Marketing is not like mathematics. There is no set formula that will help you in arriving at a final answer and being able to prove that the theorem is right.
Marketing is a lot about trial and error, individual personalities, conviction and confidence, guts and gumption, risks and courage, fundamentals and basics and much more.
There are enough and more books out there that promise you marketing gyaan and marketing knowledge with each one coming up with their own way of building brands. I have also read a few and I still intend to read a few more. There is no harm in getting to know different views and perspectives that exist out there for a subject as wide and as abstract as marketing.
But over the years, I have also picked up my own understanding of brand building and what works. Instead of giving lot of theory and corporate jargon, if I could offer you one tip of how to build a brand, then my suggestion would be that your brand can only be successful if it offers the SPA benefit.
Now stop scratching your head and wondering that if your brand has got nothing to do with salons or massage or SPAs, how can it offer the benefit of the SPA. This SPA benefit that I am talking about is not what you are thinking.
SPA in this context means:
S – Salience
P – Performance
A – Advantage
Now that I have taken care of your doubt and you have stopped considering me to be talking like a lunatic, let me elaborate on what I mean.
A brand has to offer the SPA benefit to become successful and stay successful. Let us understand this a bit more in detail:
Salience – Irrespective of how big a brand may already be, the brand will lose traction with its consumers, if it does not spend enough and be visible and salient in the minds of consumers. People often ask me why big brands like Coca Cola or Nike need to advertise as everyone knows them and thinks about them when making a purchase. My answer to them is that, as brands stop advertising, they start losing share of mind and that is when the downfall of a brand begins. Share of Mind is a critical aspect as it plays a crucial role in the purchase decision at the store and salience helps in driving share of mind, which leads to share of the wallet of the consumer.
Performance – You can spend millions of dollars on your brand across mediums, but all of that money is money down the drain if your brand does not perform in line with what it promises. Positioning of a brand has to be chosen after lot of consideration because this positioning that a brand takes, forms the barometer by which a consumer judges the performance of a brand. This combination of positioning and performance then helps in forming the perception of the brand in the minds of the consumers. So it is critical for brands to ensure that they perform what they promise.
Advantage – It is a competitive world out there and market conditions like a monopoly do not exist anymore. Sectors, industries and categories that see great growth and profitability will always attract more and more new players. Amidst such clutter and din, it is absolutely critical that your brand has a competitive advantage over the other brands, and the consumers should be able to tangibly feel or see that advantage. This will allow you to stay ahead of competitors who will always try to pull you down and overtake you.
So brand building basically starts from identifying the advantage that your brand has over your competition. This advantage should then be converted into positioning of the brand and monies should be spent behind that, to drive the positioning in the minds of consumers and building salience of the brand. This would ideally lead to trials or repeat of your brand and over time, the performance of the brand will help in building the perception of the brand and thereby the brand itself.
Once again, I would like to conclude by reiterating the fact that you can build a successful brand only if your brand offers the SPA benefit.
