Be Strategic in Managing Your Brand
Effective brand management is key to differentiating your life sciences brand and products in an increasingly competitive marketplace, and it requires consistent delivery of your brand promise across all channels and to all audiences. This consistency in your company’s voice and appearance – and continued visibility across digital and traditional platforms – will help your company stand out in the minds of both your clinical and consumer audiences.
Today’s life sciences marketers are dealing with more channels and technology updates than ever before, an increased number of remote employees who need to access and use brand assets in a consistent way, and – at times – limited marketing budgets, even as consumer expectations increase.
Because your marketing platforms, channels, and audiences regularly change based on technological evolution and your products’ target markets, you need to be organized and strategic in managing your brand assets.
WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF GOOD BRAND MANAGEMENT?
As a life sciences marketer, you may have already had to deal with challenges to your brand’s reputation resulting from the practices of other companies. Effective brand management can reduce the risks stemming from perceptions that drug and technology prices are too high, from lack of transparency leading to public – and even governmental – skepticism, and from questionable promotional practices, to name a few. Brand management can help protect your reputation, as it helps to build trust and positive associations among current and potential clinical partners and consumers. This could allow your company to bounce back faster from an industry-wide crisis or brand-specific negative publicity.
That trust also builds brand loyalty, and both clinical and consumer customers are more likely to choose you over competitors if they feel that bond with your brand. They may even be willing to pay more for your product than they would for a competitor’s offering.
Overall, good brand management draws more attention within your current – and new – markets and lets you build successful, targeted campaigns with good returns on your investments.
5 TIPS FOR BETTER BRAND MANAGEMENT
Brand management is all about keeping your assets up to date, effective, accurate, on budget, and functioning as efficiently as possible for your brand. Here are some tips on how to accomplish those goals.
1. Develop Detailed Brand Guidelines and Customizable Templates
Writers, designers, and anyone else working on marketing materials that use your brand should have a clear set of rules and access to the appropriate resources to ensure brand consistency. These are your brand guidelines, which typically set standards for and provide tools to appropriately use your:
- Color palette
- Typography
- Logo
- Graphic elements and photography
- Brand voice or tone
- Symbols and wordmarks
Not only will your audiences respond positively to brand consistency, but your teams will also work faster with these clear guidelines in place – especially if you also create customizable templates that already have many of these essential brand representations built in.
2. Support and Reinforce Internal Brand Efforts
Everyone in your organization needs to be using the same brand to effectively tell your story, build recognition in your intended markets, appear polished and professional, and – most importantly – inspire trust and loyalty among your current and potential clinical and consumer audiences. A strong brand manager can guide efforts to ensure that all of your employees learn – and are regularly refreshed on – your brand’s messaging, values, overall look, and marketing goals.
Your brand manager or brand management team should ensure that all marketing materials stick to this brand and conduct appropriate internal reviews based on how well everyone is meeting that mark.
3. Create a Clear Review and Approval Process
As mentioned above, brand managers – and often the broader team – need to review and approve each asset produced to ensure quality, consistency, and effectiveness. Employing software or online tools with which you can program standardized processes will help, and you’ll want to gather insights from a variety of stakeholders within your organization to weed out any potential issues or inconsistencies.
4. Learn to Work Within a Smaller Budget~
If you’re trying to manage your brand with a reduced budget, it all comes down to making strategic choices and prioritizing efficiency. Invest your team’s greatest efforts in the areas where you’ve seen the greatest returns – whether that means digital ads, your website, or commercials. Simplify your team’s ability to create effective brand assets with customizable templates built upon your brand standards. Making small adjustments to previous projects so that they better fit a platform or more clearly speak to a certain audience is going to be more budget-friendly than creating all-new components every time.
5. Keep a Close Eye on Customer Feedback
Check in frequently with members of your organization who regularly interact with clinical clients. Read consumer reviews or comments on your social media posts. Your current and potential customers will often offer direct feedback on what’s working and what’s not so that you can better guide your brand efforts in an impactful direction.
Ready to hone your brand management strategy and communicate it to all the key players on your team? Reach out to LIGHTSTREAM.
