Top 10 Steps To Successful Corporate Branding

. Top 10 Steps To Successful Corporate Branding

•  1. The CEO Needs to Lead The WayThe starting point for corporate branding must be the board room, which is also serving as the most important check-pointduring the project. The CEO must be personally involved in the brand strategy work, and he/she must be passionate and fullybuy into the idea of branding. To ensure success despite the daily and stressful routine with many duties at the same time, theCEO must be backed by a strong brand management team of senior contributors, who can facilitate a continuous developmentand integration of the new strategy.
• .2. Build Your Own Model As Not Every Model Suits All All companies have their own specific requirements, own sets of business values and a unique way of doing things. Therefore, even the best and most comprehensive branding models have to be tailored to these needs and requirements. Often, only a few but important adjustments are needed to align them with other similar business models and strategies in the company to create a simplified toolbox. Remember that branding is the face of a business strategy so these two areas must go hand in hand.
• 3. Involve Your Stakeholders Including The CustomersWho knows more about your company than the customers, the employees and many other stakeholders? This is common sense,but many companies forget these simple and easily accessible sources of valuable information for the branding strategy. A simplerule is to use 5% of the marketing budget on research and at least obtain a fair picture of the current business landscape includingthe current brand image among stakeholders, brand positioning and also any critical paths ahead. Simply do not forget thevaluable voice of your customers in this process.
•  4. Advance The Corporate VisionThe corporate branding strategy is an excellent channel foradvancing the corporate vision throughout the company. Itallows the management to involve, educate and align everyonearound the corporate objectives, values and future pathway.It provides a guiding star and leads everyone in the samedirection. The internal efforts are at least 50% of making acorporate branding strategy successful.
• 5. Exploit New TechnologyModern technology should play a part of a successful corporate branding strategy. Technology helps to gain effectiveness andimprove the competitive edge of the corporation. A company website is not only a must, but rather a crucial channel for anymodern corporation regardless of size. If the corporation is not accessible on the Internet, it does not exist! The more professionalthe website, the better the perception among the Internet savvy modern customer. With the advances in social media, it is also amust that your company has a strategy for how to utilise the huge number of tools and resources. It’s worth while rememberingthat ignoring social media makes you mute - not invisible.
• 6. Empower People To Become Brand AmbassadorsThe most important asset in a corporation is its people. They do interact every daywith colleagues, customers, suppliers, competitors and industry experts to name afew. But they also interact with an impressive number of people totally disconnectedto the corporation in form of family members, friends, former colleagues and manyothers. Hence they serve as the corporations most important brand ambassadors asthe word-of-mouth can be extremely valuable and have great impact on the overallimage of the corporate brand image. The most effective way to turn employees intobrand ambassadors is to train everyone adequately in the corporate brand strategy(vision, values and personality etc.) and making sure they fully understand - andbelieve! - what exactly the corporation aims at being in the minds of its customersand stakeholders. Nike is a brand which is known for their efforts into educating andempowering everyone employed by the company to be strong brand ambassadors.
•  7. Create The Right Delivery SystemThe corporate brand is the face of the business strategyand basically it promises what all stakeholders shouldexpect from the corporation. Therefore, the delivery ofthe right products and services with all the implicationsthis entail should be carefully scrutinized and evaluatedon performance before any corporation starts acorporate branding project. Think of the cradle tograve concept of a lifelong customer and the valuehe/she will provide in such a time span. The momentof truth is when the corporate brand promise isdelivered well.
•  8. Communicate!Bring the corporate brand to life through a range of well-planned, well-executed marketing activities, and make sure theoverall messages are consistent, clear and relevant to the target audiences. Make sure the various messages are conciseand easy to comprehend. Do not try to communicate every single point from the corporate branding strategy. Instead,a selective approach will make much more impact using the same resources.
•  9. Measure The Brand PerformanceA brand is accountable and so should a corporate brand be. How much value does it provide to the corporation and howinstrumental is the brand in securing competitiveness? These are some of the questions which need to be answered and whichthe CEO will automatically seek as part of his/her commitment to run the strategy successfully. The brand equity consists of variousindividually tailor-made key performance indicators (including the financial brand value) and needs to be tracked regularly.
• 10. Adjust Relentlessly And Be Ready To Raise Your Own Bar All The TimesThe business landscape is changing almost every day in every industry. Hence the corporation needs to evaluate and possibly adjustthe corporate branding strategy on a regular basis. Obviously, a corporate brand should stay relevant, differentiated and consistentthroughout time, so it is a crucial balance. The basic parts of the corporate branding strategy like vision, identity, personality and valuesare not to be changed often as they are the basic components. The changes are rather small and involve the thousands of daily actionsand interpersonal behaviors, which the corporations employ as part of the brand marketing efforts. But make sure complacency doesnot take root in the organisation and affects the goal setting. The strong brands are the ones which are driven forward by ownerswhom never get tired of raising their own bars. They become their own change agents - and brand champions for great brands.