A well-known and loved brand is one of the most valuable assets a company owns. Behavioural branding involves in creating the company’s own logo, slogan and the graphic that will help people identify the company’s products or services while browsing shops or while surfing the internet. The foundation for building a successful brand is to define the business targeted audience and focusing on tailoring a message that meets their specific needs.
‘Behavioural branding is the practice of presenting your product or service in a way using a combination of psychological knowledge and consumer behavioural patterns. When you use behavioural branding properly, you can increase your promotion efforts and overall profits because branding your property in a memorable way will not only attract consumers quickly but also keep your product in their mind, increasing the probability that they will return to your website for repeat business. The basic science behind behavioural branding is packaging the image of your service or product in a way that attracts your target audience’ Martin Glanert (Behavioral Branding)
1. Define your target group – One of the key elements of building a brand is to have a deep understanding and knowledge of your target audience.
Before trying to influence anyone’s mind, you need to know exactly who you are talking to. Defining an audience by using categories like ‘millennials’, ‘mothers’, ‘students’ etc. It doesn’t help. Different types of people are influenced in very different ways, which is why the most effective brand building strategy is based on highly segmented audiences. Businesses should commission in-depth research, to find out how their audience think, how they feel, who they talk to, who they trust and why. Different type of people behave in different ways, are influenced in different ways, and they can be reached in different ways. Businesses can use behavioural metrics to segment their target audience into groups of people who have similar attitudes, interests and characteristics. These groups should be used to deliver the right message at the right time, to the right audience, using the right media channel.
2. Gain insights – In order to thrive and succeed, businesses should carry out both external and internal analysis to establish the strengths and limitations of their brand. Understanding how the brand is positioned in the market and how it performs against the competitors is vital information to use while taking marketing decisions.
While it’s important to understand consumers behaviours, it’s equally vital to look for insights within the organization. Brands are built and managed by employees. Therefore, it is essential for a business to understand if there are any biases that may prevent their employees from managing the brand effectively, such as overconfidence and reluctance to change.
3. Consider the whole customer journey – Use behavioural research insights to determine the amount of information and choice beneficial for your customers. While building a brand, it’s important to understand and define the customer’s journey. Establish what people want and need during each step of the journey, and find out what are the behavioural obstacles between each step. For instance, how much information should you offer to consumers? How many choices should you give them? Are multiple choices always beneficial? Answering those questions is vital to build and manage the brand successfully.
4. Define your brand strategy – Successful business align their brand strategy around their leadership, their employees and their customers. Businesses with the brand’s problem should resist the temptation to make quick changes on how the brand is delivered. For example, by reducing the price, or by trying to improve the experience in the store.
Instead, companies should start by defining a brand identity strategy. First of all, they should define the set of associations that makes the brand different from the competition and relevant to the target market. Establish if the current brand positioning is consistent, and find out what customers think when they see a tangible element of the brand, such as its trademark. For a brand to remain strong, these associations need to be maintained and revitalised over time. Too often companies build brands in isolation whiteout sharing thoughts and initiatives with the rest of the company. But in the real world, employees have a lot to do with brand identity. In fact, employees own the daily delivery of the brand. They are the look and voice of the brand. Successful brands always grow organically, from the inside.
5. Building your brand identity – Building a brand identity means defining what the business means to yourself, to your team (executives and employees) and your external audiences.
Executives: the management group (board, senior team, mid-level managers), should lead the brand identity by setting the tone and defining the direction and the vision for what the brand is about. If the leadership team isn’t concerned about the brand identity, employees will pick up on it, and they will behave accordingly.
Employees: As the front-line staff, employees must live the brand. Their daily one-on-one interactions with consumers play a critical role in how the brand is perceived and experienced. One poor employee experience can destroy years of goodwill done in other areas. The employees own the daily delivery of the brand.
External Audience: The target audience should be the brand strongest advocate. Ultimately how consumers feel about your institution determines your brand’s overall value.
6. Measure the results – Start measuring before establishing the brand identity, continue measuring during the process of building the brand and carry on the analysis after delivering the brand strategy. Measure once, measure twice, optimize and measure again.
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