Brand Engagement

How to Create a Successful Brand in Today's Highly Competitive Society

It is a pretty recognizable brand name. Originally it was "Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web" but we settled on "Yahoo". Jerry Yang – Branding

In today's highly competitive society, how is your company going to create a successful brand that resonates with your audience and becomes a leader in your industry?

Below is a list of today's most popular brands and their slogans, can you match the brand with the slogan?

1. "Built for the Road Ahead"
2. "Can You Hear Me Now? Good."
3. "You're in Good Hands"
4. "The Ultimate Driving Machine"
5. "Have It Your Way"
6. "Because I'm Worth It"
7. "Just Do It"
8. "That Was Easy"
9. "Innovation"
10. "Do More"

Ford, Verizon Wireless, Allstate Corporation, BMW, Burger King, L'Oreal, Nike, Staples, 3M, American Express

The companies above have all established a brand that people recognize, which has contributed to their long lasting success. However, these companies have found that the traditional marketing methodologies that drove their past success no longer works today. Like many companies, they have to "think out of the box" and change their marketing strategy in order to sustain success.

The key to attaining success is BRAND ENGAGEMENT.

When establishing a brand a company needs to ask two questions:

1. What do our customers really want?

2. What will create brand loyalty?

The only way to answer these two questions is through brand engagement. Engagement is the way today's consumers do business, so a company must market themselves by establishing a connection with their consumers.

One way to do this is through your brands' message. What the consumer believes the brand exemplifies has increasingly defined a company's "value." For instance, consumers choose Dove soap over Irish Spring because of Dove's message and what the product means to them. Brands increasingly stand for something beyond the actual product and must have a story.

A successful message will differentiate you from your competition. The strongest brands differentiate themselves from their competition because of what the brand offers emotionally to their consumers. For instance, Toms Shoes can thank much of their success to their "One for One" campaign; one pair of shoes is donated for every pair of shoes bought. Therefore, the consumer feels good when they buy a pair of Toms Shoes because of what the shoe represents.

Toms Shoes and similar charitable organizations, such as Gap RED have done a good job of spreading their message and promoting their products to consumers via social networks and leveraging "friendtelligence." In today's society, a friend's opinion matters more than years of research by award winning scientists. Therefore, a company must create a brand that their consumers trust. Who spreads your message matters now more than ever. A brand needs to drive positive feedback on sites such as, Yelp, Facebook, and Twitter in order to achieve success.

Your brand is what your customers perceive about you and how you make them feel. The power of social network sites has proven to be both beneficial and detrimental to a brands' success. Share your story, connect with your consumers and establish a community that people trust. Brand engagement is the only way to ensure that your company is providing consumers with what they want and create brand loyalty among your consumers.

So how can you efficiently and effectively reach your customers?

1. Hootesuite – Link all of your social networks on one platform. Schedule tweets and measure your reach using their analytics tool.
2. Google alerts – Receive a daily email with recent articles, blogs, tweets, etc. that contain your company name.
3. Blog – create content that drives people to your site. Establish credibility with your customers and ask them for comments and feedback.
4. Pay-Per-Click & SEO – Use key words that will drive your target audience to your website. Create a Google ad words campaign and promote your company using Google ads.

These are just some of the tools you can use, but there are many more. Schedule time to utilize these tools every day and make it a priority to engage with your customers; as a result, you will achieve branding success.