What is brand management?
Brand management refers to a variety of strategies you can use to develop a brand and build value for your business in the eyes of customers. To manage a brand, you can create a brand identity, strengthen your brand positioning, and use marketing and other techniques to build a loyal customer base and stay relevant for your audience.
This post covers:
- 3 key components of brand management
- What is the role of a brand manager?
- How does brand management work?
- Why is brand management important?
- How do you know if your brand management is effective?
- 7 strategies for managing a brand
- Examples of successful brand management
- How brand management works in the Amazon store
Key learnings
- “Brand management” is an umbrella term for a range of actions you can take to promote a business.
- Goals of brand management include establishing a brand identity, shaping the customer experience, and growing brand awareness.
- As you reach a wider audience, you can benefit from increased sales and stronger brand equity, or the perceived value customers associate with your business.
- Strategic brand management strengthens brand positioning through market analysis, improving the customer experience, and other key focus areas.
- Consistent, positive interactions can help win the trust of customers and increase customer retention, securing brand loyalty.
3 key components of brand management
Different aspects of brand management can work together to build brand equity—the perceived value customers associate with your business. Here are three key focus areas.
1. Brand personality
What’s the unique character of your business, and how do you convey it to customers? Signature colors, imagery, and other design elements can help shape your brand identity, along with the “look and feel” of your brand. Ensuring a cohesive brand image across all touchpoints can help make a memorable impression on customers and go a long way in earning their trust.
2. Brand assets
Many different types of assets can be combined to shape a brand. They might be physical, digital, or both. Examples include:
- Brand name
- Logo
- Websites and landing pages
- Physical store locations
- Products and packaging
While they might be harder to define or calculate, intangible assets like brand awareness and reputation can also help build equity for a business. Brand management can help a business get maximum value out of all its brand assets.
3. Brand strategy
Brand strategy refers to the way you position a brand and help it achieve success. Your unique selling proposition (USP) can be a key part of brand positioning. A USP is a statement that can help communicate what makes your brand and offerings different from competitors.
What is the role of a brand manager?
A brand manager is responsible for overseeing one or more brands for a business. This role might directly handle tasks like project management and marketing activities, or work together with multiple departments on areas like product development, market analysis, or advertising.
A brand manager might also work with one or more brand teams to guide a business’s strategy and positioning in the process of building a brand.
How does brand management work?
Effective brand management can help you create a valuable and satisfying experience for customers that makes them want to come back. It also helps set customer expectations and deliver on brand promises at each stage of the shopping journey.
Another way to think about brand management is to look at the different forms it can take based on a business’s stage of growth. Tasks might change and evolve depending on whether you’re:
- Launching a new brand
- Establishing an industry foothold
- Growing a market presence
- Maintaining a brand identity
- Rebranding
In each phase of development, a brand manager can help make sure a business follows best practices. It can be a balancing act between staying true to the company values while adapting with trends to remain relevant over time.
Why is brand management important?
Successfully managing a brand can bring many benefits to a business. In the short term, it can bring higher sales and increased customer acquisition. Over time, you can also see sustained growth, continued relevance in the eyes of customers, and enhanced control over a brand’s operations and image. Done well, brand management can help a business communicate effectively to customers, internal teams, and other relevant stakeholders like funders.
How do you know if your brand management is effective?
It can be challenging to make sure you’re getting a return on investment for your efforts. Here are some signs your brand management is working:
- The brand is gaining recognition, customers have a growing awareness of the business, and you’re reaching a wider audience.
- You’re seeing positive trends in key performance indicators (KPIs) like sales, revenue, conversions, and rate of growth.
- Your team is on the same page, and teams are working cooperatively to shape a unified experience for customers.
- You have the potential to expand your product offerings or diversify your product lines.
- Audience surveys and brand audits are registering positive brand sentiment.
- Your profitability is on the rise and your share of the market is expanding.
If you’re seeing disappointing results or running into obstacles in these areas, it could be time to rebrand. Rebranding can help you adapt to changes and stay relevant for audiences. A successful rebrand can breathe new life into your business, refresh your image both online and offline, and strengthen your positioning overall.
7 strategies for managing a brand
- Define your mission and values
- Develop branding guidelines
- Create a marketing plan
- Collaborate with brand ambassadors and influencers
- Monitor your performance
- Reward customer loyalty
- Protect what you’ve built
1. Define your mission and values
Your brand mission should clearly state what your business does, how it’s unique, and what value you offer to customers. What can your business give customers that no other business can?
Think about conveying your values, or the set of principles that guide the way you and your teams operate. Customers can be attracted to a business based on its brand values. For example, customers who care about environmental sustainability and fair trade might be attracted to businesses that emphasize eco-friendly materials and ethical sourcing methods.
Your business website can be a home for your brand’s mission and values, which can also be reflected in physical store locations, marketing campaigns, and other channels.
2. Develop branding guidelines
Branding can help customers identify a business and understand what it does. Elements of strong branding can include:
- A brand name and logo
- Visuals like images and video content
- The voice and tone of marketing copy
It might be worth it to create a brand kit for internal use. A brand kit can include logos and vector files, a color palette, acceptable fonts, and other useful branding materials. Communicating these guidelines and making resources easily accessible to team members can help ensure your content has a consistent look and feel that customers recognize.
3. Create a marketing plan
Solid brand positioning can start with in-depth audience research. Who might be interested in your offerings, and what channels can you use to reach potential customers? Let your audience research guide the development of a marketing plan. Decide on marketing channels and techniques, then start running campaigns.
A brand manager can be in charge of monitoring customer engagement and gauging how audiences might be changing over time. Insights like these can guide the evolution of a marketing strategy.
Learn more in our guide to ecommerce marketing
4. Collaborate with brand ambassadors and influencers
Is a strong digital presence part of your brand strategy? Consider teaming up with thought leaders within your niche. A single campaign with someone who has a large and loyal online following can bring a major boost to your brand’s visibility and introduce your offerings to new audiences.
You can also engage a brand ambassador for a series of promotional efforts. These could include digital campaigns or in-person events like product launches. Synergy with a brand ambassador could also center on user-generated content. Maybe you have a loyal customer who often posts online about how much they love your brand? It could be the start of a valuable relationship.
Live streaming events could also be worth investigating. Check out options like Amazon Live, a destination for live online events where brands can connect with new customers.
5. Monitor your performance
Once you’ve established a brand, there are several ways you can monitor brand performance on an ongoing basis.
Conduct market analysis and set up KPIs for measuring and tracking analytics. Common KPIs include clicks, conversions, sales, average transaction value, and customer retention. This type of data can help you make informed decisions about brand positioning.
You might also set up a mechanism for getting regular customer feedback. For example, customer surveys can help you gather audience input and help inform branding decisions. Taking action on feedback could mean running different marketing campaigns or tweaking branding to help differentiate a product from competitor offerings.
Looking to take your branding to the next level? Consider running a regular brand audit to gauge customer sentiment. This could involve in-depth analysis, or be as simple as a quick social media survey to give you immediate feedback. Either way, it can help clarify what action steps you should prioritize based on current conditions.
6. Reward customer loyalty
Customer acquisition and customer retention are two separate but related areas of focus. Once you’ve earned the trust of new customers, think about ways to keep them coming back for more.
Be sure to have adequate options for customer service in place. You might also set up a designated landing page where customers can sign up for marketing emails and be the first to know about deals, discounts, and more. Another idea is to start a loyalty program.
One example of a loyalty program is Subscribe & Save in the Amazon store. It offers customers the convenience of regular deliveries and discounts. For sellers, the program is an opportunity to secure repeat sales and build brand loyalty.
7. Protect what you’ve built
To safeguard your brand and reputation, invest in expertise, technologies, software, and other systems to meet your business’s unique needs as you become more established. Risk management can help you mitigate crises and recover quickly from problems or issues that might arise. Ongoing market analysis can also help you keep an eye on competition and make sure bad actors like counterfeiters don’t profit off your hard work.
Examples of successful brand management
Kanda Chocolates
There’s always room for someone else . . . There could be 50 brands of something, but it’s how you market it—and what your story is—that makes it a little bit different, that people might connect with.
Hope & Henry
I’ve actually been really impressed—and kind of surprised, quite frankly—at how much Amazon has helped us build the brand; not just on Amazon, but outside of Amazon.
New Republic
Amazon allows creative people like myself to focus on what we do well, which is build great brands and create great products.
How brand management works in the Amazon store
We have programs, tools, and resources to support your success as you launch and grow a brand.
Amazon Brand Registry
Amazon Brand Registry is a free program that can help you build and protect your brand. If you have a registered or pending trademark, you can enroll a brand in Brand Registry to gain access to a suite of brand management tools and programs.
Amazon Brand Analytics
Amazon Brand Analytics is available to brands enrolled in Brand Registry. This collection of dashboards can help businesses better understand brand performance through aggregated customer search and purchasing data. Try it out to explore metrics for impressions, clicks, conversions, and more.
A+ Content and Stores
Brands enrolled in Brand Registry can use the Amazon Stores builder to build an online storefront. Check it out to create a customizable shopping destination for your brand complete with advanced automation and a user-friendly checkout experience.
Registered brands can also use A+ Content to enhance product detail pages with videos, shoppable comparison charts, and more. Bring your brand’s story to life and shine a spotlight on unique selling points like your mission and values.
Amazon Ads
Amplify your brand’s message with marketing campaigns and drive traffic to grow your audience. Amazon Ads can help you boost visibility and increase sales with cost-per-click (CPC) ads to reach customers in the Amazon store and beyond.
Manage Your Experiments
Manage Your Experiments allows registered brands to run tests comparing different versions of product content to see what drives the most sales. Use it to make data-driven decisions about product titles, images, and other elements based on what resonates most with customers.
Customer Reviews
Available to brands enrolled in Brand Registry, the Customer Reviews tool in Seller Central gathers reviews and ratings in one place for efficient analysis. View and respond to feedback, uncover product insights, and build brand loyalty.
Automate Pricing
As your pricing strategy evolves along with your brand, consider using a pricing automation tool. Automate Pricing in the Amazon store can automatically adjust price points for you based on changes in demand, competitor prices, and other factors.
Search engine optimization (SEO)
You can use keyword research to improve product titles, descriptions, bullet points, and other elements in order to reach a wider audience, or help a more specific set of customers find the exact products they’re looking for. Learn more about Amazon SEO.
Global Selling
Expand your reach by selling to Amazon customers in other countries. We have programs and tools to help you navigate complexities like translation and currency exchange rates when you sell across the border.
Learn more about selling globally with Amazon
Take brand management to the next level
As you shape a brand customers can rely on, you may benefit from increased customer trust, loyalty, and sales. Each exchange a customer has with your brand can be an opportunity to create a memorable experience and form lasting connections.
Building brand credibility can be an ongoing and intensive effort, but it can pay dividends in audience perception, positive word-of-mouth marketing, and other benefits. For best results, focus on keeping customers at the center of your approach.
If you’re interested in the suite of programs and tools Amazon offers to help manage your brand, create an Amazon selling account to get started. We can help you get established in a niche, reach new customers, and thrive in ecommerce.
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*A Professional selling plan is $39.99/month + selling fees. Learn more
