What is Brand Health?
Brand Health refers to the brands position in the market place. The ultimate goal of a healthy brand is drive maximum loyalty. Loyal users not only maximize profitability with the brand but drive costs lower by driving the brand through the distribution channel ,but also have a positive influence on non-users. Loyal users become advocates for the brand.
What Measures are Taken in Brand Health?
The first step in the process is awareness. Potential users must be aware of the brand. Even if potential users are aware of the brand they must be familiar with what the brand does or stands for. Knowing what the brand does, they must also have a preference for the brand. In short the brand must be part of a short list of brands they would consider using.
Then comes experience with the brand. Have they tried it? What is their experience? Are they satisfied with their experience? Satisfaction alone does not mean they are loyal to the brand. Have they or are they going to re-use the brand time and time again? Are they then advocates for the brand?
How Do These Measures impact Strategy?
What is described above is often referred to as the “sales funnel”. Knowing where all the potential users in the marketplace are at in this funnel provides us with an understanding what the task is at hand to move them down the sales funnel. Is the task one of creating awareness, educating potential users on the brand, creating trial use or driving satisfaction and loyalty. It guides decision-making on communications, programs and service.
What is Brand Image?
Brand Image is how the brand’s prospect or customer perceives the brand whether brand is a product, service or company. It is how your brand is positioned in the mind of the prospect/customer relative to competing brands.
Why Determine Brand Image?
- To understand how your brand is positioned in the mind of the prospect/customer, what are its unique features and benefits and how do these perceptions relate to reality and to other brands.
- To know what drives the overall image of your brand and its competitors helps you to focus on advertising and promotion, social media and sales activities.
- Understand how these perceptions change by segment, geography, purchasing power, use experience and demographic considerations.
Visualizing the Results
Perceptual Maps: A graphical technique used for a top-level visualization of brand positioning.
Brand Differential Graphs: Direct comparison between brands, segments, users and non-users etc.
Brand Image Drivers: Matrix chart showing brand rating on each attribute versus impact on overall brand image.
Methods
iFusion Methods: Two methods can be used: 1) Importance and brand ratings on various attributes where simple low-cost results are desired. 2) Choice based techniques using maximum differential questions forcing respondents to trade-off attributes against one another resulting in a more robust result reducing the so-called “halo effect”.
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