This quote by Warren Buffett says it all: building a brand is a tricky business. You'd certainly be forgiven for thinking about how to grow your brand deep into the night! So unless you're planning to bring down your brand (we know you're not), you'll always be looking for new ways to build your brand.

And who's a better person to talk about branding than someone who has done it successfully before?

Vase.ai had a chat with Anthony Low, former VP of Nestlé. He is now a mentor with Endeavor, inspiring entrepreneurs in Malaysia. In his vast 39-year experience in various positions like Supply Chain, Sales & Marketing Management, and Marketing Communication with the company, he definitely has a lot to teach on branding.

Here are the key takeaways from the fascinating webinar. Expect plenty of Nestlé and other brand references to hammer the points in!

1. Get your brand identity in order

Brand identity refers to the visible elements of your brand. Everything that the customer can see, touch and physically interact with is part of the brand identity. Elements of brand identity include the logo, brand name, colours, shapes, designs, tone of copy, social media presence and packaging.

Building a brand's identity takes the whole team. The whole design and implementation process must be clearly spelt out in your brand book, also known as a brand style guide. A brand book contains all the details on how the brand should look and feel. This is to ensure that no matter the brand touchpoint, the brand is consistently presented. Everyone knows their role in the brand-building process and how they should perform it.

An inconsistent brand brings down your brand rather than build it. It's harder for people to verify whether your business is authentic and whether the communication is directly from you. It also makes you look unprofessional, totally not a good look for any brand!

A well-defined brand is easily recognizable, looks professional and inspires trust and loyalty.

A brand should also have a clear direction, and some of the fundamental guiding principles are knowing your purpose and values. These help keep the brand outlast the rest of the competition and remain relevant for many years.

Nestlé has been in the food and beverage industry for 155 years now. Guess what hasn't changed?

Their guiding principles.

Nestlé's purpose is to enhance the quality of life and contribute to a healthier future. It is their purpose that drives them to make quality food that is healthy for people of all ages and pets. Their values are all centered around respect. Not just for individuals and families, according to the company, but also for the community and the planet.

Why are brand values and purpose important?

The marketplace is changing, and consumers are considering a brand's purpose and values in their purchasing decisions more than ever. They direct everything that a brand does, from making new products to marketing, customer relations and even employees' code of conduct. A good brand is a reflection of its values and purpose across all its touchpoints.

Get your branding right, and you venture into brand loyalty - which is where customers align with your core values and trust you with their money across the range of products you offer. Who wouldn't want that?

2. Your brand is the total experience your customers have

Often people think of a brand as the logo, the tag line, the slogan, colours and the like. This view of a brand is flawed-they are only part of the brand identity, but they are not the brand itself. A successful brand is more than just a name and a logo.

When building a brand, incorporate other elements such as brand personality, culture, values and purpose in addition to the other brand elements. Successful brands connect with their audiences not just physically but emotionally as well.

A brand is the sum of all your customers' experiences across your brand touchpoints, be it with the company, your product, or your service. The experience is both rational and emotional, though, for most people, emotional experience takes more precedence. The brand is a promise of what your company offers its customers and how you deliver them.

Strong brands make the customers feel and believe that they are trustworthy because they deliver on their promise. Effective brand building can bring a lasting impression on your consumers-an edge over the competition that is difficult to replace.

For example, the Coca-Cola brand promises the 'good feeling'- happiness, fun, and joy. It delivers so well on its promise that it's a billion-dollar company that has spread all over the world. It's so simple, yet so effective. Simplicity is the key to building effective brands.

3. Identify where and how you can make an impact

You cannot build and market a brand without knowing where it's intended for. Knowing your ideal consumer provides structure to the brand's interaction with the customer -you know what they want, how they want it and how to communicate with them.

It's not just about the numbers like the location, gender and age of your consumer base. Knowing your customers means going beyond the data and including other psychological, behavioural and environmental factors in the mix. If you understand them well, you can serve them well.

Nestlé has a strong focus on the consumer and is always looking for ways to make an impact in the community. What can your brand do for your town, community, country? To make the impact happen, the brand has to be on the ground and in touch with the people.

Visiting your current and prospective customers and interacting with them is a great way to find out the challenges they've got and how you can help make things better. In Nestlé, for example, senior managers and other managers are encouraged to make regular market visits as a part of their job.

Knowing where you can make an impact is only one half of the story-knowing how to make an impact completes the picture. Nestlé' makes an impact by conserving and taking care of resources for future generations. They also promote gender equality, inclusiveness and diversity - they've got over 80 nationalities in their global office. Nestlé not only provides healthier food options but also inspires people to lead healthier lives.

An example of this in action is Nestlé's Wellness Club. A market visit done in 2014 in Kaido, Japan, by Anthony showed that about 42% of households were living without their partners. They were, on average, above 50 years old. Nestlé found that so many people had an unmet need for dietary help, which was an area they could provide value.

They then sent doctors and dietitians to visit these individuals to assess their diets and physical activity. The team then developed personalized green tea, Anthony explains, that contains all the day's nutritional needs.

Nestle determined that they could impact the single, elderly individuals in society (the where) by providing assessments and products to solve their dietary needs (the how).

4. Your brand is your most valuable asset; invest in it

Let's bring in the Coca-Cola brand again. Its total market value in 2020 is 180 billion US dollars. According to Anthony's point of view, Coke's best seller is the brand itself! No matter your stand, brands are incredibly valuable for both consumers and the organization. Here's how:

• Brands create trust among your clientele.
  A well designed and communicated brand has a higher chance of attracting and winning over customers than the rest. Branding helps motivate brand loyalty. Starbucks, for example, is associated with premium coffee and has a loyal following of consumers willing to pay more for the value.
• Branding helps companies stand out in the market.
  Brands uniquely identify a company from the competition and help it reach the target market. Coca-Cola, for example, is a recognizable brand all over the world, and that sets it apart from the rest of the market. Apple Inc is also a well-known brand in the smartphone industry, distinct from its Android competitors in the sector.
• Branding promotes employee satisfaction and loyalty.
  Employees working for reputable brands have a sense of enjoyment and fulfilment working for the company and are likely to stay around longer.

Investing in your brand is the best investment you can make in your business, to quote Steve Forbes' words. How does Nestlé do it? They put at least 16% of the budget of every new product they launch aside for brand building, or else it won't be approved. This is why the brand has a high product launch success rate.

Whatever you choose to invest in brand building, make sure it isn't nothing!

5. Leverage customer understanding into insights

Learned something from your clients? Brands that weave these customer insights into their processes are more likely to perform better on the market. Knowing your customers isn't enough; putting them first, understanding them and leveraging that understanding is what counts.

Nestlé uses a unique system known as Ownable Brand Proposition (OBP) to grow their brands. OBP means that you understand your target market enough to identify one key insight, which they call a human truth, to unlock doors to grow the brand.

An example of this in action takes place in Manila in 2003. Before an interview with the marketing team, a group of ladies was discussing how to keep themselves fit and their tummies flat. The marketing team there and then discovered a human truth- they have a concern and care about their tummy. Nestlé turned that into a hundred days challenge with Nestlé fitness.

Another example is an experience they learned in China. Nestlé noticed that young people were taking Nestlé products, looking at them for a while, then returning them to the shelves. On asking them for the reason why, the team discovered that the consumers are not only looking at the expiry date but also the manufacturing date. The human truth in this situation, they learned, is that they took products past 100 days as close to expiry, and they wanted fresh ones. It's no surprise that their market share began to shoot after they began offering freshly packaged products to the market!

6. Romance product truths

Your products should speak for themselves. Does your product provide something unique or something better than your competitors? Romancing that product truth means forming it into a narrative that can encourage your consumers to take action.

Anthony gave the example of Nestlé's Read the Label global program. Consumers need to make the right choices when selecting what to eat, and the program intended to do just that. Read the Label encouraged consumers to check what ingredients are contained in the product before making the purchase. They believed that their products spoke for themselves - a better, healthier alternative to the rest on the market. Their market share from the campaign in ASEAN countries grew, Anthony says, because people became more aware of what they consume.

Romancing product truths separates your brand from the rest. In a marketplace with plenty of similar products, your prospective clients won't know the difference, and you may not make the sale.

7. Learn from your competitors

Whether it's marketing or sales, customer service or research, there's always something you can learn from others and use to improve your brand. It doesn't matter whether the brand is big or small, there's always something to learn from the competition. Size brings arrogance, as Anthony says- you still need to put in the effort to learn even if you're a big brand!

There's a Chinese saying that only when there is competition you can have improvement. The competition isn't just there to compete for market share. It is there for you to learn from. Why is competition significant though?

• Competition breeds innovation. If all is well for your brand, it's very unlikely that you'll sit down to think of new ideas, and you'll just run on what's currently working. Competition forces brands to stay on edge and, if your competitors are using something to be better, you'll soon be out if you can't improve.
• Analyzing the competition fosters optimal decision making. Strong brands spend a lot of time studying the market and the competition to make the best decisions for themselves and the business.

Learning from the competition doesn't mean copying them. It is more of looking at anything that they do best and finding new ways that can help you improve your brand. It's not about the positives alone either; you can also look at what didn't work for them and find ways to make it better or avoid the same mistake.

8. Leverage technology to market your brand

The old marketing ways are soon becoming outdated. With the internet becoming more accessible to people, consumer expectations are getting redefined by the day.

Brand building in today's world is becoming more low cost and high impact, thanks to technology. While marketing isn't flawless now that computers are here, they certainly have made a few things better. For one, your brand has way more touchpoints with your customers, thanks to websites, social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram and even email. Digital marketing has also been made more efficient with customer relationship management software, data analytics and visualization tools, among many more products. Even for a low budget brand, there's a lot you can do to drum up excitement about your brand and engage with your consumers.

Anthony gave the example of Nestlé and Alibaba's collaboration which used technology to grow their brands. In 2012, the Chinese government encouraged young people to visit their parents whom they had left in their hometowns MD rural areas during Chinese New Year. Not many people visited their parents at the time.

The program was simple. If you couldn't visit your parents on Chinese New Year, you could send them a gift using the eCommerce firm Alibaba. The gifts would show that they still remembered and loved their parents. In the first year of the launch, the campaign made 9.3 billion US dollars, a figure that has never dropped since.

Final thoughts

Building brands successfully is not an easy task. With these few insights on brand building, however, you should be on your way to building a strong brand. Too long, didn't read? Anthony's top three takeaways for building your brand are:

• The customer is key. Know your target market deeply and understand them; they are a great source for insights that can open great doors for your brand.
• Understand and satisfy customer needs. The more you do, you earn their trust and, consequently, more business for your brand.
• Inspire with purpose and deliver on your brand promise.

Vase.ai  is a consumer research platform that lets you engage with and get feedback from consumers in the ASEAN region. With as little as USD1,000, you can use the AI-powered system to get the valuable customer insights you need to grow your brand.

No business can run successfully, or for very long, without insight into their target audience. There must be an understanding of the people who support the company, and that is why brand research is vital.

Whether a brand is big or small, it is essential to always know what their audience thinks and feels. This knowledge is especially important when it comes to the brand itself.

Even the most popular company can go down if their brand health is not properly taken care of – just ask any marketer worth their salt.

So how can you ensure that your brand is keeping your audience happy?

There are several ways, fortunately, such as doing a brand audit and constant brand tracking. With the information you gain from these methods, you can practice efficient and effective brand building.

Your brand is what people see when they hear your company name. Building successful brands doesn’t happen overnight, and you’ll spend many days sweating as you try and figure out what your audience is feeling.

You’re not alone – all brands have to go through brand research and build intelligent, relevant strategies. You can learn from others and follow their examples to be successful.

We’ll be looking at FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods) brands that nailed their research and not by being fancy. They used surveys to find out what their customers think.

Not all surveys have to be 10 or 15 ‘yes or no’ questionnaires. There are clever ways to ask your audience all the right questions without them feeling like they’re taking a survey.

6 Successful FMCG Brands That Invest in Brand Research

1. Knorr

The popular food brand launched a campaign that was able to help them stay relevant even during changing times. While Knorr used to be all about families coming together after a big day and enjoying a hearty Knorr-based meal together, modern times have changed that image.

Fortunately, they could use consumer insights gained from a massive survey to help them get noticed by the younger generations.

What’s the Problem?

Knorr needed to attract the attention of millennial consumers. The brand risked being forgotten by the younger generations because their marketing wasn’t tailored to them.

What Did the Research Help to Discover?

The company interviewed 12 000 consumers, all of them millennials, to understand how they feel about flavour in their lives. After all, Knorr is focused on adding flavour to food. Twelve countries were targeted to get the most accurate information from the brand’s biggest buyers.

What Was the Solution?

Thanks to the information gained, Knorr was able to launch a campaign, #TastesLikehome, and it resonated with everyone, not just millennials.

Essentially, Knorr showed consumers that they can use flavour to find love because people with the same tastes get along better.

A simple quiz was used to let people discover their favourite flavours, putting them into ‘personality types’. Then, the marketing team kicked off the second part of the strategy – matchmaking by flavour.

An unscripted social experiment followed, and single strangers were paired up over a table with their favourite flavours. The results were filmed and ‘Love at First Taste’ happened.

What’s the Benefit of the Research?

Knorr got what they wanted – the brand got noticed. The resulting video and the campaign were shared on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter.

The social sharing that came as a result exceeded expectations, actually. The aim was one billion impressions, but Knorr got more than two billion. That’s a definite win!

2. Maggi

Not every brand research campaign needs a huge survey to work. Sometimes just a few questions, or one with different answers, can do the trick.

Maggi needs no introduction, but this popular noodle brand felt it needed some way to remind people how much they love it. Brand awareness was an important goal that would lead to boosted sales and even more brand loyalty.

With the help of a creative video, Maggi asked consumers to vote for their favourite flavour.

What’s the Problem?

Even brands that have been going strong for many years can start to falter if they don’t continuously update their consumer insight.

It is important to know what consumers love about a brand’s products and what they don’t. That way, the brand can constantly improve what they offer and stay a favourite. Maggi knew this and that’s why they launched the ad campaign.

They launched a new range inspired by popular ingredients and needed to know their consumers’ thoughts.

What Did the Research Help to Discover?

Upon launching the ad, Maggi was able to find out which of their flavours appeal the most to their audience. They could then categorise the data and use that information to tailor their future campaigns more accurately.

Once they knew which flavours weren’t as popular, they could also work on improving them for better results next time.

What Was the Solution?

The ad showed a family who enjoys their Maggi, with each of them liking a different flavour. This scenario appealed to everyone and didn’t highlight only one of the flavours.

By showing off the taste of all three flavours – Yummy Capsica, Chatpata Tomato, and Desi Cheesy – Maggi made sure everyone felt included.

What’s the Benefit of the Research?

Maggi was able to determine if their new range of noodles appealed to their buyers. Did people really like the new flavours? Which flavours was most popular and worth keeping?

The brand also gained brand awareness thanks to the new range and new ad campaign.

3. Dove

This personal care brand launched a campaign that skyrocketed sales and helped turn the perception of beauty on its head.

And it all started with a survey of over 3,000 women. Few people don’t know about the ‘Campaign for Real Beauty’ ads, and that just goes to show the power of a good survey.

What’s the Problem?

Dove wanted a fresh approach to marketing its products and came up with something award-winning.

Instead of telling people why they should buy Dove products, they shifted the attention to why women feel pressured to look flawless. This, in turn, put a spotlight on Dove, which was the result of clever marketing.

What Did the Research Help to Discover?

The survey was able to help Dove identify the many things that women are self-conscious about. The issues they face in society and how much pressure they’re under to be beautiful was also highlighted.

The marketing team was able to learn that traditional beauty marketing wasn’t making women feel inspired. Instead, it made them feel bad about how they looked.

And that’s why Dove asked women to rethink their ideas of beauty.

What Was the Solution?

The campaign resulted in a very different way of doing marketing. It wasn’t a sales pitch or anything resembling beauty marketing at all.

Dove realised they needed to change and appeal to their consumers’ real needs. Interactive outdoor billboard ads asked people to vote on whether or not the women were beautiful.

Normal women showed off their bodies for the ads, not models, and it didn’t take long for the Campaign for Real Beauty website to have millions of visitors.

In fact, 15 years later, Dove is still inspiring women and other beauty brands to rethink beauty.

What’s the Benefit of the Research?

Dove was able to establish itself as a beauty brand that cares about its consumers. This is not an easy feat to accomplish, especially in the beauty industry. But Dove did it — spectacularly so — and all because the brand took the time to ask their audience how they feel.

4. Coca-Cola

Another giant in the FMCG industry that needs no introduction, Coca-Cola, knows how to do marketing the right way. However, the brand knows the value of staying in touch with its consumers. The company also understand the importance of getting feedback on its products.

Coca-Cola didn’t resort to a massive survey; instead, they kept it short and sweet, and it kept them in the spotlight.

What’s the Problem?

For big brands, and sometimes the smaller ones, there will always be negative attention and publicity. To get the attention back on the product, brands need to get people to talk about the good, not the bad.

That was the aim of a simple but effective Twitter poll (an underrated form of survey) to get consumers to focus on their new Coke with Coffee range.

It’s available in three flavours: Dark Blend, Vanilla and Caramel, and Coca-Cola asked their followers to vote on the one they’ll try first.

By adding the hashtag #cokewithcoffee, they made sure the conversation could be kept going for long.

What Did the Research Help to Discover?

The quick survey was able to determine the flavour that most people were looking forward to – Vanilla.

The brand also learned that Caramel was the second-most anticipated of the flavours. Additionally, they could see that people were excited about it, thanks to the hashtag that everyone started using.

What Was the Solution?

By introducing the new flavours and asking people which one they’d try first, Coca-Cola ensured the focus was on their product. The survey served its purpose of gaining insight into the preferences of consumers.

The positive reaction to the new range and the question also helped Coca-Cola become a talking point on social media, which is good for marketing.

Creating a unique hashtag also helped a lot to get more people involved in talking about the product.

What’s the Benefit of the Research?

Instead of focusing on any bad press that Coca-Cola suffered in recent times, consumers were happy to try out the new flavours.

The range was able to distract many from any negativity swirling around the brand and focus on what they love: Coke.

Of course, since they used social media, it’s hard to avoid unhappy folks from spreading negativity. But judging by the hashtag usage, most people shared how impressed they were with the new flavours. Some even shared videos of them enjoying it.

This also led to increased brand awareness and loyalty, which is always a welcome sight for any brand.

5. Lay’s

As a popular crisps brand, Lay’s has the advantage of being wildly loved by many snack enjoyers. However, it still needs to have good marketing to make sure they entice consumers into buying their products.

Using social media for a quick survey is a great idea to determine whether your brand is still as popular.

What’s the Problem?

Lay’s needed to remind people that their crisps are a must-have snack enjoyed by millions regardless of their taste in food.

It’s not always easy to appeal to everyone, but Lay’s could show off their crisps’ versatility by getting answers from the consumers themselves.

What Did the Research Help to Discover?

The research done here by Lay’s may seem small in comparison to what companies of this size usually do. But it’s just as relevant and useful for marketing purposes because it got responses straight from the target audience.

By asking followers on Instagram what their wackiest Lay’s combo is, the brand was able to get consumers talking.

And talking consumers lead to brand awareness and boosted sales. What better way to get people craving your product than make them think of the unique ways they eat it?

What Was the Solution?

Lay’s kept it simple and straightforward. They called on people to answer a simple but fun question. It didn’t take much thinking from consumers, and the ‘insignificant’ post got thousands of likes and many comments.

People love talking about themselves, especially on social media, and Lay’s used this to get them to talk about their products as well.

What’s the Benefit of the Research?

The benefit of this question was the increased brand awareness that resulted from tasking it.

The post also got people nostalgic by making them remember their favourite combination of the crisps and other snacks.

It’s very possible that many people went out and bought a packet of their favourite flavour not long after reading or responding to the post!

The brand might also have gained insight into which flavours is eaten most with what other snacks. This opens possibilities for experimentation with new flavours in the future.

6. Downy

Downy is a beloved fabric softener that has a loyal following all over the world. However, that doesn’t mean it can’t do with more customers and what better way to get them interested than by seeing five-star reviews?

What’s the Problem?

Getting users to review your products isn’t always easy. Even consumers who love your products are often too busy to care about leaving reviews.

As such, it’s often necessary to find ways to entice folks into reviewing, which is what Downy did by sharing a post on Facebook.

What Did the Research Help to Discover?

In this case, the research results were pretty clear: what do consumers think of Downy?

After clicking on the provided link, people are taken to the brand’s website, where reviews are already praising the product.

It’s clear that people love Downy, and that’s just what they wanted to know. The feedback provided can be used for future marketing strategies.

What Was the Solution?

The brand asked users to share what they think of it. Accompanying the question posted on Facebook was a video with quotes showing off what other users had to say. This makes it seem like Downy would use reviews in future videos – enticing more reviews.

It’s a simple strategy and doesn’t even seem like a survey. But information is being gained through a question directed at the brand’s consumers – it's a survey and a good one.

Not all solutions have to be over-the-top creative, as long as it accomplishes what is needed.

What’s the Benefit of the Research?

Thanks to the feedback and reviews resulting from the Facebook survey, Downy knows that people love and recommend it. They can also see that consumers appreciate the smell and softness of their clothes after using Downy.

Downy can also determine if the products lack anything if they find no good feedback for certain factors such as how long the smell lasts. Much like positive feedback, negative reviews offer a good opportunity for growth.

Watch the video here.

Final Thoughts on Brand Research

There you have it – real-life examples of brands getting valuable consumer insights without making it obvious to them. This kind of research doesn’t have to be fancy. As long as you know the right questions and ask them at the right time in the right place, you’ll get better at understanding consumer needs.

These brands were extraordinarily creative in how they went about doing their research. By using social media to gather information, they encouraged consumers to engage with the brand in the research stage itself.

Doing so helped them get the information they wanted and increase their brand awareness.

Of course, knowing the right questions and finding the right time and place is an important task itself! For that, you’ll need to do consumer research relevant to your brand and goals.

But for now, you have some excellent examples of brand research to learn from and be inspired by. Nothing is stopping you from taking your brand to the same heights as the brands discussed here.

Market research can help you understand what your target market wants.  Knowing who your target market is and what they need enables you to improve the quality of your decisions when marketing to them.

A well-crafted market research survey can be used to access critical demographic information so that you can find out just about anything about your target market. For example, a market research survey can tell you what your customers like about your brand and the types of products they need.

Conducting a market research survey before launching a marketing campaign is essential in today’s highly competitive marketplace. However, in most cases, people still rely on their gut instinct derived from years of industry experience when we all know that guessing and gut instinct are not enough for launching products and crafting the right marketing messages.

To keep current customers and to generate new business, you need the correct data to help you make the most informed decisions.

Here’s what you need to conduct a successful consumer research market survey.

Step 1: Set A Clear Goal

It would help if you had a clear goal when starting your market research survey.

You need to know

• Why you’re conducting the survey?
• What you want to find out?
• Is it to improve products with existing customers?
• Are you trying to launch a new product and need to know if there’s a demand for it?

You need to know what outcome you’re seeking to get the answers you need for your marketing campaign.

Here is a template that Vase.ai usually gets clients to fill up before getting started on a research. This can also be done together with Vase.ai to get the template filled up.

Step 2: Know Who Your Customers Are

Not everyone will be a customer. Targeting everyone is equivalent to targeting no one. Therefore, you must fully understand who your customers are and where they come from.

Some of the things that you need to know:

• Age
• Income
• Gender
• Race
• Location
• Occupation
• Education Level
• Marital status

Once you find out who your ideal customers are, find out their needs, interests and personalities / psychographics.

Buyer personas can help you find out who your ideal buyer is. Then, when you compile different customer characteristics, you can build different personas to represent your typical customer.

Understanding your target market can help you market more efficiently to your customers.

Step 3: Identify Which Persona Group to Engage

The buyer personas that you create will let you know who your ideal customers are.  Once you have that information, you can use it to identify which group to market to. This should be as specific as possible so that your advertisements and marketing messages are highly relevant.

The group you decide to engage is usually made up of just 1 – 2 profiles of the people who have recently purchased your products.

Here are some tips on getting the right participants for your research.

Identifying the right people for your market research survey

To start off, in the case of a mass market product, such as a bottle of shampoo, reach out to 1,000 people of the profile that you’re marketing to. For example, in the case of a household product, you’d want to reach out to decision makers / joint decision makers when it comes to household products.

Once you’ve built the different personas from the research data, you can then drill down deeper into uncovering more insights from a particular segment.

Select Customers Who Have Recently Interacted with You

You want to focus on people who’ve interacted with your company within the past six months.  If your company has longer sales cycles or is in a niche market, you can focus on customers who’ve interacted with your company within the past year.  Your participants will be answering very detailed questions, so their experience must be fresh.

Gather A Mix of Participants

You want to recruit people who have either purchased your product, bought your competitor’s product and decided not to purchase anything at all. You should compile all the information you need from your customers; getting information from people who are not yet customers will help you develop a balanced view of your market.

Here’s how you can reach out to your target audience:

1. Using your own database:

Get a list of customers who have made a recent purchase. Get a list of customers who purchased from you within the last six months and filter it for the characteristics you’re looking for. You can do this by using your CRM system if you have one, or you can ask your sales team for assistance.

2.  Use an external database like Vase.ai (important to pay attention to the pool of respondents to see if they’re verified):

Reach out to people who have purchased from your competitor. This gives you a more holistic view of the entire market rather than just your own customers.

Step 4: Prepare Research Questions for Your Participants

For a research to be successful, you need to keep in mind to ask the right people the right questions. In the case of coming up with the right questions to ask, it can be quite tricky as we do not want to introduce any bias by asking leading questions. There are templates readily available with a simple search on Google but if you’re using Vase.ai to run your research, in addition to the templates ready for customization on the platform, you have access to a team of research experts through the chat support.

A tip on crafting the questionnaire – identify the data you’ll need in order to hit the research objective(s) stated in the research brief from Step 1. Work backwards to get the questions you need to ask to get the data.

Here is an example of a question without any bias:

Ask: Which of the following items have you purchased in the past 3 months?

Instead of: Did you purchase [product] in the past 3 months?

Step 5:  Determine How Your Survey Will Be Delivered

With the reach of the internet, online surveys have proven to be the most effective method given its reach and speed to data collection. However, more traditional approaches such as street intercept (where you walk up to a person to get them to fill out a survey), is the more effective approach if you’re targeting a specific area. For example, if the objective of the survey is to learn about the behaviour of shoppers in a particular mall, the best approach would be to talk to people in the mall since it’s really targeted.

With that being said, for a street intercept survey to be successful, you’d need really experienced interviewers so that they know which are the relevant questions to ask a participant rather than have the participant go through the entire survey including the questions that do not apply to them.

In the case of an online survey, an experienced interviewer is not necessary given that most platforms support display logic where participants will only be shown the questions that are relevant to them based on answers provided in previous questions. In terms of getting responses, you can consider consumer research platforms such as Vase.ai where it comes with a proprietary panel of 2.6 million identity verified consumers ready to answer your questions. What this means is that besides having a guarantee on the quality of the responses, you’re able to have a far better reach instead of sending the survey to your circle of friends and family members, which means that the data you collect is skewed towards your circle of consumers.

Step 6: Analyse the Data

When it comes to analysing the data, one common way is to put the respondents into groups based on their demographic profile – age, gender, race, region, household income and marital status. Once the filters are in place, compare the groups side by side to see if there are any key differences between the groups. Another common thing to do is to find the “mean”, where you add up the number of people who select a particular answer and divide it by the total responses. Once this is done, anything that is above the “mean” should be paid attention to.

Consider using tools that are available in the market to aid analysis or to outsource your data analysis to an experienced researcher.

Did you know? Vase.ai’s platform automatically suggests insights to you. Check it out here.

Conclusion

For a market research to be successful, it all starts with identifying the research objective. Once this is done, remember to ask the right people the right questions. At the end of the day, we want to collect data that is actionable.

Ready to get started on your research? Reach out to our experts here.

There is a common misconception that marketing a product or service is centred around promotion, but that is not true. In reality, there are several aspects and forces that work around marketing that make it so effective for some brands, and not so much for the others. Picking the right strategy is vital to helping your business propel to success. One of the ways to develop and execute a marketing strategy and plan is through the Marketing Mix, a framework for marketing that consists of 5 necessary components.

What is the Marketing Mix?

The Marketing Mix is a concept for marketing based on 4 Ps: Product, Price, Place and Promotion. These elements provide a framework for marketing strategy for goods and services. Originally developed by Notre Dame professor Edmund Jerome McCarthy, the four Ps categorised the challenges that marketers and brands faced while developing marketing activities.

Recently, there has been an introduction of a fifth P – People. Altogether, The Marketing Mix consists of the five pillars of a successful marketing campaign (e.g. new product launch) which reaches the right audience at the right time. By leveraging the steps and developing a product or service around these five elements, brands are able to understand the needs of their consumers and optimise their activities to truly connect with them.

Before we dive into this new fifth P, let’s take a look at the original 4Ps of the Marketing Mix and how you can apply them to your business.

Product – What are you selling?

So you have created a wonderful product, and now you want to make it available to customers. But the important question is: do your customers feel the same way as you do?

The first step to success is a great product. This could be anything from retail goods such as a handbag, to services like consulting, or even applications or softwares. It is also worth taking a step back to look at what makes your product great or unique, and how this can be communicated to consumers.

Knowing that a certain product or service is in demand may have led you to creating a product to serve their needs. However, chances are that the saturated market presents stark competition. It is crucial for marketers to highlight any special qualities in order to truly stand out.

Looking at data can help you decide what your audience finds special and useful. To build something that people really want, an important tool you can leverage is feedback. For example, start off by running a competitor analysis to find out what they can offer and why consumers are choosing them. From there, you can find your Unique Value Proposition – in other words, what makes you different.

Another great thing about feedback is that it can be used during any stage of a product life cycle, be it planning, designing, beta launch testing or even post-launch to find any areas for improvement.

Price – How much are you selling it for?

At first glance, price seems like the most obvious concept: any business is out to generate revenue. The caveat is finding the ‘right’ price. Given how saturated most markets are, charging premiums are generally for market leaders or name brands.

Price can also be a USP of your business, for instance, selling FMCG goods to consumers at a low cost can help you generate more sales. On the other hand, pricing your products at a lower rate than what the market decides is ‘reasonable’ may end up cheapening your brand.

To put things into perspective, imagine a diamond necklace retailing for $100. Would you buy it? Brands have to find a balance between brand perception and profit to create the best value for them and their customers. It is important to know how much customers are willing to pay and their price sensitivity.

On the flip side, brands can use a lower-than-market price as a tactic to build consumer trust, but only if this can be justified. Marketers nowadays are discovering that content marketing can be a valuable tool to educate and inform their consumers. The trick here is to focus on transparency in order to convince your consumers that a low price does not equate to low quality.

Place – Where can customers find you?

A great product at a reasonable price will be useless if customers do not know where to find you. Picking the right places for your marketing plan not only helps attract the attention you want, but makes the product readily available for purchase.

One rule to follow is: pick a location where your customers are, instead of making them come to you. Your product could be the best in the market, but if it’s inaccessible, you are essentially limiting your consumer base.

Marketers need to understand where their customers are, by asking the important questions: Where do they live? Where are your competitors? What distribution channels are doing better than others?

Some people may think that placing their product or brand marketing campaigns on the World Wide Web makes it accessible to all. But in reality, the Internet is segmented and some demographics exist on there more than others. To highlight the importance of location, 62.8% of Instagram users in 2021 are aged between 18 to 34 years old, while only 2.1% are above 65. On the contrary, television has the highest view rate from adults aged 65 and above. For businesses that are manufacturing products for the elderly, this means that Instagram may not be the best place to run campaigns.

Promotion – What strategies do you use?

With so many channels and methods to promote your offer, it can be hard to pick a place to start. This category comprises elements from advertising to public relations, social media marketing, email marketing and many more.

Creating a Customer Journey Map can help visualise the touchpoints and key events in a potential buyer’s journey to realise motivations and areas of friction. By utilising this information, you can better understand the user experience of a customer with your brand. These touchpoints can then be optimised to produce the best return on investment by choosing the right form and amount of promotion required.

To get an idea of the motivations and potential areas of friction, you have to find out customer preferences and behaviours. For instance, do they prefer being contacted for sales coupons through SMS or email? Would they rather watch a two-minute long video tutorial or view an infographic? These are all questions you can ask before building a promotion strategy.

The 5th P: People – Who are you selling to?

Perhaps one of the most essential aspects of the Marketing Mix, albeit a relatively new concept, is its people. If you have realised by now, identifying the right customer profiles and their needs is fundamental to building the first 4Ps. At its core, your business and brand activity should be built around the people you want to serve – your target audience, employees, and everyone involved in the marketing process.

You can first start off by asking: who are you trying to reach? What kind of messaging will work best for them? What are their specific pain points that your product or service can address?

To effectively develop a comprehensive marketing plan that encompasses the needs of your people, it is vital to understand your audience needs and wants. Having the right data provides marketers with a solution to knowing their audience on a deeper level. After all, valuable and comprehensive market research is imperative to picking effective marketing strategies.

You may think that your organization only needs to satisfy its customers, however, your employees are an important asset to your business. These are the people that implement your strategy, carry out marketing efforts to improve brand perception, achieve target objectives and ensure customer satisfaction. Essentially, your employees are a great asset, and you want to attract and retain the best.

Understanding your customers through data

In a rapidly-evolving world, consumer behaviours and sentiments are constantly changing. To keep up, brands must continuously adapt by having the right data and information to make informed decisions to satisfy their customers. For any business, the key to success is through its people.

Vase.ai helps businesses better understand their target consumers through their AI-powered consumer research platform that can give you actionable insights in as little as 24 hours. Whether it’s to build your Customer Journey map or to identify the media consumption behaviour of your target consumers, Vase.ai does it accurately, quickly and most of all, affordably.

Reach out to our friendly team today to find out how we can help!

Just as the Holy Month of Ramadhan was about to end, and Hari Raya celebrations were being looked forward to, a steeply rising number of new COVID cases made the Government put the nation under a very strict lockdown forbidding families to visit each other’s Open Houses.

As with Hari Raya celebrations were muted and families could not completely reunite, the wish to be together resonated louder than ever amid the people. Many brands wanted to echo these sentiments, and as such their Hari Raya ads showed us of how it is to celebrate together, while reminding us of the good times when the entire family was together. These memories and brand stories went viral and were widely shared on social media news walls, individual stories, and of course through traditional media channels like TV commercials.

“Going back into lockdown, means that many more consumers are spending more time online but with limited attention spans, brands that focus on capturing the ‘mind space’ of the consumer will be the ones that grow faster,” said Julie Ng, Researcher & Co-Founder of Vase.ai.

All the more, these commercials were instrumental in promoting the Hari Raya celebrative spirit. It looked as if the brands themselves, were inviting us to their own Hari Raya open houses.

Asia School of Business and market research company Vase.ai were curious to see whether people would think of offering a counter-invitation: Should brands became persons, would they be invited to join our Hari Raya Open House celebrations?

In opening this question, Vase.ai conducted a large-scale study among 391 ethnic-Malay Malaysians. The study presented a choice of 35 brands that heavily advertised during the last month in conjunction with Hari Raya to this representative sample.

The questions posed to the pool were:

“Consider this hypothetical scenario: The government is allowing you to have a small, safe and socially distanced Hari Raya open house. If brands were people, which of the following brands would you invite to the open house? Please select all that apply.”

Asking people to view brands as a person is a very common practice, the company notes. Consumers often attribute human features to brands on a daily basis. Many people project selected personality characteristics on the brands they are familiar with and favour. As an example, the car brand Volvo projects a responsible, trustworthy, reliable, and a family-man personality.

The Eight Invited brands:

This study uncovered that on average, a brand receives a Hari Raya open house invitation from 22% Malay Malaysian consumers. Some brands are more welcomed than others.

3 Most Invited Brands – KFC, Shopee and McDonald's

Three brands – KFC, Shopee and McDonald's – made the most wanted guest at Hari Raya open houses. As the nation’s favourite cousins, they won close to a 50% popularity vote. Also interesting to note is that these same trio came up on top for a similar study earlier this year on CNY Open House.

Followed by 5 Invited Brands

The five brands that follow in getting invitations from 30% or more from the people, but not by a majority are “good family friends”: Maybank, Foodpanda, Nestlé, Petronas, and Watson’s.

The Seven Un-invited brands

Three of the 35 brands included in the study were grouped in those that would not receive invitations. For one of the brands that were categorised as a non-invite, there was an obvious reason: it is a strong-branded medicine. Purchasing medication is unlikely to be at the top of Malaysians' minds as they're planning their Hari Raya open house!

A fourth group consists of three brands with a certain “double-bind.” The relationship is a mix of positivity and negativity. For instance, people are uncertain if they should invite brands of an entertainment/media company, an airline, and a personal care company. In a relational sense, “it’s complicated” as the number of Hari Raya open house invitations is as large as the number of non-invites.

“Perhaps the worst that can happen to a brand is being ignored. We found 20 brands caught in the silent and uneventful zone of indifference.” said Willem Smit, Assistant Professor of Marketing at Asia School of Business and International Faculty Fellow at MIT Sloan.

The TWENTY Brands in the “Danger Zone of Indifference”

This study grouped a fifth group of brands – those that people don’t really care about. Twenty brands were classified as those that do not have a significant connection with the people, and are not even important enough to be disliked. Typically, more than 70% of consumers ignore them.

Being placed in the “Zone of indifference” category would be a nightmare scenario for the marketer, as there is no existing cloud to start a conversation and sharpen the brands’ positioning.

It means it’s all the way back to the drawing board: thinking of the ideal target audience and crafting a better value proposition. Being in the category also means they are way below most people’s radar and results in an even worse start for them this year. There is no consolation for brands in the Zone of Indifference as it means hard work – if not the end is near, and they might well be unlikely to be part of the Hari Raya celebrations in 2022.

By: Professor Willem Smit, Assistant Professor of Marketing at Asia School of Business and International Faculty Fellow at MIT Sloan.

About Vase.ai

Vase.ai is a market research technology firm specialising in online consumer research to help consumer brands make decisions that drive higher ROI. With an emphasis on speed and accuracy, our flagship software product, allows you to seek consumer opinions from over 400,000 Malaysians and gain results in under 2 hours. Whether you're a novice or an expert researcher, Vase can help you make better, faster and more informed data-driven decisions.

About Asia School of Business

Asia School of Business (ASB) was established in 2015 by Bank Negara Malaysia in collaboration with MIT Sloan School of Management to be a premier global business school, a knowledge and learning hub infused with regional expertise, insights and perspectives of Asia and the emerging economies.

ASB’s executive education programs and degree programs have been globally-acclaimed for leading the way in management education. Through its award-winning Action Learning based curriculum, in partnership with the corporate community and students from across the world, ASB is committed to developing transformative and principled leaders who will contribute towards advancing the emerging world.

The government started the National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme in February. As of 27 April 2021, about 1.4 million jabs have been administered to the first target group (frontliners) as well as part of the second target group (elderly people aged 60 and above, those at high risk of chronic diseases and essential services workers etc.). However, the total registrations is only at 38.5% of the national population.

This survey was administered to Vase.ai’s online panel using an active quota sampling-method, where only people contacted are allowed to participate. Respondents aged 18 years old and above were quota sampled according to census statistics by Race, Gender, Age and Region of residence. The purpose of the survey was to find out Malaysians’ intention to register for the Covid-19 vaccinations as well as their reasons behind it.

In this research,1150 Malaysians were surveyed, asking if they have registered to receive Covid-19 vaccines. The core reason Malaysians registered for Covid-19 vaccinations is to protect themselves and their family from contracting Covid-19, as well as to reach herd immunity (84%). Some other reasons include being asked to (e.g. encouraged by the government, workplace requirements) (10%) and to be able to travel to other places (4%).

Among those who have not registered, almost 30% do not plan to register for the vaccine at all whereas the rest take the wait and see approach due to various reasons. The main reasons Malaysians have not registered for vaccination are:

1. They are not confident in the efficacy of the vaccines (36%)
2. They are afraid of the side effects (23%)

Some other reasons include:

1. They are busy with work or their studies, and forgot to register
2. They are pregnant, breastfeeding their babies or have certain health conditions.
3. They think it’s not necessary as they are not leaving their homes

Keeping track of your competitors’ achievements and failures is vital if you want to build an effective branding strategy that pulls in new customers and drives growth. Learning lessons from your competitors isn’t cheating – it’s good business sense that will help you to innovate and remain popular in a saturated market.

Unsure how to organise and run a competitor analysis? Don’t fret – we’ve put together an easy-to-follow guide that will help you to identify gaps in the market, understand market trends, develop new offerings, and market your wares more effectively.

Step 1. Find your competitors and assess their offerings

You can’t run a competitive analysis without figuring out who you’re competing against first. If you’re operating within the FMCG market, you’re probably already well aware of the major brands out there. To ensure you discover as many competitors as possible, however, it is a good idea to talk to your sales teams and find out which companies they regularly come across. Similarly, you could check out social media platforms or online community forums to figure out which brands are being discussed and promoted by users.

Once you’ve completed this part of your market research, segment the competition by factors such as location or services offered to ensure your results are as granular and actionable as possible. Here’s a table from Kantar detailing the top five FMCG brands in mainland China, for example:

Creating a similar chart detailing the best-performing players in your sector will help to set your goals. By looking at penetration, for example, you can determine which brands are implementing the most successful marketing and awareness campaigns. Factors such as market share, on the other hand, could help you to ascertain which companies represent the best value for money or are the most trusted in your sector.

If your sector is highly segmented by product cost and quality, it is worth creating a graph like the following from creately:

By placing yourself on this kind of graph, you will quickly be able to ascertain who your closest and most important competitors are.

Step 2. Research competitors’ sales and marketing strategies

Next, you need to dig down into your competitors’ sales and marketing strategies, assessing what strategies appear to be working as you go. Factors to consider include:

Marketing and sales channels

Are your competitors using paid ads, social media, or email marketing? Are they using an e-commerce site to sell their wares? Are they using a popular platform such as Instagram to make direct sales? If you’re unable to answer these questions using search engines or market data alone, it is a good idea to issue an online survey for customers. Ask questions about what motivates them to invest in particular brands and use this data to hone your marketing strategies.

Content

High-quality content represents the bedrock of any decent brand building strategy as it helps boost search engine optimisation (SEO) and ensures customers remain loyal. What keywords are competitors using to stay ahead of other brands? How often are they posting content?

Pricing and special offers

Are your competitors winning customers via special introductory offers or low prices? How do your offerings compare? If possible, you may wish to trump their offer with something more attractive.

Step 3. Analyse competitors’ social media presence and engagement levels

Social media channels can give away a lot about a brand’s popularity and relationship with its customers. Look at factors such as their tone of voice, how often they post, and how they handle public criticism online. Do they post stock images or real images of their team in action?

Again, an online survey may be a useful tool with which to gather information about a competitor’s customer engagement strategies. Ask respondents to rate the efficacy of specific campaigns and gather information about which social media platforms potential customers are most likely to spend time on.

Step 4. Find out what technologies your competitors are using

Ascertain which tools your competitors use to draw in customers and keep their offerings fresh. Are they using a cutting-edge new SaaS tool or customer service platform? Perhaps their e-commerce site is amazingly user-friendly?

If you’re unsure how to find out such information, investing in a consumer research platform such as Vase.ai will help you to stay on top of developing trends almost effortlessly. Vase.ai allows clients to stay ahead of the curve by analysing the risks and opportunities affecting their business at any given moment. Try it today!

Step 5. Write up a final assessment and set goals

This is the most important part of your competitor analysis and you should dedicate a significant amount of time to it. Once you have collated as much information about the strategies your competitors are using, note down their strengths and weaknesses in a legible chart and work out how to respond to this information with concrete, actionable goals. Again, creately has created a useful SWOT analysis chart that could help to get you started:

Reach out to Vase.ai today!

If you need a little extra help setting yourself apart from competitors and honing your branding strategy, Vase.ai is here to help. We harness the power of AI to deliver cutting-edge consumer research from as little as USD 1k. Get in touch today to find out more and discuss your options.

Email: expert@vase.ai

Phone: 03-8408 1668

Or drop a form at our contact page.

Vase is an on-demand market research solution that allows companies to gain accurate consumer insights within days at a fraction of cost by creating and deploying surveys to respondents within our database.

Through Vase research study can clients get quick and accurate consumer insights via 2 ways that could assist in marketing, branding & operational decisions.

Online Survey - Quantitative

We collect all data through online surveys, participated by voluntary survey respondents who have registered on our website. By understanding our client’s study objective, we collaborate with them by helping to design the survey questionnaire.

We currently have respondents in ASEAN countries. However, we are open to operate in other countries as well.

We perform two types of validation to ensure the accuracy of the data. First is identity validation of the survey respondents. We validate all of our respondent information, from social media accounts all the way to banking information. This controls our input source so that we can be very sure that for each response, there is a real live human that’s submitting that response. Each response is unique.

Secondly, we validate how genuine the answer is - based on several methods including measuring completion time of the survey, context logic, trap questions and open-ended questions relevancy. We’re constantly tweaking our fraud-detection algorithms to look for inconsistencies in user behavior and answers.

Other than providing you with raw data reports, we provide Vase presentable reports where we conduct statistical analysis. We conduct cross tabulation analysis between different variables of data to give you further insights to help guide you to make the most informed decisions for your business.

On the 10th of March, Anthony Low sat down to have a fireside chat with us, providing insights and tips into brand building. He provided his perspective from over 39 years of experience, most of which he spent at Nestle. He held various leadership positions while he was at Nestle, from Supply Chain, Sales & Marketing Management, Production, and Marketing Communication, to name a few. He is now a mentor at Endeavour, sharing his knowledge and expertise with entrepreneurs in Malaysia.

Anthony shared some great insights with us, including those listed below:

• The key guiding principles of a brand trying to succeed should be knowing their purpose and values, and knowing where and how they make an impact.
• A brand is the total experience consumers have with a company, its products, and its services. This experience is partly rational, but mostly it is an emotional experience with the 'brand promise'.
  How do you know you have a strong brand? When consumers feel that your promises are trustworthy.
• Romance product truths. Anthony gave an example of Nestle's 'Read the Label' global campaign, where they believed their own product's ingredients spoke for itself; being healthier than alternatives from competitors. So the 'product truth' of being a healthier alternative was romanced into a narrative that encouraged consumers to take their health into their own hands.
• Always learn from your competitors. At Nestle, they believed that 'size makes arrogance'. To counter this, they believed they could always learn from competitors; big or small.
• Brands have to know their target consumers deeply, put consumers first in everything they do, and learn to leverage the understanding of consumers into insights which will help the brand to grow.
  Nestle uses what they call the OBP; the Own-able Brand Proposition. It describes the brand knowing their consumers so well that they can identify a deep insight about them or a human truth, that will then lead to a Big Idea or a sweet spot that will help bring to life the brand promise.
• The Q&A session involved Anthony bringing us back to one important point; talking to consumers being crucial to brand building. Whether it's from market research, from distributors, etc. it's important to keep talking to consumers and understanding them, their behaviour and their needs.
  Nestle relies heavily on market research, with SPC (selling price calculation) only being signed off by the CEO if more than 16% of it goes towards brand building, which covers market research.

Anthony calls us to always pay attention and listen to consumers, and to invest in building brands, no matter if it's a new or established one. He believes that a company's brand is their most valuable asset, a sentiment shared by Steve Forbes, who said:

Your brand is the single most important investment you can make in your business.

The three key points he would like us to remember from the webinar are as follows:

• Know your target consumers deeply; understand them so you can identify a deep insight which you can turn into a big idea or Own-able Brand Proposition
• Inspire with purpose and deliver your brand promise
• Keep satisfying real consumer needs and build their trust

Watch the webinar below to learn from the former VP of an FMCG giant!

Prepare yourself for some information that will be new to no one. Are you ready?

To be successful, it's vital that you market your brand. After all, it shows customers who you are, what you do, and gives them something to identify with.

This is news to no one; every brand and every marketer knows this. However, knowing this to be fact and knowing where to start with marketing a brand are two vastly different things. And by taking the wrong steps, you'll end up with a less-than-efficient process that does your brand no favours.

So, with this upcoming series of posts, we’ll look at how you can market your brand and what steps you can take to make sure it's properly positioned and optimized for the most revenue and success. However, before getting to that, we’ll look at the basics like what your brand is and some initial steps to take in marketing your brand.      

1. What Is Your Brand?

Before looking at the first step in marketing your brand, let’s first look at what exactly your brand is.

A formal definition of a brand could be that it is a feature or set of features that distinguishes one business from another and typically consists of a name, a tagline, a logo or symbol, design, brand voice, and more.

In simpler terms, it refers to the overall experience a customer has when interacting with a business when, for instance, they shop at the business, follow the business on social media, or even walk past the business on the street.

Now,  you might think that your business is doing fine and that your ads are running well, so you don't need to spend more time and effort on marketing your brand than you already do. If you think this, you should perhaps reconsider.

Your brand is arguably one of your business’s most valuable assets.

It gives your business an identity beyond merely your product or service and it gives customers something that they can relate to and connect with. It also makes your business memorable which helps customers distinguish your business from your competitors and, in doing so, it supports and improves your marketing and advertising efforts.

In fact, your brand can be the deciding factor when consumers make a buying decision. In a 2015 global survey, almost 60% of shoppers said they would rather buy from brands they know and 21% said they bought a product because they liked the brand.

A perfect example of branding that does all these things, is that of Apple. Is the iPhone the best phone on the market? Are Apple products the best there is? Well, they certainly could be, however determining whether Apple products are the best is not in the scope of this post. But the fact is that many customers buy Apple products not because they're the best, but because they identify with Apple's values and the brand.

And that's the point, your brand gives customers something they can identify with and if they do, they'll buy more of it.

So, now the immediate question is what your first step should be when marketing your brand. Typically, you'll follow some sort of process to establish and market your brand to your customers and you'll find a lot of information online about the different variations of this process. So, let's take a look at some core steps in this process.                                    

2. Define Your Values

Often, the first step will be to define your brand values. This means that you develop a strong mission statement and company culture with which customers can identify. In other words, your values are your story, it’s a way of telling customers who you are, what do you do, and why it matters.

So, to define your values you ask questions like who you are, what your story is, what your beliefs, your convictions and your principles are, what drives you, and why you do what you do. Remember, these questions relate to you and your business and they're not a way of trying to sell something to customers, but rather to open the door to let customers in.

If you look at the Apple example again, its answers to these questions might lead to the following mission statement:

“Apple wants to bring the best user experience to their customers through the use of their innovative design, hardware, software, and services.”

This mission has taken the brand from being a mere computer company to being a lifestyle product.

As a result, there are plenty of customers that identify with this mission statement, with some buying the products for their design and the way they work, and others buying the products because of the user experience. Irrespective of the reason why people buy the product, Apple’s mission statement has arguably made it one of the most valuable brands in the world.                

Another example of this is Nestle.      

Nestle has given Malaysians some of our most beloved and well-known brands, including Milo, Nescafe, Koko Krunch and Maggi.  

Nestle's purpose is to unlock the power of food to enhance quality of life for everyone, and to make a difference for people and pets, the environment, and their shareholders and stakeholders. This purpose is also geared towards creating value for people and communities around the world.

This purpose has worked well for them, translating to Nestle becoming the largest food and beverage company in the world, with more than 2,000 brands in 187 countries worldwide. Furthermore, Nestle is so skilled in providing local context that it has become well-integrated into our Malaysian identity; everyone knows Milo trucks in schools have the best Milo, and that Maggi goreng is a stable in any mamak shop.

3. Determine Where You Fit In

The next step would be to figure out where you fit into the market, and this is crucial for your success. The first thing you’ll want to know is who your competition is. This is simply because you can't know where you're going to if you don't know who you're competing against.

The next inquiry is what makes you stand out from your competitors? You'll have to find that differentiating feature that makes you stand out from the crowd and will prevent you from disappearing into the masses.  Here think of a company like Nike.

Nike has a brand identity that details its identity from a sender (Nike's) and receiver (consumer's) perspective, and differentiates between the internalisation versus externalisation of their brand identity. In the clarity and creativity behind their brand identity, they are able to find their feet in a market full of training, running, and lifestyle shoes; standing out simply because they have unique designs, great product quality, and excellent innovation.      

Another example of a brand that uses their values to find where they fit is Shopee.

Shopee entered the market when Lazada was without a doubt the top e-commerce platform in Malaysia. Staying true to their purpose of using technology to connect buyers and sellers, they introduced features like Shopee Live, Shopee Quiz and Shopee Feed, all of which provided a social community within the e-commerce environment that was well-designed and user-friendly, lending the platform more credibility.

This led to Shopee becoming the most clicked e-commerce site in Malaysia in the first quarter of 2020, with 27 million clicks in a span of three months, with Lazada trailing behind at 12 million clicks.

Likewise, you'll have to find your brand’s differentiating feature, and this will be one of the cornerstones of your brand.        

4. Understand Your Customers and Add Value To Their Lives

The next step will almost always be to understand your customer and add value to their lives. This is probably the most important part of building your brand because it ultimately determines the success of your organization.

Here, you want to know how your customers perceive you and what their needs are. If you establish this, in helping to address customers’ needs you will then create value for customers. This will allow you to acquire new customers, retain existing customers, increase your brand awareness, and stand out in the marketplace.

The first thing you should do to create value for customers is by seeing your customers’ perspective.

This means you need to have empathy in order to understand their problems. By knowing their problems, and knowing the ins and outs of your own product or service, you will know how your product or service can solve their problems.

Thus, the way in which you can add value to your customers' lives lies in the overlap between what their needs are, and your product or service, as shown in the diagram below.

This will create a shift from ‘selling’ to ‘helping’; where you provide valuable resources for your customers that they can use to solve their problem.

The second instance to add value is by consistently working to improve customer satisfaction.

Remember, a happy customer is a returning customer, so as you improve customer satisfaction you indirectly also improve your sales and revenue.

The third way in which you can create value for customers is by developing and implementing a stellar customer experience.

This means you'll have to consider every touchpoint in your business that customers interact with and decide how they can be improved. The more touchpoints you have, the more extensive your checks on customer experience needs to be.

Below is an example of all the brand touchpoints that would contribute to a customer's experience with a certain brand. All of these touchpoints are a potential positive (or negative) experience with the brand.

Continuous checks or audits of your brand touchpoints will not only improve your customers' experience of your brand, it will also allow you to build stronger relationships with your customers. This means you also increase your chances of success because you're more likely to benefit from referrals and higher client retention.

Ultimately, it's this process or some variation thereof that you'll use in marketing your brand to your customers. But we believe that by following this process you neglect a crucial part of marketing your brand. Don't get us wrong, these are all very important steps to take and they are vital to ensure success in your branding efforts, but we’ll argue that before taking these steps, you should first know where your brand stands.

That brings us to the real first step in marketing your brand.

The Real First Step in Marketing Your Brand

You've probably noticed in all the steps above that they rely on a lot of questions. For example, in determining where you fit into the market, you'll have to ask who your competitors are, what features differentiate you from your competitors, who your customers are, what their problems are, and many more.  

And the only way you'll know the answers to these questions and get a complete view of your brand (before you start to market it) is by knowing where your brand stands, or in other words, doing market and brand research before you start marketing.

In doing this, you will be able to take measure of your brand. Knowing where your brand stands will help you to know what to do next and what areas of your business to focus on. It will give you a great indication of what customers want to see from your brand and whether steps like customer education or building awareness is the best course of action to improve.

Likewise, it will show you where you stand compared to your competitors, and using this perspective, you will be able to improve your methods to make you more competitive.  

By not taking this step, you’ll be in the dark and often miss vital details in your whole brand improvement strategy.

Final Thoughts

To sum up, remember this checklist when thinking about marketing your brand, and remember that knowing where your brand stands helps to inform your marketing and branding efforts:

1. Know where your brand stands
2. Define your values
3. Determine where you fit in
4. Understand your consumers and add value to their lives

Marketing your brand is vital, and the first step in doing so is by conducting the necessary research so that you know exactly where your brand currently stands and what you need to improve on. This will form the foundation of your strategy from there on out.

To make establishing your brand value easier for you, our platform can help you do a brand audit, brand tracking, or a brand health survey, to make sure that your brand value is the best it could be. The various methods will be detailed further in our next post.

Until then, start thinking about what you would like to find out from consumers about your brand!

During this extraordinary pandemic-struck Chinese New Year, many families were not able to completely reunite. As a result, the wish to be together became even stronger than ever. Many brands wanted to resonate with these sentiments people had, and as such their CNY ads showed us how it is to celebrate together and remind us of a good time with all our family together. These memories and brand stories were massively published and shared on our social media news walls, stories, and of course through traditional media channels like TV commercials.

All the more these commercials were instrumental in promoting the CNY celebrative spirit. It looked as if the brands were inviting us to their own CNY open houses.

Asia School of Business and market research company Vase.ai were curious to see whether people would think of offering a counter-invitation: are brands, if they were persons, invited to join our CNY open house celebrations?

To check this well, we conducted a large-scale study among 462 Ethnic-Chinese Malaysians. Our study presented this representative sample to a choice of 29 brands that had heavily advertised during the last month of CNY.

Our two questions were:

“If these brands were persons, which brands would be invited to your CNY open house? And which ones won’t be?

As a note aside, asking people to think of brands as persons is a very common practice. In daily life, consumers tend to attribute human features to brands. Many of us project certain personality characteristics on the brands they know and like. For example, for many people the car brand Volvo has a responsible, trustworthy, reliable, family-man personality.

1. The Twelve Invited brands:

Our study shows that on average, a brand receives an CNY open house invitation from 27% Chinese Malaysian consumers. Some brands are more welcome than others.

Most Invited Brands - McDonalds, KFC and Shopee

Clearly, three brands – McDonalds, KFC and Shopee – are the most wanted guest at CNY open houses. As the nation’s favorite cousins, they won over a 50% popularity vote.

Followed by 9 Invited Brands

They are followed by nine brands getting invitations from 30% or more from the people, but not a majority. These “good family friends” are Foodpanda, Lazada, Grab, Maybank, Watson, Tesco, Eu Yan Sang, Nescafe, and Yakult.

Figure 1: The 5 Family Groups of CNY-Brands

Figure 1 plots the popularity of the brands against their unpopularity. The vertical Y-axis indicates the percentage of Invitations (“likes”) a brand had received, whereas the horizontal X-axis shows the number of un-invitations (“dislikes”) a brand received, not to join the CNY celebrations.

2. The Nine Un-invited brands

Six of the 29 brands included in the study received many more non-invites, than invitations. As it is not very polite to publicly announce which brands are unpopular and/or unwelcome, we will only mention their industries. For one of them, the reason is obvious: it is a strong-branded medicine, and it is generally considered inauspicious to welcome medication to a CNY open house. It may introduce bad luck.

A fourth group consists of three brands with a certain “double-bind.” The relationship is a mix of positivity and negativity. For instance, people have with an insurance company, an airline, and an energy company; for them, basically, it is not clear if the brands are welcome or not. In a relational sense, “it’s complicated” as the number of CNY open house invitations is as large as the number of non-invites.

3. The Eight Brands in the “Danger Zone of Indifference”

Finally, this study identifies a fifth group of brands. Those are the ones people don’t really care about. There is no significantly strong affection, and they are not even important enough to be disliked.

In our study, there are eight brands we neither like nor dislike.

This category in the “Zone of indifference” is a nightmare scenario for the marketer, as there is no existing cloud to start your conversation and sharpen the positioning.

It means all the way back to the drawing board: thinking of the ideal target audience and crafting a better value proposition. It means for them, being below the radar of most people, this new year had an even worse start. Being in the Zone of Indifference is by no means comforting. It means hard work – if not the end is near and it might well be unlikely to be part of the CNY celebrations in 2022.

With that, we wish all brands Happy Chinese New Year and May You Stay Out of the Danger Zone of Indifference.

By Willem Smit and Julie Ng

Prof. Willem Smit is the Assistant Professor of Marketing at Asia School of Business and International Faculty Fellow at MIT Sloan.

About Asia School of Business


Asia School of Business (ASB) was established in 2015 by Bank Negara Malaysia in collaboration with MIT Sloan School of Management to be a premier global business school, a knowledge and learning hub infused with regional expertise, insights and perspectives of Asia and the emerging economies.

ASB’s executive education programs and degree programs have been globally-acclaimed for leading the way in management education. Through its award-winning Action Learning based curriculum, in partnership with the corporate community and students from across the world, ASB is committed to developing transformative and principled leaders who will contribute towards advancing the emerging world.

About Vase.ai

Vase.ai is a market research technology firm specialising in online consumer research to help consumer brands make decisions that drive higher ROI. With an emphasis on speed and accuracy, our flagship software product, allows you to seek consumer opinions from over 400,000 Malaysians and gain results in under 2 hours. Whether you're a novice or an expert researcher, Vase can help you make better, faster and more informed data-driven decisions.

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If you want to know how your brand is being perceived in the eyes of your target consumers, check out our brand audit page to find out how we can help.

Knowing what is brand tracking and the steps to brand tracking is just the first step. There are different attributes of brand tracking, some could be useful, some might add little value, depending on your brand. So, here, we wanted to point out what are the 6 dimensions we can look at when doing brand tracking so all of us can select what's useful and not for our next study.

Dimension #1 - Brand Awareness and Usage

To understand the success of a brand is to understand the consumers’ opinions on our brand. The best type of brand awareness are those that become proprietary eponyms, the alpha dog of brands. We want people to associate items with our brand.

Ask me for a Kleenex and not a tissue, ask me for a Coca Cola and not a soda. We want our brand to be the first our consumers think of and the only brand they consider over and over again.

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For that to occur, people have to be aware of our brand and there must be a high usage rate. To understand the level our brand is at, we have to use brand tracking.

Understand the level of familiarity consumers have with our product and if they do not have that familiarity, establish a brand trial with them.

A good brand awareness is when both brand recognition and brand recall are strong.

Brand recognition is when your consumers are able to confirm their previous exposure to our brand from just a normal cue while brand recall is when consumers are able to name our brand from memory with just a product category as a cue.

Questions we can ask:

1. What brand of phones are you aware of?
2. What is the brand of the phone you are currently using?
3. Which brand of handset do you consider using or buying?
4. If you need to buy a phone tomorrow, which one would you go for?
5. Have you heard of [product]? [establish familiarity]
6. Have you used [product]? [establish trial]

Dimension #2 -Brand Imagery

The image of our brand is the promise of our brand. Brand imagery is the tangible or intangible elements that consumers associate with a brand. It comes from the 5 senses of a human; visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile and oral and it differs for each consumer. What we want to achieve is a positive image :)

The image we want for our brand depends highly on the objective and target market of our product. For example, if we are targeting a high end market, we would want our brand to have the luxurious, extravagant kind of image. If our brand has the objective of being a normal everyday object, we would want our brand to have a more approachable image.

The best kind of brand imagery is when people associate our brand image to our users too such as people who drives Volkswagen prioritise safety. If we wish to change our image to one that best suits your company’s objective, we will have to first understand the image that our brand has in the eyes of the public and this can be achieved through brand tracking.

The 4 dimensions of brand image is explained by BrandAsset Valuator, a model produced by Young & Rubicam. According to BrandAsset Valuator, the 4 dimensions are brand’s perceived differentiation, brand’s relevance, brand’s knowledge and brand’s esteem.

Questions we can ask:

1. To what extent do you admire and respect people using [product]?
2. How much do you like people using [product]?
3. How well do each of the following words describe [product]?
4. Please list the quality of the users of [product].

Things we need to know

• The qualities of the products in the same industry
• The words our consumers use to describe us
• The words our consumers use to describe our competitors

Dimension #3 -Brand Feelings

Titanic would always go down (literally) as the most tragic romance movie of all time while Coca Cola would be known as the “happiness” drink for their famous tagline “open happiness” as well as the company that brought us the epitome image of childhood happiness, Santa Claus.

We should want our brand to be associated with these type of strong emotions. Regardless if it causes rage or causes “depression” (as people like to put it lightly these days), it helps with our brand recognition and is commonly known as emotional branding.

It’s difficult to change the emotion consumers have towards our product, which is why we have to get it right the first time. If we are able to get our customers to be emotionally connected to our product, we would always have recurring sales despite having minor setbacks.

To ensure our brand continuity, we should be very certain about the feelings our brand ignites in our consumers so that we do not continue marketing a product that is negatively viewed by the users which will end up causing our company’s overall image to fall.

Things you need to know:

• Does our [product] give our consumers a feeling of….happiness, sadness, safety, etc?
• When people think about our company or product, what are the feelings and associations we want them to have? Are they unique? Can we “own” them?
• What are the emotional benefits that only we deliver to our customers?
• The list of emotions our brand wants to associate with.
• Do they think of this feelings occasionally or every time?

Dimension #4 -Brand Resonance

Brand resonance is the dimension that talks about the relationship consumers have with the product and how well he can relate to it. This dimension arises from a model called Keller’s Brand Equity Model which states that to build a strong brand, we must shape how our customers think and feel about our product. The model states that only when our customers have specific, positive thoughts, feelings, beliefs, opinions and perceptions about our product, will we achieve brand equity which is the commercial value of our product.

Brand resonance is achieved when we achieve 4 things, behavioural loyalty, attitudinal attachment, sense of community and active engagement.

Behavioural loyalty is when our consumers are so loyal to our brand that they would never consider another brand of the same product.

Attitudinal attachment is when our customers see the purchase of our brand as a special purchase.

Sense of community is similar to brand feelings when our consumers feel a sense of belonging when they own a product that majority of the public owns.

Active engagement is the most intense form of brand loyalty where consumers are actively engaged in our brand even though they are not the individual purchasing or consuming it.

To climb up the next stage of Keller’s Brand Equity Model hierarchy, we should first understand our current and potential customer’s current brand loyalty. This is where brand tracking comes in. Once we have an understanding of our current brand loyalty, our goal would be to achieve the next level of brand loyalty with the ultimate goal being active engagement.

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Things you want to know:

• Whether our consumers buy our product whenever they can
• Whether our consumers would go out of their way to buy our product
• Whether our consumers join our products’ newsletter/fan accounts and user chat sites.
• Whether our consumers consider themselves loyal to our brand
• Whether our consumers would only choose our product and no one else's.
• Whether our consumers feel that our product is easy to consume.

Dimension #5 -Brand Judgement

It takes only 7 seconds to form a first impression on someone, brands are no exception of this rule.

Consumer’s make accurate judgement with surprising speed and sensitivity based on relevancy of the product to the consumer’s circumstances. Customers would judge where one product falls in comparison of another product and it can be based on actual interaction or perceived reputation.

Brand judgement is the general public’s overall opinion on our product in terms of superiority, price worth, satisfaction and whether it is favourable in comparison to existing market competitors.

Questions you can ask:

1. How favourable is your attitude towards [product]?
2. How well does [product] satisfy your needs?
3. How likely would you recommend [product] to others?
4. Is [product] worth the price?
5. What do you like best about [product]?
6. To what extent is [product] superior to other brands?

Dimension #6 -Brand Perception

Brand perception are illusory consumer sentiments and customer impressions that are driven by emotion. However, different from brand feeling where we wish to ignite the most positive feeling in our consumers, brand perception is neutral.

In brand perception, we want to know our consumers’ feelings regardless of whether it is positive or negative. It is to gauge how our consumers feel about a brand, how they respond to it, talk about it, and interact with it.

Brand perception is triggered by 8 factors; emotion, individuality, communication, social influence, competitiveness, innovation, leadership and durability and comfort and inspiration. These 8 factors will determine whether our brand can emerge as the top brand in our industry.

However, be warn that when we are a food and beverage company, our brand perception is influenced largely by the information our consumers are fed before they try our product. It has been tested that when you try to gain market share through taste tests, it is largely influenced by the brain. Dan Ariely described in the book “predictably irrational that the pre-frontal cortex responsible for higher order brain functions activates when it is given information (being told that this brand is better) and can override part of the brain that reacts to taste. Thus, think twice and weigh your options before we react to a competitor’s taste test results.

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Questions to ask:

1. What are the 3 words that come to mind when you think of our brand?
2. What do you think our brand does?
3. Compared with our competitors, what advantages made you choose our brand?
4. If this brand were a person, who would it be?
5. What is this brand missing?
6. Why would you recommend this brand to other people?

Conclusion is, brand tracking is an important marketing tool and we should not shy away from it as it can bring us many benefits such as:

• Being able to retain customer loyalty
• Lower marketing cost if you use the right tool
• Showing customers that you pay attention to their needs
• Keep track of the success or failure of your strategies
• Increase in market share
• Improve employee morale as business transactions become smoother
• Support brand extension
• Increase marketing communication efficiency and effectiveness

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Want to start brand tracking? Head over to our brand score page.

Great Brand Represents Great Value

Market research, as valuable and as useful as it is, can seem a little intimidating to a brand or business that has never done market research before. It can seem like a complex, many-headed concept, and knowing how or where to start can be a difficult thing to decide on in the midst of this uncertainty.

When a brand or business is unsure of where to begin with market research, doing a brand health study is a great way to kick off their market research and cover the ‘basics’ of what they need to know about themselves and their consumers’ preferences.

While checking for a brand’s health, certain vital aspects are captured, such as how aware people are of the brand, how they perceive the brand, what they expect from it as compared to other competitors and whether or not they intend on purchasing from them.

Tracking a brand’s equity is an important task for any brand manager or whomever responsible in the marketing aspect. Not only does it help in staying a step ahead of the competition, but it also quantifies the effectiveness of a brand’s marketing and advertising campaigns.

Objectives of Brand Health Survey

Generally, this technique is used to measure a 360 degree view of a brand. It includes the following aspects:

1. Awareness and Usage
2. Performance of the Brand on its Value Proposition
3. Customer Loyalty
4. Strategy to Allocate Resources for Maximizing the Brand Potential
5. Ability to Charge Premium Services

The ability to charge consumers for premium services is defined by the qualification to charge the offerings from the company’s product, either tangible or intangible, higher than the standard market price.

Areas To Be Covered in a Brand Health Survey

The following features are covered for a comprehensive brand tracking study:

1. Brand Awareness
   Consumer awareness is the connection between a brand’s marketing and their sales. This awareness refers to how familiar customers are with the brand. In a brand health survey, both the recalling and recognition of customers are captured. Recalling, however, is a better indicator of the brand’s health as a name that first comes to the customers’ minds proves to be more desirable to the customer as compared to a name that is prompted and then recognized. This is the difference between the brands that consumers instantly think of when an industry is mentioned, and a brand whose name brings about a “Sure, I know that brand too” kind of reaction. Customers are also more likely to recommend the brand that they remember at the top of their minds compared to other brands.

2. Brand Usage
   Understanding a brand’s usage helps a company realise where it stands in the market. Apart from getting an idea about the consumers’ purchase behaviour and preferences, the study also indicates the brand’s market share. While measuring for brand usage, frequency of usage, the recency of purchases and total spending on the brand are then quantified.

3. Brand Attributes
   This section reflects what consumers think of a brand. Consumers purchase from a brand they trust and believe provides good value. This part of the study simply checks whether or not the brand is aligned with the customers’ expectations and how well their needs are fulfilled. Every brand strives to maintain a positive impression about themselves in the minds of customers. Measuring brand attributes checks for time and what the pitfalls are that customers associate with the brand.

4. Purchase Intent
   Measuring the likelihood of purchase intent is an important part of a brand health survey. Respondents should be probed on their reason for purchase, channel and time so that a near accurate prediction of the actual purchase decision can be made.

5. Comparison to Competitor Brands
   Metrics like brand awareness and usage are useful, but unless a brand also has these metrics for their competitors, they do not have the context required to know whether or not their brand is doing well. If for example, a brand knows that their brand awareness is at 58%, objectively this sounds like a solid number. However, if they also knew that their competitors’ brand awareness are at 64% and 72%, this indicates that while their awareness is high, their competitors are doing better than them, and they should step up their marketing efforts to improve.

When to Conduct a Brand health Survey

Depending on the industry and the organisation, this study can be conducted at an interval of 3 to 6 months or on an annual basis. Generally it is conducted most frequently required in the FMCG sector, due to the fast paced atmosphere of that industry. For the services industry, conducting a brand health study less frequently is sufficient.

It is beneficial to conduct a brand health survey in the following changing circumstances:

1. Business / Organisational change
   Whether it’s the name recognition of new members of the organisation, or if the organisational restructuring have changed the processes within the organization, it is worthwhile to track any changes in the brand’s metrics due to these.
2. Strategic Alignment (Vision, Mission & Values)
   If the vision, mission or values of a brand has changed, it may resonate more or resonate less with their target audience, thus changing brand metrics.
3. Promotional Synchronization with Marketing Plan
   A new marketing plan may affect the visibility and recognisability of the brand.
4. Market Dynamics
   Whether it’s the introduction of a new competitor in the industry, or a downturn in the economy, these could affect brand metrics, and should be tracked.
5. Change in Customer Base or Clients
   A new target market being implemented or a new influx of customers could impact brand positioning, which in turn could affect brand metrics as well.
6. Rebranding in Terms of Names and Logos
   A rebrand would definitely shake up the industry and also a brand itself, which would arguably make a brand want to track brand sentiment even more closely than before.

If your brand or business is interested in finding out more about Vase.ai’s offerings, click here. If you’re interested in a brand health study specifically, consider checking our brand score page.

Most companies make sure to conduct a brand health study once a year. But the successful ones who truly believe in putting their consumers first conduct a brand lift study after each marketing campaign. This allows them to track the effectiveness of their campaign and identify the changes in their target consumers’ awareness, perception, consideration and the likelihood of purchase towards their brand.

Through continuous learning and iteration, companies will be able to create more effective campaigns that contribute to brand growth.

A brand lift study answers the following questions:

1. Are audiences able to recall the ad?
2. Are audiences attributing the ad to the correct brand?
3. Do people like what they see in the ad?
4. Are they more aware of the brand’s presence after seeing the ad?
5. Did the ad influence people in considering the advertised brand or product?
6. Are consumers more likely to purchase the product or brand after seeing the ad?

How can one conduct a Brand Lift study?

Primary Market Research

Primary market research, for example online surveys or online focus group discussions, allows you to ask either global or regional audiences (depending on how big your marketing campaign is) what they think about your ad. More importantly, you are able to specify how the ad affects their customer journey. These effects can stretch from awareness, consideration and influence to purchase:

Awareness

Are more people aware of the brand after the campaign? Did they become aware of the brand from the campaign or elsewhere? Did the source of their awareness affect their sentiment towards the brand, whether it’s positive or negative?

Consideration

How does the consumer’s perception towards the brand change before and after the marketing campaign ? Do the consumers believe in the values of the brand and its products’ usage? Are consumers able to recall the ad? Are consumers able to identify the key messages shared in the ad? Do consumers tie the ad back to the brand?

Purchase

Is the ad persuasive enough to get people to buy the product? How do the key messages in the ads move people to purchase the product? Are the audiences choosing to lean towards the brand in their future purchases after seeing the ad?

Measure Changes in Online Metrics

To support your primary market research findings, you should also be measuring your online metrics as a concise validation. Increase in likes, comments and shares will validate your increase in brand engagement whilst new website or social media visitors contribute to the general increase in the brand awareness.

Conclusion

Consistently conducting brand lift studies in your brand building journey helps to ensure that your campaigns are bringing your brand towards the right direction. At its core, a brand lift study identifies if your ad is generating the positive impact that you desire; whether it’s towards your brand or product.

If you’d like to get started on your brand research, check out our brand score page to learn more about how Vase.ai can help. Alternatively, you can speak to us directly by submitting your contact information.

I bet that in just a split-second, you are able to recall that one brand that influences and sends positive feelings towards yourself because you know you love that brand.

Brand love is not sparked at first sight, neither does it come at the moment after purchase. But rather something particular that has been nurtured and maintained over time. Brand love makes purchasing goods different. How so? The word ‘love’ itself, refers emotions and sometimes irrational relationships (in this case, it’s purchase) towards something.

The effective strategy in expanding your bottom-line growth is one that nurtures your brand love. Not only will it generate repetitive purchase, but it will also tap into a much more deeper-level, such as emotional attachment between the consumer and your brand. Which is why brand love is much more significant and important than brand loyalty.

And how is brand love nurtured?

Before we get real deep into the strategy, let us address the definition first, along with the explanation of the 'brand connection and feeling' matrix which you can use when you're reflecting on the topic “where does my brand stand in terms of achieving brand love?”

Brand Connection Matrix

There are two independent variables involved in the development of brand love; a functional connection and an emotional connection. A functional connection reflects the functional performance of your brand, such as durability, material quality, user interface and deliverability. An emotional connection on the other hand, refers to abstract ideas and is directly influenced by your brand personality, image and positioning. If you are unclear on how to develop a solid brand positioning and personality, you can brush up by reading about it on our previous blog post here.

Q1: Brand as a colleague
Q2: Brand as a family
Q3: Brand as an acquaintance
Q4: Brand as a friend

Through market research you can learn to categorise and group your customers into the relevant quadrants in the brand-connection matrix.

From this matrix, you should be able to answer these questions:
How many of my customers are in Q2?
Are there too many of my customers in either Q3 or Q1?

Ideally, having your customers in Q1 would mean that you have an already finished product in your hands, that has been rightfully delivered to your customers the way they want it.

This is when a new question arises; how do I drive my customers to Q4 and Q2?

From the brand connection matrix, the dependent variables of emotional connection were removed to create the brand feeling matrix:

From consumer research, you should already know which quadrant most of your customers are in by now. The ranking from the lowest attachment to the highest can be shown as Q4 -> Q3 -> Q1 -> Q2.

These two matrices will give you a clear idea of how you should nurture Brand Love, with the central question being:

How does one create and nurture Brand Love?

The two core-elements in creating brand-love are to communicate both the functional and emotional sides of your brand.

Functional Communication

Start thinking about communicating the functional-side of your product in a different and more creative way. Below are some options on how you can communicate this:

1. Transparent Pricing

With growing consumer concerns over unfair distribution of a purchase, brands should embrace it and be on consumers' side. If you are in the apparel and footwear industry for example, communicate on how you pay for the materials, labor, marketing cost and even your profit. Here’s an example of a company called EVERLANE, that does communicate their transparent pricing.

2. Show Them the Process of Making Your Product

People want to know what’s behind the curtain. Consumers are often driven by pure curiosity or concern over the unethical processes of product-making. Show them that you are ethical, and that you share the same beliefs as they do. Show your customers that you are here to create a better world. In Jogjakarta, Indonesia, a chocolate brand called ‘Monggo’ did exactly this. In its flagship store, the whole process of making their chocolate is shown, and the labourers in their small factory are willing to give more information and talk to consumers as well. This will give customers assurance that the product is hygienic, and labor-fair.

Emotional Communication

The core to-do list to leverage the emotional side is to communicate. Here is a list of strategies that you can adapt in order to enhance an emotional connection with your customers.

1. Emotional Marketing: Brand Purpose

You should be able to communicate to your customers how your brand will help them to improve their lives. Let your customers be aware of your beliefs, and what the purpose of your brand is. If you are not clear enough on how to create a brand purpose, refer to our previous blog resource here. As a matter of fact, most of us did not know of the brand TESLA until just a few years ago. But Elon Musk, the founder of TESLA, helped us resonate with the brand by communicating with the world about how TESLA was created for the better. And people are on the side of people who want to make the world better.

2. Create Community: Brand Community

Every brand that resonates with people has a community of their own. It embraces the sense of unity, family, and closeness between not only the brand and customers, but also between customers that purchase the same brand. One good example is the Harley-Davidson Club Global; their presence can be found in almost in any country that the Harley-Davidson franchise is active in.

3. Treat them like you would a good friend

Be personal, and communicate with them as if you are ‘chatting’ with them. Utilise your social media as a medium to communicate with your customers. Attend to their pain points and concerns over your products. A great example from the retail industry is NET-A-PORTER. With a strong following of 2.9 million followers, they are still proven to attend to their customers' needs and concerns. Below is a screenshot of their Instagram where they respond to their customer's comment comment regarding a negative experience in October 2017.

4. Induce Meaningful Experiences

Learn how to turn consumers into customers, study their customer journey and find ways to improve it. If you have your own dedicated store, make sure that it is able to create exceptional experiences for people the moment they walk into your store. If you only have online presence, make sure that you attend to the needs and questions of each customer and potential customer and deliver over the top experiences. Explore every payment method available that your customers might be using, and find out how to ease their purchase experience. Meaningful experiences should be 360 and done continuously. As a sportswear, Nike created different sub-brands to enhance the experiences for different target customers. NikeLab, one of Nike’s sub-brands, enhances customer experiences through their tweaked and limited products and also has its own dedicated store, separate from the Nike store.

What will you gain from brand resonance and brand love?

There are two things your customers will do once your brand resonates with them and their love for your brand has been nurtured. The first is to develop an Attachment (attitudinal attachment and sense of community), where your customers find it ‘hard to give up’ your brand for other competitors. This will give you the power of price elasticity. Think of Apple and their loyal, loving customers. The second is to start becoming Brand Promoters, in which your customers actively seek information about your brand (latest news, latest product release) whilst providing you with free, honest and effective positive word-of-mouth to their peers. Being Brand Promoters also involves repetitive purchasing patterns, and behavioral loyalty towards your brand.

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If you're wondering what your target consumers think of your brand, head over to our brand score page to see how we can help.