The advent of Industry 4.0, artificial intelligence displacing functions and 5G on the anvil leads us to one pertinent question on everyone’s mind; “how to make money through the brand building?” Timely innovation is healthy but given the rapid pace of advancement coupled with ever-rising customer expectations, you realize that it’s not so simple. The challenge of making money and building your customer base remains, so let’s look at how you can emerge a winner.
Every board room has a naysayer who believes that spending on the brand building should not take precedence over other spends that generate instant revenue. Brand building requires money and doesn’t promise immediate returns, nor you can measure its impact on a scale. But if this mindset drives your product strategy, be prepared for fleeting success until you get swept away by your competitors who may slowly but surely build recall, trust and enhance equity of their brands.
From visiting a theme park to buying a pair of shoes to having a cup of coffee, such routine chores are catapulted to a moment of unmatched pleasure simply because of the ‘brand value’ each brand brings to the table. Making money isn’t an overnight process and neither is brand building. When your brand equity starts taking shape, your brand’s reach increases organically, and this induces new trials, fosters loyalty and builds a solid foundation. Almost all leading global brands have faced a ‘crisis’, whether it was product recalls or poor working conditions and at those watershed moments, it was the investment they made in ‘brand building’ over the years that kept them afloat and keeps them going strong even today. That’s why you can make far more money through the brand building than through R&D, through innovation and through even patents.
The beauty of the brand building is that you can only make a real difference if you remain true to your brand. Following the herd when it comes to advertising campaigns will only fuel your competitors’ progress. Instead, you should carve your own identity and treat your brand as a separate entity. Based on this approach, you should invest in at least one standalone brand building activity year-on-year until you reach a stage where you start reaping benefits through organic revenues. When it becomes synonymous with your brand is when you can sit back and be sure to see an uptick in revenues or in other words experience the phenomenon of ‘making money through brand building’.
Flaunting and self-consciousness are at peak levels and only rising. Everyone is concerned about ‘that picture they take below the Eiffel Tower’ and the magnitude of the response to their props and poses. A counselor would lament at this but there’s no better time and place to be a brand. Making money through brand building here could mean investing in an activity that makes your brand a partner in your consumer’s journey of self-discovery, of achievements, of chasing their dreams or simply giving them a platform to express themselves. To conclude, your brand’s loyalty quotient goes up by notches and results in your brand making good money.
