What is brand management? How it works, and how to do it well. -

Key learnings

Brand management involves ensuring brand compliance by providing the whole company with easy access to your brand parameters.
Good brand management leads to increased brand awareness, which leads to community support⁠(opens in a new tab or window) and company growth.
Brand management is an iterative and collaborative process that takes time and investment in the right tools.
A brand isn’t static, because customer preferences and trends change all the time. That’s why monitoring brand performance is crucial. When a brand’s performance is dipping, it might be time to rebrand.

We’ll get into everything you need to know about growing, managing, and adapting your brand strategy.

What is brand management?

If your team has ever struggled to keep branding cohesive, or felt like you ‘lost control of the brand’ entirely during periods of rapid growth, a clear brand management strategy can help.

Brand management is the steps taken to monitor your brand image, grow brand awareness, and build a strong brand community.

Strategic brand management is all about translating your company’s brand purpose into every piece of content you need for sales and marketing strategies, from business cards to presentations to social posts. By building a cohesive brand, you can develop a strong reputation and improve awareness, both online and offline.

What is a brand management process?

The brand management process starts with a strong brand identity, and involves ongoing monitoring, updating, and analyzing of brand performance. Many brand managers measure brand sentiment and awareness as benchmarks for growth.

Types of brand management

1. Strategic brand management

Strategic brand management is using your brand intentionally to scale business growth. Before you can activate your brand to contribute to sales and marketing initiatives, you need to build an initial brand identity that aligns with business values.

Steps of strategic brand management:

Determine your brand positioning and values. Brand positioning is the action of setting your brand apart in the minds of your consumers. Your values should shape your company goals, which will help you decide the best brand positioning strategy to use. Consider your brand values. Do they provide your brand with a purpose that aligns with your company goals?
Develop and test brand campaigns. Highlight your USP (unique selling proposition), and try different types of brand campaigns to see what resonates most with your audience. Try brand campaign ideas like using emotional branding, promoting your brand on several channels, using video, or working with brand ambassadors or influencers.
Measure brand performance. Set internal and external benchmarks by figuring out key performance indicators (KPIs) like growth rate, engagement, and conversions, and setting goals based on your industry. Brand performance metrics include brand recognition, brand perception, brand consideration, and referrals.
Maintain and improve brand equity. Brand equity is a brand’s perceived value according to its customers, and it can be positive or negative depending on how consumers feel about their experience with the brand. To build brand equity, establish brand trust, focus on reputation management, prioritize the customer experience, and grow brand awareness. Companies and organizations need to add SSL certificates⁠(opens in a new tab or window) to their websites to secure online transactions and keep customer information private and secure.

2. Digital brand management

Digital brand management is a system for managing digital brand assets, monitoring online brand reputation, and building a brand community. Digital brand strategies should be centered around your target audience, and create an emotional connection that drives brand awareness.

Managing a brand online can include:

Creating valuable content for your audience
Improving the customer experience with helpful technology
Using design and asset management tools, or project management software⁠(opens in a new tab or window)
Incorporating search engine optimization (SEO) and branded keyword⁠(opens in a new tab or window) research in marketing campaigns

5 core principles of brand management

1. Brands are so much more than a logo and color scheme

A brand is recognized by its logo⁠(opens in a new tab or window), brand fonts⁠(opens in a new tab or window), and brand colors⁠(opens in a new tab or window), but those design choices alone don’t make up the whole brand. Your company’s personality, its product offerings, its voice and tone, its packaging, and its social media presence all contribute just as much to your brand’s success. Incorporating unique elements like a custom box mockup⁠(opens in a new tab or window) or paper bag mockup⁠(opens in a new tab or window) can further distinguish your brand’s packaging, adding another layer to your overall identity.

The goal of the brand decisions you make are to create a personality and relay a set of values that resonate with your target audience. Trying to appeal to every person on the planet won’t work, so making bold design decisions and taking calculated risks when it comes to building your brand and values can help you grow your business among your target audience.

Defining your brand’s core values and personality is an important early stage of the brand creation process.

Learn how to make these important brand choices with our video below:

WATCH: How to define your core brand values and personality.

To learn more about the choices you need to make when branding your business, watch our full Branding Your Business series⁠(opens in a new tab or window).

Brand management involves intentionally selecting and leveraging a wide range of brand elements to shape the public perception of your brand. Seek out feedback throughout the process, too: Finding out how the public reacts to every choice you make when building your brand — and acting on their feedback — helps you keep your brand current and effective.

Here’s a few examples of elements that make up a brand:

Logo⁠(opens in a new tab or window) design, like the Golden Arches of McDonald’s.
Signature colors⁠(opens in a new tab or window), like Starbucks green.
Marketing materials design.
Product design.
Packaging⁠(opens in a new tab or window) design, like the minimal white boxes for Apple products.
Voice, tone, and personality of every written word you share, from your manuals to your communications and marketing materials.
Pricing, like Subway’s $5 footlong.
Social media presence⁠(opens in a new tab or window), like Duolingo’s videos on TikTok⁠(opens in a new tab or window).
Spokespeople or characters⁠(opens in a new tab or window), like Disney’s Mickey Mouse, the Geico Gecko, and Dos Equis’s The Most Interesting Man in the World.
Sensory cues, including signature scents, flavors, lighting and store design, and music choices, like the scent of Cinnabon at the mall or the black and white glamor of Sephora.
Your company mission statement.
The customer experience, whether your products are available only in-store or online, or a mix of both.
The demographics of who your target audience and current customers are — college students? 30-somethings in the city? Empty nesters? Barbecue aficionados?

2. Brand management is a long-term project

A brand is not built overnight. It takes time to firmly establish a brand that is recognizable and evokes a strong mental association for customers. Some brands may achieve overnight viral recognition — which often disappears just as quickly — but building a brand⁠(opens in a new tab or window) that will last is still a slow and steady process.

The most instantly recognizable brands have built up their name and branding over many years, which requires a dedicated strategy and ongoing maintenance. Design-centered collaboration tools⁠(opens in a new tab or window) can make it easier to see the visual progress of your brand and how it’s evolving.

What is brand management? How it works, and how to do it well.