The Significance Of Brand To Business Strategy

There is no doubt that today's Chinese enterprises are aware of doing so.

It is not easy to clarify the relationship between brand and business strategy. They are closely related to each other.

But many companies confuse them with a lot of problems, confusing their different meanings and making a lot of misunderstanding between what they do and what they say.

Brand and business

Guiding the future development of enterprises

Formulating strategy is a long-term work to consider the enterprise. Whether it is brand or business strategy, enterprises need to analyze their goals, resources and capabilities systematically and integrally, and put forward corresponding possible development paths and make choices.

Brand relative to business, the two answer the positioning of enterprises, the relationship between each other, as well as the relationship between business growth and the role of differences.

From the point of view of positioning development, brand often answers the question of "existence" of an enterprise: what problems the enterprise has to solve, meet or create what kind of demand the customer needs, or what possible changes the enterprise is facing.

What brands care about is not just what the enterprise can make at present, but what the existence of the enterprise can create for the outside world.

When the business strategy of an enterprise considers the core competitiveness of a company, the brand strategy considers the meaning of the brand created by the enterprise, and extracts an exciting proposition and its reasons.

From the point of view of mutual relationship, brands focus on "what to say", "who to say", "how to say", and "where to say". These questions correspond to the core concepts, objects of communication, communication tonality and communication channels of enterprises, while business strategies focus on "what to do", "to whom", "how to do" and "where to put into practice", which correspond to specific business, customers, business plans and business channels.

There is no contradiction between business and brand, but the perspective of observation is different.

From the perspective of driving the growth of enterprises, some enterprises are driving the development of enterprises from a business perspective. Some enterprises are driving the enterprises to make unremitting efforts to achieve their goals from the perspective of brand vision.

Vision driven or business driven is a management option for many enterprises.

Enterprises that aspire to develop strong brands put the brand at the core of the development of the enterprise, take the brand as the motive force to drive the internal staff and the external market, fulfill the brand promise; others put the brand under the business, and take the brand as a stage strategy to match the business development, so as to respond to the market challenge and meet the communication needs of the enterprise.

Brand concept beyond reality business

Although brands and businesses are inseparable, there is still a big difference between what to say and what to do.

Brand does not need to be trapped in what the enterprise can do in the immediate market conditions. The brand can describe a future enterprise's ideal at a higher level.

The brand strategy objective of many enterprises is to "create the first brand in China", which does not express the real development ideal of the enterprise itself. Therefore, "making the first brand" is neither the purpose of the existence of the enterprise, nor is it a result.

The great brands have done a good demonstration for us. They can put forward a great dream in the observation of the world and form the idea and mission of the enterprise.

Apple Corp makes science and technology more humane for people to use, Nike promotes the competitive spirit of competitive sports, GE uses dreams to start the future, encourages innovation, and contributes to human society.

The brand has set up a lofty ideal for business. They surpass the real business. They are more likely to resonate with the public and customers on the concept than the simple brand of quality and function.

For developing brands, setting up a concept suitable for brands should not only observe the whole world in depth, but also put forward their own ideas and ideas in combination with their own abilities and characteristics, so as to solve a meaningful problem.

Therefore, the brand beyond the real business is that it does not need to be restricted by the existing business. It is the navigation mark that goes ahead of the development of the enterprise, guiding and motivating the staff to work hard and innovate. This goal must be practical or exciting.

Brands need not cover all businesses.

In the face of market opportunities and competition, enterprises will naturally extend their product lines, expand their businesses, or diversify their development.

Brand will also expand, develop or create with the expansion of business.

Can the brand accommodate more business?

This is a choice of brand structure.

Generally speaking, brand does not need to cover every business and product that an enterprise wants to do. The core of a brand's business is often the core business of a company, or the business that most needs the role of a brand.

Why do I say so?

The reason is very simple. For every business, the force of the brand is different.

Some businesses are highly competitive, brands become an important symbol of segmental consumers or market segmentation, so enterprises need to be clearly defined.

For example, in consumer goods, shampoo brands are divided into hair care, dandruff, herbs and other different market segments. Multi brands can help enterprises maximize their market share.

And some businesses, such as real estate development, industrial processing, agency sales, and so on, the brand's choice of customers is much smaller than that of highly competitive businesses, and the amount of brand dissemination is also very small.

Therefore, the most important thing for a brand is to focus on the biggest business or product with the greatest force of the brand, without having to take account of all the sub businesses.

In addition, brand is extensibility.

For some businesses or products, they are much smaller than the main industry, so it is enough to get the "halo effect" of the big brands of the enterprises, so it is not necessary to create the brand individually.

For example, Nike extends from sports products to hats, watches and other products, through the brand's "halo effect" to lift the brand force, and promote the sale of peripheral products.

Many Chinese enterprises have diversified development. If the business is extended or focused on the main business and involves other sub businesses, in this case, there is no need for the enterprise to adjust the main brand too much.

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Brand positioning does not mean that

Enterprises should give up future business opportunities.

Does the uncertainty of business mean that the brand has the same uncertainty?

For example, mergers and acquisitions, market expansion, upstream and downstream extension of supply chain.

Brand strategy requires enterprises to have a clearer business strategy framework and clear the possibility of their future development. Therefore, the development of brand strategy often starts with the business strategy of an enterprise, sometimes even forcing managers to make business direction selection, and many managers are very puzzled at this point.

Managers should spend more time at the business level thinking about where the enterprise is now and where to go, and the brand helps them think about the identity of the enterprise, and answer the question of "who am I" and "what do I want others to think of me" and "what do I want to say to others?"

Different business positioning leads to different corporate identity. Only by defining this relationship can enterprises design brand and find suitable positioning opportunities.

A good brand strategy should be able to cover the current and future needs of enterprise development and guide enterprises to develop to the established goals.

Today's brand positioning should not restrict the future business opportunities of enterprises, otherwise a brand will be too short-sighted.

The brand must be linked to the work through various means.

Brand and business are different from each other, so their docking is challenging.

Brand strategy shoulders the mission of landing the business strategy of an enterprise in the field of communication and market activities.

Many enterprises believe that brand work is difficult to implement because in the eyes of managers, brand strategy is a market slogan, a series of advertising and public relations activities, which are separated from their business. They often think that brands are important but not urgent, and they will abandon their brand investment if the market budget is insufficient.

There are also some enterprises who have high expectations for brands. They hope that the brand can immediately connect with the work that the enterprise will do immediately (such as 4P: products, pricing, channels and promotion), but they soon find that the brand can not immediately enter the actual execution level.

Where is the problem?

Brand strategy requires clear path planning for enterprise development.

Brand communication is not an overnight job. It should be systematic and targeted, and it should be in line with the development of enterprises at every stage of development.

The brand strategy of an enterprise should be decomposed into different stages of work objectives. Under each goal, the task, target, means and implementation plan of the brand must be decomposed into executable, measurable and adjustable work, otherwise the brand will be hard to really land.

Brand strategy also needs to plan various kinds of information, such as where, what stage, what circumstances and situations to say, all of which are the management and application of brand at the information level.

Without such information planning work, the brand can not only guide the dissemination work, cooperate and support the business and the market, but also cause confusion in brand communication.

In some cases, brand strategy needs to make a reasonable planning of the brand contacts.

The significance of this work is that it can clearly define the way of brand communication and identify where to reach the most effective target groups.

Brand work is a step by step process. It requires managers to think strategically when they think about brand strategy, and also respect the law of brand building and brand development.

Brand strategy itself is a complete system. It requires enterprises not to stick to existing businesses and markets too much, but to make long-term strategic plans in the direction of higher, farther, more creative and exciting.