A brand is the overall experience of a customer that distinguishes an organization or product from its rivals in the eyes of the customer. The aim is to create a lasting impression in the minds of customers.
Why is brand identity important?
There are a few reasons why brand identity is important. Below are a few:
- Personality: A brand identity is the visual representation of the values and “personality” of your brand.
- Consistency: This can be given with each piece having the same basic styles and design elements, creating a cohesive branding package.
- Differentiation: A brand identity helps you to differentiate your business from the competition and appropriately position your brand.
- Awareness: Creating a brand identity package ensures that your brand is at the forefront of all your marketing materials, which helps to increase brand awareness.
- Loyalty: An effective brand identity can help to build customer loyalty and trust in a brand, since it allows customers to make a connection between a product and the company.
How can you get into a Brand Management Career?
Interested? There are many things to learn in order to make it as a Brand Manager.
Educational Background
Brand management is offered as a specialization by some universities while pursuing an MBA / master’s program. But if you are in the marketing field, you can also top up your skills with various online brand management courses.
Skills Required
This is a demanding task where targets are important and candidates must be good at achieving, being well-organised and methodical if you want to excel in this field. Also, he should be able to analyze large set of data and come up with meaningful information out of that. Below are some of the major skills required:
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills
- Strong research and analytical skills
- Comfort with CRM software
- In-depth understanding of the company’s current products and future concepts
- A willingness to listen
- Ability to think creatively and innovatively
- Budget-management skills and proficiency
- Professional judgment and discretion that comes from years of experience in the field
- Analytical skills to forecast and identify trends and challenges
- Familiarity with the latest trends, technologies and methodologies in graphic design, web design, production, etc.
Specialization
Although it is itself is a specialization of marketing a product, you can further specialize in
- Retail
- Luxury Branding
- Brand Distribution
- Brand Packing
Nature of Job
This is one of the most demanding jobs in the world of sales and marketing, where your work will directly be impacting the bottom line of the company. The job responsibility is not limited to tasks but to achieving targets in a stipulated time frame.
Growth path
For brand management, most newbies start their career as Marketing Analysts. After gaining a couple of years’ experience, they take up the role of Assistant Brand Manager or Brand Manager and coordinate various marketing functions. From some years down the line, you can see yourself as Marketing Director building strategies for the brand.
Over to you
We hope you’ve got the basics on how you can enter this lucrative career. What are you waiting for? Take this first step by gaining the skills required for Brand Management.
