Brand Building - Using The Web For Brand Building, Building A Brand Through Advertising, Building A New Brand

The key to a successful brand lies in delivering value to the customer. Brands offer customers a promise, a set of values that will motivate them. Brands are positioned to echo the brand promise. This requires understanding customer needs. It is also important for companies to deliver a brand that reflects what customers thought they were promised. Brands are built around successful products, not the other way around. Sometimes this insight has been lost on e-businesses, in particular, which have spent millions of dollars on e-brand building programs, motivated by speed, by the need to be first in order to capture "eyeballs." Along the way, some e-business companies neglected to develop products that lived up to the brand images they wished to project.

There are many benefits to having a recognized brand. A strong brand is regarded as an important strategic asset that can enable a company to build stronger relationships with its customers and give it a measure of strategic control. A strong brand cuts through clutter in a fragmented marketplace and keeps a firm's products from becoming commodities. A strong brand name can affect investment decisions and a firm's market capitalization. A strong brand, then, has come to be regarded as an asset to be managed like any other corporate asset.

Brand building is multi-dimensional. A strong brand is the result of a long-term, cumulative effort. It involves more than advertising, although most marketing executives believe that traditional advertising is the best way to reach a broad audience, according to a Mercer Management Consulting survey as reported in Advertising Age. Brand building also includes investments in areas such as customer service, product development, and enhancing the customer experience.

Companies need to determine what is important to their customers and recognize that different customers have different preferences. Companies learn what is important by listening to their customers. Gathering information from their customers enables them to learn what their customers' needs are. They can then build and position their brand to offer the promise of satisfying those needs. Factors such as low price, high quality, broad selection, and personal service figure into customer preferences and brand building. One group of online customers may prefer high quality, a reputable brand, and the lowest possible price. Another group may prefer speed, convenience, and a high level of functionality and interactivity when shopping online.