Peter Weedfald is the Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Sharp Home Electronics Company of America. His monthly column on Money Inc covers a wide range of business topics including, running a business, the future of retail, staying motivated and management.
When you boost your brand’s short and long term value, competitive dominance and market demand, you boost overall earnings. And as I like to say repeatedly, “brand is a promise.” Your brand currency needs to be shined, primped, pruned and protracted competitively each and every day.
As we know, a brand’s greatest power is empowered through its products, in the face of competitive pressure and market opportunity. And under any brand umbrella is emotional capital, which is the flame needed to build brand infatuation.
An important part of the art of the possible in building brand muscle and empowering consumer demand is measurement. It seems measurement is so easy and forthcoming in our cloud based initiatives, but still daunting outside of the internet. The tried and true brand measurement formula I have deployed for years still works according to several of my colleagues:
Brand Campaign Performance ROI = Product Revenue X Profit Margin / Cost of Advertising
This simple ROI calculation is an incremental campaign metric to be measured against previous campaigns and results.
Chief financial officers (CFOs) value this brand-specific formula as useful for measuring pilot marketing campaigns, A/B test splits, social campaigns, incremental brand value and product sales measurements inclusive to consumer enhanced promotional drive periods. Smart focus on brand value return on investment (ROI) takes into consideration the following:
- Brand Equity Measurement: an intangible asset determined through the incremental value of marketing as it pertains to increased or decreased brand awareness and product purchasing to a given buying audience in any channel, place or time.
- Brand Equity: defined as incremental cash turns accrued to branded product offerings measured above and beyond cash flows resulting from same product offering, absence of brand.
- Brand As Income: that brand equity can be measured and ascertained through this formula as future cash flow based upon expected competitive product displacement earnings and profit earned pools related to maturing brand and product performance.
- Brand Awareness: managing, leading and measuring customer brand funnel stages in the language of: awareness – consideration – intention – purchase.
- Brand Shaping: marketers can only shape (market and advertise) consumer perception, drive engagements, or motivate sales by first establishing formidable and targeted market centric awareness, purpose and clarity of brand position.
- Brand Diagnostics: it is critically important to evaluate primary brand performance and or under-performance with respect to specific marketing and advertising investments inclusive to competitive shelf pull, editorial exposure and social based programs.
- Brand ROI: measurement is critical in the heat of driving brand awareness to evaluate customer behavior as a key articulator, course corrector and accelerator of marketing strategies.
Brand is a promise. Brand is also your only viable asset. Each and every employee across all departments, products, services and customer support represents, and fuels your brand muscle in the market. And of course mediocre or poor brand execution destroys opportunity, reverses market penetration, drains profit intentions.
Measuring brand ROI through marketing investments must be mirrored by measuring ROI of each employee towards ensuring brand infatuation versus a long negative tail of brand evaporation and destruction.
Kinetic brand measurement must be coupled to strategic objectives and increased performance metrics. The ultimate brand ROI delivers greater awareness, impact, influence, conversion and customer valued propositions. The heart of your brand is pumped by the heart of your employees. The heart of your mission, is to build your greatest asset, your brand value, your brand’s competitive muscle and profitable future.
With profits benefiting from the protection of cost reductions it is now time to raise the roof on revenues, market share and brand value. Brand value, your most valuable asset is your surest pylon to profitability: the core product to price competitive entry lever to ensure the gain of a few more pennies per product turn, per consumer purchase.
Sounds like a smart and easy sales and marketing task, however, it is not. Senior leadership needs to boost executive support and accord to fuel brand affinity, growth and acceleration through these seven principles in congress with relevant, kinetic investments.
Remember, brand truly is your only asset. It is the primary currency of any company’s profitable present and future. Brand is also the primary currency for any movie star, sports figure, any world class musician like the inspiring sounds and stage persona of our mighty Jon Bon Jovi.
Peter Weedfald is the author of Green Reign Leadership, a book enriching leadership lessons to ensure sales and marketing dominance.
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