintain and improve customer-based brand equity over time and reactive strategies to address any difficulties or problems.

Managing Brand Equity over Geographic Boundaries, Cultures, and Market Segments. 

It is essential to consider the impact of geographic boundaries, cultures, and market segments on branding and marketing decisions to manage brand equity effectively. This involves recognizing the diversity of consumers and developing appropriate branding and marketing strategies to appeal to different segments.

When expanding a brand overseas, it is important to understand the specific cultural and behavioural nuances of the target market segments to build brand equity. Global branding strategies must account for these differences and adapt the brand positioning and marketing mix to resonate with local consumers.