Finding it difficult to get through the maze of Brand decisions?

Ensuring that brand design is a competitive advantage can be a challenge. design4brand has a simple, but thorough 4-Step process to guide you through your brand strategy and brand design decisions. We help ensure that the design of your products and services personifies your brand identity and supports your brand portfolio.

We can help you balance your brand investments to maximize your share and profit.

Top 5 Mistakes in Managing High-Tech Brands

High-technology brands offer a unique set of challenges and opportunities. The goal of high-tech branding is essentially the same as that for packaged and other consumer goods: to create a compelling association between the company’s products (including services) and customers. Brands shape customer perceptions. They add value to the bottom line by creating clear customer advantage and thereby enhancing profitability. Then why do so many high-tech firms struggle with creating a coherent brand strategy?

Here are five common mistakes companies make when developing and managing their brands.

Mistake #5: Not Knowing How Your Brand is Performing

Tracking brand performance is tricky; there’s no doubt about it. And getting quantitative results are a challenge for traditional brand measurement techniques. You’ve got basically three ways to measure how well your brand strategy is working. Firstly, there’s looking at your short-term sales. Did your marketing mix model increase sales and/or higher end profits? Secondly, is brand loyalty increasing your customer-based brand equity? Do customers come back to you and recommend you to others? Thirdly, does your brand provide bottom line value, in terms of present/future value, discounted cash flows, or other forms of shareholder gains? Any of these measurements takes time and resources. Choose one and follow through.

Mistake #4: Believing brand is not important to high-tech business customers

Maybe you think customers buy on emotional appeal when it comes to lipstick and cell phones. But what about ERP software or multi-function printers? How does brand impact those purchase decisions? In many ways, it’s due to where the product category sits on the Technology Adoption Life Cycle. Let’s look at the different emotional jobs that the brand must do in two different parts of the lifecycle. For the visionary in the Early Adopter stage, the brand must help the customer feel, “I’m the one around here who really thinks out-of-the box. I’m willing to take risks to achieve breakthrough results.”
For the pragmatic buyer in the Bowling Alley stage, the brand must help the customer feel “I’ve made a safe choice and a smart buy. I’m of value to my company because I know how things really work around here.” Knowing this, which of your product design and promotional elements would you change?

Mistake #3: Leaving the Brand Strategy solely to the Marketing Department

Branding is often equated to a set of logos, messages and advertising. But these are not the most effective tools for building high-tech brands. Unfortunately, most R&D folks assume brand is something those Marketing guys do after the product is done. In truth, brand strategy should also impact every phase of product development and customer support. While Marketing can lead the brand strategy effort, other departments should help create the strategy and design the key brand elements, from features and design, through sales materials. For example, if the brand needs to communicate best-in-class ease of use, then the user-interface and sales support process should embody that brand attribute, as well as the color and layout of the sales brochure. It all needs to come together.

Mistake #2: Having a Sloppy Brand Architecture

Does your product portfolio make sense to you, your channel, and to your customers? Do your brands and sub-brands break along customer lines? Technology? Business segments? Or all of the above? If customers cannot distinguish between two sub-brands in terms of what they offer, then why spend money on developing and marketing both of them? Every sub-brand and product line should have a clear role in your portfolio, whether it’s to gain share, acquire niche profitability, or serve as a firewall. It’s not enough for the architecture to distinguish brand names and numbering schemes. An un-informed stranger should be able to look at your brand portfolio architecture and say, “I get it,” without having to sit through an hour long PowerPoint presentation. If not, you are confusing yourselves, your channel and your customers.

Mistake #1: Managing the Brand for the Short-term

Brands build value over time, but sustaining the brand story and maintaining investments year after year is a daunting effort for most high-tech firms. It’s easy to see how it happens. The players come and go. VP’s of Marketing are typically measured in quarter-to-quarter results, whether by market share or overall earnings per share. It’s often easier to measure the investments in your brand (dollars spent) than the long-term, and intangible, returns. But short-term tactics, such as price promotions and frequent brand persona changes, only serve to dilute the brand. And this short-term thinking can lead to the “price-promotion doom loop.” Your quarterly results are soft, you drop price to make up the volume, while reducing your brand budget. Great. You’ve gained volume for the next quarter, but your competitors respond and you’ve reset the expectations of the brand value in your customers’ minds. And you’re back to another quarter of soft results, ready to drop price again.

Do any of these common mistakes ring a bell?

A coherent brand strategy can address each and every one of the above mistakes. Let design4brand help you avoid these and maximize your brand value.