Branding Research: Which Strategy Will Ensure Success?

How much value does your existing brand lend to the future of your company? The answer to this question is vital to business success, and fortunately—the answer can be found through research. Determining your current brand equity and improving brand value is the ultimate goal. Even if you already have a strong brand, it is important to maintain its qualities. To do this and develop a manageable, reality-based plan in the process, businesses rely on solid research.

What is Branding?
Professionals in business today understand that in order to succeed, a brand should be carefully crafted, nurtured, reviewed, and even updated to ensure their presence in the near and distant future. A brand is the visual, emotional, rational, and cultural associations that a consumer associates with a company or product. You can read more about the definition and importance of branding in the previous Bouchard Marketing feature article highlighted in the Spring Issue of this Web site. The article link is available in the scroll-down menu option at the top of this page.

The Value Of Research
To retain current customers and attract new ones, businesses must positively differentiate themselves in the marketplace and determine their unique brand attributes—what makes them different from the rest. This begins with research. Research adds validity to the all-important branding image and provides a confident basis on which to develop corporate direction. Research also ensures that materials produced for corporate image, promotions, etc. are targeted to the correct audiences and reinforce brand attributes. The first step to finding your brand's unique attributes is to confirm the profiles of your customers. Once you are fully aware of these customers, and more importantly what qualities in your product, service, or brand make them loyal, then all marketing can focus on these desirable attributes and reassure them that the qualities they have always appreciated will not change. This information can be confirmed through research conducted in a variety of different ways.

Welcome Feedback
An effective research tool is a Focus Group, which allows the opportunity to gain instant feedback on customer perceptions of the company now, what they want for the future, and if any concerns exist. A variety of pre-determined questions, asked by a professional facilitator, will generate open discussion and valuable insight on topics that the company has deemed important. The facilitator can add and adapt questions that arise as a result of specific issues uncovered during discussion. This type of research provides a quick turnaround for instant feedback and is very effective for studying consumer satisfaction, ad campaign testing, jury testing and more.

Test The Conclusions
While focus groups give us a qualitative look at perceptions and preferences, Telephone Surveys allow us to test, quantify, and validate those findings. Starting with a list of proven questions, this survey yields the greatest results when it also includes customized questions regarding the results of focus group findings or other research. With customers who have previously indicated a desire to receive more information, telephone research then has the added potential to create new leads in 10%-25% of these survey respondents. So when applicable, this type of research can actually help defray survey investment-costs through new customer opportunities.

Include Employees
Don’t overlook the combined power of your employees. An important task of any company should be their commitment to maintaining brand integrity in every aspect of corporate action—from the boardroom to the break room and beyond. When a promise or a claim is made, that promise must be kept. If you say your brand is “friendly” and your sales team or support staff is not, you have just failed. If the employees are secure and informed they will pass that on to your customers. Employee information can be gathered through Written Surveys or a Vision Workshop where a facilitator brings out ideas and concerns at the beginning to help get the whole team on board, which makes the entire branding process faster and easier.

Involve Customers
Q-Sort Analysis is another cost effective way to obtain helpful research information and involve your customers directly in brand development. It consists of testing and comparing different corporate logos, ads, or other graphic compositions for their relative strengths. The survey can be done in written form, through face-to-face interviews, or for the sake of speed and affordability, via the company’s Web site. For example, after a name or branding change, a researcher may use three variations of a logo and ask: Which logo best says “dependability?” The order is noted and the process is repeated for other characteristics. Each is rated for strength in various categories to discover the strongest logo overall.

Partner With Professionals
The type and amount of research required depends in large part upon the preferences and needs of each client. Bouchard Marketing has extensive research and branding experience. We work together with the client to determine which research is most appropriate, what findings are most meaningful, and how best to respond in order to benefit the common good of the company and its future success. For additional information about Branding Research, check out the tips and trends on the ‘What’s Hot’ section of this Web site. For help with
your marketing research or branding project, call Bouchard Marketing at
(916) 783-6161.