Defining your brand

Within the Marketing Strategy section of your marketing plan you should clearly define your company or product/service brand. The brand will represent your identity as it will be perceived by the audience so it is extremely important to pay very attention in clearly identifying a good, clear brand concept at this stage of the marketing plan.

A good starting point to know how to define your brand is by looking through your mission and objectives also defined in this section of the marketing plan. Such goals and principles will dictate the attributes of your brand – are you looking to be the most exclusive? The fastest? The cheapest? The most consumer oriented? The highest quality provider? – Whatever you define and see your company as is your brand.

Once you are sure about all the characteristics associated to the brand you should then consider the company’s core values which might influence the way you shape your brand and present it to the public. By this I mean, values such as corporate responsibility, honesty, integrity, efficiency, corporate sustainability and environmentally friendly policies, amongst others. Those that clearly define the way you are planning to conduct business, should be combined with the company’s characteristics to create a cohesive bond which will then be communicated to the public as your brand.

The name you give to the brand which may or may not be the same as your company name (for example under Procter & Gamble you have several brand names including Pantene, Fairy, Pampers, etc. for each different product line) should be defined alongside the company image and the product or service it will be associated with. For example, it may not be a good idea to name a high technology computer provider as “Friendly computers” as for this type of business it will be more relevant to the consumer to get across characteristics such as efficiency, advanced technology and fast systems other than anything to do with friendship and kindness. “Friendly computers” might be a more appropriate name for children’s computers though, as not only the name is appealing to the parents and children but the word “friendly” can also be associated to user-friendly computers which will be beneficial for children users.

Good brand names will effectively build a connection between the brand personality as it is perceived by the target audience and the actual product or service itself. You can keep in mind that some of the most successful brand names are those who had such strong presence in the market that consumers started associating its name as a generic term for a product or service. Examples of these are brand names such as “Post-it”, “Kleenex” or “Tupperware” which are names used to represent all sticky paper notes, facial tissue or plastic containers respectively.

This brand will be representative of what will differentiate you from your competitors so, once it is established, you must stay true to it. All marketing activities you define from this point onwards in your marketing plan must be consistent with getting across the brand image, or the way you want your target market to see you. This is when the definition of a concise integrated communications plan will come into place as you continue writing your plan. Please note that while thinking about your communications strategy you never lose sight of who you are as per your brand definition so you don’t fall into the trap of trying to be everything to everyone. Your brand will represent your niche in the market and will be your biggest selling point so make sure you will stick your actions to what you define in the plan as this will be a great tool to guide you through the brand implementation. After all, your brand implementation will ultimately determine your failure or success.

What is a Perceptual Map?

When you reach the point of analysing your own product in the marketing strategy section of your marketing plan, this is when you will come across the necessity of creating the perceptual map. This will help you understand how your product is perceived by consumers relative to competition.
Based on a visual 2D representation of how target customers view the competing alternatives, this comparison will combine both the product’s segmentation and positioning with the aim to understand the correct product position so a competitive advantage can be identified.
In these conceptual maps there are two axes, and all competing products will be assigned to one of the four quadrants that best describes the customer’s perception of that product according to those axes categories. So, if we are analysing a stomach ache relief medicine, for example, we will consider as the two dimensions as taste (good or awful) and efficacy (works fast and well to doesn’t work at all).

From the example above we verify that Product D is seen by the consumers as the one that tastes the best and is also quite efficient. Product D is also the one with the largest market share hence its larger circle representation. Product A and B are percepted as very similar products and product E is the worst perceived product as it neither works well or tastes good.
The product’s position is defined through statistical calculations based on consumer preferences that can be acquired through questionnaires. Other than the simpler version of the conceptual map of competing products as above, products can also be analysed in accordance to the ideal vectors established by the consumers. An ideal vector will indicate the preferred ratio of the two dimensions within the quadrant they apply. Each vector will be defined in the perceptual map as a line from the origin to an arrow indicating the direction in which the vector’s attribute is increasing. The longer the line, the greater is the importance of that attribute in explaining the variance. For a better understanding of how this is done and the calculations involved I would suggest you to read the presentation by the Columbia University Marketing Professor Skander Esseghaier here.