Brand Development

A brand is more than a logo and tagline. It is every emotion that a consumer feels when shopping in a store, interacting with an employee, making a purchase, and using the product. This brand experience is crucial to intrigue new customers, keep repeat customers, and hope they spread the word about how wonderful your service and products are to potential customers.

Building a strong, recognizable brand has significant benefits when competing with companies of similar products. There are numerous companies that sell the same products. So, what makes one company a top seller and competitor, and another company second best? A lot of it has to do with the product itself. A quality product is what the consumers are ultimately looking for. However, the strength of a brand can help to increase the consumer beliefs about a product, and increase the price point of a product.

If you are a startup company or small business it can be difficult to accurately determine the strength of your brand, but it is not impossible. Try some of these ROI measuring techniques to see where you stand compared to competitors, and gain insights into how you can strengthen your brand initiatives to where it will matter most.

Surveys

Try taking a survey of current and potential customers in your industry. Conduct a survey before implementing branding initiatives to have an initial measurement, at a middle point of building your brand, and when you have finished unveiling all brand efforts. This will show you how your brand grew over the period of time and in what areas. Be sure to ask questions not just about products, but about customer service, atmosphere in the store or online, how the customers first discovered your store, and if they would recommend your products to friends and family. Answers to these questions will tell you what areas you need to work on, and which to continue to focus on as strengths.

Google AdWords and Analytics

You can track how many people are looking for products in your industry and area by creating a Pay-Per-Click campaign with Google AdWords. By targeting simple terms, customers will find your company without even looking for it. For example, a local plumbing company “Awesome Plumbers” would use simple terms like plumber, plumbing repair, water heater, sump pump, and Quad Cities plumber. When a customer looks up any of these terms, one of the “Awesome Plumber” ads will show up. The more impressions and clicks an ad gets, the more people are seeing the ad.

Google Analytics lets you track the amount of traffic your website gets each day. It shows page views, sessions, amount of time spent on a page, audience demographics, how most people find your website, and how they navigate through the pages. It is pretty much a goldmine of information you can use to increase branding efforts to a target audience.

Loyalty

Keep a measure of your repeat customers, and how many times they purchase a product from you. This will also give you a good idea of your target audience and what products are doing well in the eyes of the consumers. It never hurts to ask the customer how they found out about your company, so you can see if they heard about the product by a branding effort of the company, or if the brand is strong enough to travel by word of mouth.

Article 1: The ROI of Branding

Article 2: Is Your Brand Experience Strong Enough