Firstly, what is a brand, and why try to create brand awareness?
Well the fundamental aim must be to create customer loyalty often by using the customers own imagination to convey some connection or association with your product or service. This ultimately creates differentiation between your product standing it apart from any competition and ultimately persuading the consumer to choose you above everyone else.
Strong brands create a perceived value, they breakdown the objection to purchase and encourage a sense of belief which ultimately leads to improving sales. Who has not gone into a shop and mulled over the price of the branded versus the cheaper own label option but still walked out the shop with the branded version not necessarily appreciating why that happened but none the less pleased with the purchase and the value that represents?
When working in overseas markets or areas where you are less familiar this is even more critical. Brands simply do not directly translate. There is often terminology used for which there is no local words. Or worse your brand name may have connotations that you may not want to be translated. If we ever get to meet, I would love to share some of the anecdotes that we have had to work with over the years and how to play that into your advantage.
Similarly, what appeals in your home market may also not be relevant to a new consumer that has been bought up in a different way, within a different educational and cultural system. Yes, you have a successful product and service, and the strategy and approach of how you got to where you are in of course important – but that too needs to be translated.
Finally, you will need to implement all that you have understood to this point. It is one thing to understand the place that your brand can sit. Which consumer that it will appeal too and of course where you want to be distributed, but then comes the how of implementation. This too requires local knowledge to appreciate the best route to market and how to get the best approach for the budget available. There will always be advertisers and marketeers that will promise the earth but please remember that all that glitters is not gold (assuming that phrase translates to the reader wherever you are).
None of this can be more true than in the Dental and Medical worlds where trust in the brand is everything. At Brilliant Brands we are specialists in our market and promise to deliver. We do not have all the answers but like to think we have a lot of them, reducing risk and creating better local appeal. Our track record and brand really speaks for itself.