A strong brand is a brand that drives sales and/or justifies a premium price for your product. But what makes you unique and can get your customers to select you more frequently and be less price sensitive?
In earlier blog posts, we have discussed the unique benefits from a brand study developed by Niklas Bondesson and Johan Anselmsson, and revealed the top list of brand associations that drive sales in business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C). In this post and two coming, I will discuss three general learnings about what is required to build a strong brand.
Brand associations can, roughly speaking, be divided into hard and soft arguments. The hard ones address the buyer’s functional needs and are often connected to the actual product or service. Concrete examples include equipment capacity and size, a car’s fuel consumption, television contrast levels, the formal competence of a law firm, and so on.
The soft building blocks, on the other hand, have less to do with how the product or service performs and more with how the brand – or the company behind it – is perceived. For example, whether it is expected to be prestigious, fun, caring or inspiring.
In every Brand Potential study we have conducted, the soft building blocks have proven to be at least as important than the hard ones. It may seem strange that a company’s core competence or product quality matters less than, say, whether the buyer feels a sense of belonging with the brand. But consider that most products in most markets increasingly lack significant rational differentiation. Especially in mature markets, major competitors often offer similar core functionalities, making many features “hygiene factors.” In such cases, “good enough” really is good enough.
Even in industries where actual product differences exist, these differences often prove difficult for buyers to perceive or appreciate. Buyers tend to choose brands in the same way they always have unless the differences are made meaningful. For example, can you determine the relevant technological differences between a washing machine from Electrolux and one from Cylinda? Or if a car from BYD is technologically better than a car from BMW?
In practice, it is usually the buyer’s overall thoughts and feelings about the brand that become the decisive basis for the decision. These highly subjective expectations may stem from personal experience, recommendations, general reputation or advertising. Even though our decisions often are emotionally driven, rational arguments are important – they allow the buyer to motivate the decision afterward.
To build a strong brand, both hard and soft associations must be highlighted. Only then does your brand have the best chance of becoming more valuable than the competition – i.e., generating greater revenue and higher profits.
If you want to discuss how your brand can drive better business, reach out to ulf@sfinxconsulting.se
