What is brand management?

Effective brand management ensures visitors and customers have a positive experience at every interaction. Competent brand management also helps your brand stand out from the competition. By maintaining consistent messaging and experiences, both online and in-store, you can build trust and make your brand more memorable.  

When customers recognize your brand, it may also increase the likelihood of purchase.  

Brand management also focuses on customer loyalty. Loyal customers return to your brand and recommend it to others, driven by positive experiences and strong relationships. 

Three basic brand management principles

From customers recognizing a brand logo or jingle without seeing a brand name to consistently choosing the same brand, there are a few brand management basics to understand.  

1. Brand equity

Brand equity represents how much value a brand holds in the eyes of its customers. Factors including brand awareness, image, brand association, and loyalty all contribute to the overall perceived value a brand has. Brand equity is often intangible and challenging to quantify.  

Building brand equity takes time but can erode quickly if brand image isn’t managed properly. 

Pro tip: Find out the difference between brand equity vs. brand value now.  

2. Brand recognition

Brand recognition is how easily consumers can identify a brand without directly seeing its name. The key components for brand recognition include visual elements like logos, slogans, and packaging but also extend to audio cues such as jingles.  

Consistent messaging, themes, and brand personality can all play a role in how audiences recognize and connect with a brand. 

3. Brand loyalty

Brand loyalty is when customers consistently prefer a particular brand over competitors. Strong brand loyalty reduces the importance of price in purchasing decisions and encourages repeat purchases, subscriptions, and brand advocacy.  

Loyal customers often become brand evangelists, promoting the brand through word-of-mouth and social media. 

What’s the importance of brand management?

From building a recognizable brand identity to creating a solid competitive advantage, there are a few reasons why brand management is critical.  

Better brand recognition

Brand management is essential for creating a recognizable identity that makes a brand stand out in crowded markets. For example, companies use consistent visual and messaging elements in their brand assets to create a strong brand identity and stand out.  

Building brand recognition helps establish trust with consumers, making it more likely they’ll think of your brand when making a purchase. Research on consumer awareness, often called the “awareness set,” shows that consumers need to be aware of a brand before they can consider buying from it. Interestingly, research also indicates they don’t need to know about competing brands to make a purchase decision.  

Stronger customer loyalty

Effective brand management builds lasting relationships with customers by resonating with them on an emotional level. By consistently delivering on brand expectations and creating a sense of trust and reliability, brands encourage repeat business. Loyal customers are more inclined to come back to a brand they trust, fostering long-term success and advocacy. 

Competitive advantage

Proper brand management helps differentiate a brand from its competitors and attract a distinct following. By clearly defining what makes a brand unique, companies can appeal to specific audiences and stand out as innovators and market leaders. 

Seven best brand management strategies

Recognizable brands all have something in common––they have solid brand management strategies in place. Here are the seven brand management best practices and branding strategies to follow. 

1. Create and manage a unique brand identity

To create a strong brand, begin by establishing your brand elements. 

Here’s a quick checklist to get started:  

However, it’s not enough to simply create your brand elements. You’ll also need somewhere to house and share them, too. 

2. Manage your brand with a digital asset management platform

Organizations looking to scale brand consistency across channels and markets need a digital asset management (DAM) platform. DAM platforms centralize all brand and content controls, digital assets, and brand guidelines into one organized and tidy source of truth. 

DAM platforms include everything you need to manage your brand. Features like version control, digital rights management, brand style guides (also known as brand guidelines), user permissions, approval statuses, and expiration dates help organizations maintain brand and content control.  

It’s much easier to collaborate effectively with creatives, marketers, content creators, and stakeholders using DAM software’s unified approval workflows and collaboration tools. Also, features like DAM workflows, workspaces, and share links speed up collaboration.  

A DAM platform also transforms content workflows and boosts productivity. Since files are centralized and searchable, it reduces the time spent finding assets and eliminates duplicative work. Additionally, DAM software accelerates content production with automated processes and integrations. Some DAM software uses metadata and auto-tagging along with AI-powered search and AI facial recognition for easy content categorization and retrieval. 

Finally, a DAM solution allows for better analysis of content performance, helping you understand what branding strategies work.  

3. Share consistent messaging across all marketing channels

To ensure brand consistency across channels, you need to develop brand guidelines that cover all brand elements’ proper usage (in other words, centralizing all the important brand elements from strategy one into a single place). You’ll also need to maintain and share a centralized content calendar and have tools to distribute and track content usage, too. Here’s how to do it: 

First, create and distribute your brand guidelines to all team members and partners. Have everyone review the guidelines, ensure they understand how to use them, and have a system in place to enforce follow-through.  

With a DAM platform, your brand guidelines, content, and controls are in one place, so you can actually enforce brand consistency across teams and channels. 

Next, don’t forget to maintain your brand guidelines; it should be a living document that is regularly updated for any color, font, imagery, or messaging changes. 

Finally, practice cross-channel coordination by aligning messaging across platforms like social media, email, websites, and advertising. You do this by creating and collaborating on a centralized content calendar across teams. 

Now, a centralized calendar, unified brand guidelines, and DAM software’s content controls all come together for brand consistency across multiple channels.  

4. Prioritize customer experience

It’s important to understand the needs of your customers to make a positive and lasting impression.  

Gather insights through surveys and customer feedback to tailor content and experiences to their preferences and ensure your offerings align with their expectations. Then, personalize interactions by using data and marketing automation tools to deliver customized recommendations and communications across all touchpoints. 

When interactions are also on-brand across all channels using a DAM platform’s content controls, you’ll build stronger connections and a powerful brand.  

You can optimize digital experiences by ensuring your websites and apps are user-friendly, fast, and mobile-optimized for cohesive navigation. A smooth digital experience is crucial for retaining customers and encouraging repeat visits. 

Finally, enhance customer service by providing responsive, multi-channel support through knowledgeable representatives and AI chatbots. Chatbots are great for providing assistance with purchases, handling basic questions about products, and triaging product support. Offering prompt and effective assistance at every buyer’s journey stage reinforces customer satisfaction and loyalty. 

5. Build strategic partnerships

Identify opportunities to strengthen brand identity and positioning and enhance your offerings through strategic partnerships with businesses, ambassadors, and influencers. Great partnerships can expand your brand’s reach to similar audiences and help you explore new markets. Similarly, co-branding can increase your brand equity and elevate brand positioning and perception. 

Choose partners who share your brand values, have large, active brand followings, and stellar reputations. Also, look for brands where you can tap into complementary strengths by combining resources and expertise.  

6. Focus on brand loyalty

Deliver consistent value by ensuring your products and services are high-quality and meet or exceed customer expectations. Consistent value builds trust and brand loyalty. 

One strategy could include implementing loyalty programs to reward repeat customers with exclusive offers, discounts, or points systems. Incentives encourage continued patronage and make customers feel appreciated. 

Then, gather and act on feedback to improve your products and services. Showing customers that you value their opinions strengthens their connection to your brand and builds loyalty. 

Building a community is another avenue to foster brand loyalty. Use events, social media, forums, and exclusive content to build a sense of belonging among customers. Encourage interaction and connection to deepen relationships and engagement. 

Don’t forget to cultivate brand advocates who naturally promote your products and services to family and friends without any commission or incentive. These advocates can significantly expand your reach and credibility. 

7. Become a thought leader with authoritative content

Brand juggernauts are seen as thought leaders, and it’s no accident. Powerful brands build a library of authoritative content to elevate brand perception. 

Identify your target audience’s needs through the research you did earlier in step four. First-party data and insights will help you understand the most relevant topics and issues. Incorporate key audience themes into your brand guidelines to ensure content consistency and relevance among channels and teams. 

Develop high-quality content by creating informative, well-researched articles, white papers, and videos that showcase your expertise. Sharing informative content positions your brand as a reliable authority in your industry.   

Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. To reach a wider audience, try creating diverse content formats, such as blogs, podcasts, webinars, and infographics. Providing content in multiple formats can increase accessibility, engagement, and channel content coverage. 

Regularly refresh content to ensure it remains current and relevant. Add new information to maintain your brand’s authority and ensure your content continues to meet your audience’s needs. 

Why choose Canto for brand management

Canto is the market-leading DAM platform for brand management. With Canto, you get the brand and content controls for managing your growing brand all in one platform. Canto makes it easy to organize, find, collaborate on, and distribute brand content across channels. Canto is fully loaded, including Canto AI Visual Search, Smart Tags, unlimited branded Portals, Style Guides, Workflows, intuitive brand controls, and everything else you need for brand management. 

Brand management frequently asked questions