People talk about brands, the one they buy, the one they don’t like, or refer to their business as “my brand”. Few, however, have a deep understanding of their strategic and operational implication in the success of businesses and organizations.

Why are brands essential in business?

Because in them is kept the memory of what the companies generated in their customers as:

• Useful communication
• A good service experience
• A memorable experience of use or care
• An informative post-sale service

A good memory reinforces the behavior and the possibility of being recommended.

In a simpler way: good businesses build great brands, and growth.

Bad brands, the result of companies that did not know how to understand or serve their market, are the insignia that distinguish them in failure.

According to Clamor Gieske, there are seven main reasons why brands really matter:

1.- Brands and reputation protect consumers

Branding, creating impressions and reputation, the resulting impression, is a system that allows the consumer to have affinity or repulsion for a company’s services or products.

A company constructively focused on developing, innovating and generating better deliverables creates more loyal customer bases, who do business with the company for longer, and who are willing to pay higher prices for the certainty of better results.

2. Strong brands drive stock performance and can be measured.

When a company performs outstandingly well, everyone around it benefits: shareholders, management, employees and customers.

In addition, companies with strong brands tend to be more resilient to economic swings, giving them more reliable demand predictability and a more stable outlook.

And in public companies it is very clear, when comparing the total value in the market against the value of their fixed assets.

3. Brands offer more choice and ensure competitive economics.

In an open economy, where there is little or no government intervention, the competition that differentiates the different brands helps to easily assess the differences between one brand and another.

In addition, brands help to generate a market on more differentiators than just price, such as quality, innovation or reputation.

4. Brands allow the economy to adapt faster and grow more.

Markets are a constant flux that accelerates with technological change. Brands help faster adaptation and more dynamic responses between buyers and sellers.

And it’s not just because brands simplify purchasing choices; they also play an educational role, helping to reduce uncertainty. Brands often generate interest and excitement for new products or services, helping to break down barriers in stagnant or protected markets.

In general, brands contribute to the process of adaptation and growth in competitive economies.

5. Brands accelerate growth across geographic and cultural boundaries.

Brands help cross borders more easily. Global brands are great assets for their countries.

Brands are vital for success across borders and are a significant source of international competitiveness, because they help transcend cultural boundaries as long as their language is “international”.

6. Strong brands benefit everyone

Brands are not only central to consumer products but also to companies that sell to other companies and service providers. They help non-profit organizations, governments and tourism to be understood.

A clearly defined brand strategy provides organizations with the foundation necessary to communicate their vision and purpose to their stakeholders: consumers, prospects, shareholders, legislators, business partners, employees and competitors.

The role of brands goes beyond visual identity, but rather they are guides that drive business performance in a myriad of facets.

7. Brands ensure that companies are accountable for their actions.

A well-managed brand has high exposure and engagement that can be reflected in more sales, but this high visibility makes companies more visible but also more vulnerable.

Today, businesses and institutions are under increased pressure to be transparent in order to maintain a higher brand value.

Brands help ensure that companies are accountable for their actions.

Companies with the best-known brands are widely scrutinized and examined by consumers, journalists and the general public to verify whether they comply with the law.

Closing

There was speculation that the growth of digital technology and the Internet would have a diluting effect on the power of brands, but this has not been the case; on the contrary, some of the most valuable brands in the world such as Apple, Google, Microsoft and Cisco have increased their value and influence in the market.

Brands are symbolic artifacts that connect directly with people’s feelings, emotions and ideas, which can lead to higher sales and commercial influence in the markets.

That may be a bold generalization, but it is a reflection of what most of us avoid: being sold to.

Whether it’s a salesperson directly in a mall, those who do it by door-to-door canvassing or digitally through emails, search ads and banners on newspaper or magazine sites.

People would rather not waste their time attending to what the inconsiderate salesman is only interested in: sell, sell, sell.

Most of the time it is usually because you don’t have the time or the quality attention to compare offers, but why give away time to someone who wants to use it for your benefit?

And this is aggravated by the fact that some sales tactics consist of giving a benefit that is difficult to understand surrounded by a paraphernalia of technical terms that are not very digestible.

We have created protection mechanisms

Nowadays, there is so much advertising and pressure from salespeople that we have learned not to give them our attention, not to wear ourselves out trying to understand offers that are confusing or simply do not interest us.

This does not mean that we all respond this way, but it is an increasingly widespread trend, where companies are having a harder time getting people’s attention for a short time to try to place their products or services.

It’s the weariness of hearing so many salespeople.

Let’s analyze: how many ads is the average person exposed to per day?hundreds.

From billboards on the side of streets and roads, to messages in every business, digital media banners, Google and Facebook ads, banks with “hassle-free” credit card offers, and blaring street vendors that take away the peace. Constant pressure.

There are studies that mention that people have learned to “disconnect” from advertising, and it is obvious, who wants to be processing dozens of ads and stop concentrating on their own life.

People don’t like to be sold to, but they love to buy.

The tendency to avoid vendors, advertisements, etc. was already growing before the covid-19 pandemic, and has increased.

This means that it is becoming more and more challenging to sell, especially using the most common methods.

Now, you have to take a breath, not all sales are the same.

There are products that are immediate: a pair of shoes, a dessert, a washing machine repair service; these are all examples of purchases that tend to take less time, and can be a straightforward and less sophisticated sales effort.

But the purchase of real estate, vehicles, industrial tools, and many others, requires further research and comparison, where the criteria is based on a certain number of variables.

What to do?

First of all, it is to consider making a sensible and flexible marketing and sales plan that allows to have a value proposition that differentiates the brand, that particularizes the company, that defines the unique space it wants to have in the market, and to have creative and digital assets that drive the messages.

Anticipate and be creative.

A sensible plan from the point of view that considers the client/prospect as the center of the project, offering them a clear benefit for their life or business.

Not only trying to sell, but to create a parallel strategy to the sales one, where information is provided in an organic way, that nurtures your criteria, that broadens the panorama of those who read it, that generates little by little a sense of trust.

Flexible from the point of view where messages, designs and platforms will be used in different combinations, experimenting to understand which are the most interesting, the ones that provoke more conversations or contacts, the ones that request prices and sales terms.

Today we have the advantage that advertising powers are no longer concentrated in television, radio or the press; but at the same time there is the challenge of knowing how to devise, define and program campaigns on a series of platforms, both traditional and digital, with a given budget.

Nowadays it is not only about selling, selling, selling, selling, but also about informing, being attractive and useful.

For Google Ads, there is a tool called Google Ads, which helps organizations, companies or individuals to advertise their products or services.

And Google Ads will show those ads when people are browsing the web.

The ads may appear on the search network, on Maps, and on the sites of its partner network.

Payment on the platform is by results when, for example, people perform an action by:

• Click on an ad
• Visiting a web site
• Asking for directions to a store

Given the current pandemic conditions, it seems sensible to jump into opening a Google Ads account, run the ad, fund it and wait for results.

This is not recommended.

Mistake no. 1

Usually, people who are not familiar with the Google Ads platform, when creating an account, are sent to a simplified version called “Smart Campaigns”. It is true that it is much easier to create an ad campaign in Smart Campaigns, the variables are reduced to a minimum, and the configuration is made easier.

But this comes at a cost:

You have less control over each point of the campaign. With the risk of much higher campaign spending.

And that suits Google. It sells more.

But it is very possible that your cost will increase and you don’t know how to reduce it.

The platform, in its “Expert” version of Google Ads, gives the facility to manage granularly your Google Ads campaigns.

• Daily expending
• The bidding for each keyword
• Negative keywords
• The geographical area by zones or radius
• The messages of the advertisements and their descriptions
• The type of audience
• And many more…

However, setting up an ad campaign in Google Ads is not everything, it is necessary to know how to read the data over time and optimize it. To increase the return on investment (ROI) by focusing on the most productive formula.

It is true that not Google Ads has a learning curve that requires effort, but in this increasingly digitized world, it is well worth giving it some time that will pay off.