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Month: April 2020

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Branding Brand Manager

A Day In The Life – Being A Brand Manager

brand managers and what they do

Managers play a vital role in brands and businesses. They make sure everything is running smoothly and that any necessary materials are on hand. Managers are needed in all industries, and some companies opt for managers in each department. This also means there are several different kinds of brand managers. Knowing the importance of a manager allows you to see what you should be doing in your position, or what you should be seeing from the position holder. In this article, I will be covering what a brand manager is and does, go into detail of these requirements, and how to make sure you are the best brand manager for your company.

Why Have A Brand Manager?

The brand manager is the person in charge of overseeing the promotion of a product. They are there to make sure the development goes according to plan and, well, that it happens. Investopedia explains that brand management helps boost a product so prices can rise and bring the company more money as well as building customer loyalty.

Customer loyalty is a massive goal for brands. This means that your customers will come back. They will talk to their friends about your brand and, by word of mouth, bring you more customers. Wise Geek points out that being a brand manager means you hold a more significant amount of authority over employees of a lower level. In other words, this is the person who holds the success, or failure, of a brand in the palms of their hands. If they stay on top of their job and begin each day with determination, they will make your brand succeed. But, if they slack off or advertise your brand in a bad light even a little bit, it can lead to its failure.  

What Does A Brand Manager Do? 

They don’t just show up and instantly bring success as they need first to learn the ins and outs of the brand. They work to understand the goals, the products, and more importantly, the customer. Just like Investopedia implies, brand managing is one of the essential departments of marketing. They need to be innovative and stay innovative. This is what will cause your brand to be set apart from another company. 

Wise Geek goes into the different aspects of the brand manager position and explains what each requirement is. Part of it is market research. From finding the demographics for the product(s) to forming test markets, the brand manager digs themselves into the company. They treat it as their own, if it is not, and take as much pride in your product as you do.

It’s imperative they work closely with those in both marketing and advertising. Though they have different job descriptions, the brand manager needs to work alongside them to get the product out there and reach the proper people. Troubleshooting is another task that the brand manager has to deal with. You will face issues when growing your brand. That is inevitable. And it is the brand manager who needs to discover what went wrong and how to fix it, or where they need to try harder and do it. 

Consult With Someone Who Knows.

A brand manager will bring strength to your brand. The weight that sits on their shoulders is one of determination. And it isn’t always their own. Sometimes it’s theirs and yours. Being such a central role in branding, they soon feel like the brand is also created with their determination to see your company/brand succeed. The be-all of your brand very well could be some of your worst nightmares. 

Give your Brand Success.

Do you have your own brand? 

You put your own time and energy into your brand. It is a product of you and your determination. You want it to succeed. Can you handle that yourself? After reading this article, you know the importance of a brand manager. There is a need for brand managers, as they have a pretty hefty workload. They will bring you success. Hire a brand manager, and watch your brand grow. 

Categories
Trends Marketing Target Marketing

Emoji Marketing: How to Use Emoji’s in Marketing

Emoji Marketing has been popular since their rise in the 2000s, emojis have taken over the world and have changed the way people communicate. Emojis are used to convey emotions that are hard to say. A person who has any contact with your target audience needs to know what emojis are and how to use them. In this post, we’ll provide an all-encompassing rundown of emojis, including an explanation of why emojis are essential, 5 things to keep in mind before you start using them, and offer 3 examples of effective ways other brands have used emojis in the past.

What Is An Emoji (and Why Does it Matter)❓

The Oxford Lexico dictionary describes an emoji as “a small digital image or icon used to express an idea, emotion, etc.” The most popular emojis used today are “face with tears of joy” 😂, “loudly crying face” 😭, and red heart❤️. 

Understanding what Emojis are and how to use them is essential. Especially, when you consider that over 700 million emojis are used every day on Facebook posts alone. According to Adweek, 92% of internet users use emojis. Additionally, according to a study by psychologist Jerome Bruner, people remember 10% of what they hear, 20% of what they read, and 80% of what they see. The more visual your message is, the more likely it will have a lasting impact that can benefit your brand. 

5 Tips On How to Use An Emoji in Marketing

Before you start using emojis, keep these five tips in mind:

  1. Don’t crowd your message with too many emojis. 💬 When using emojis, you don’t want to overcrowd your message. Keep it simple, and only use them where they’ll add value to your point.
  1. Be selective with the platform you use them on.📱Before you start using emojis on every platform, make sure it is a relevant place to use them. On a platform like Twitter, emojis are expected. On LinkedIn, emojis would look out of place. 
  1. Make sure the context is appropriate.🤦 Always know your context. Before posting, it is important to know the full context of what you’re responding to. If you are responding to a sad video, it would be insensitive to respond to the post with a laughing emoji. Always evaluate the context and respond accordingly.

 

  1. Make emojis interactive. 🖱️This tip is as simple as using the emojis to make your message a two-way conversation. This can be as simple as responding to a post about how great your company is with a smiley face. 
  1. Know which emojis connect with your audience. 📊With over 3,100 emojis available, it is important to know which emojis your audience uses. By using the same emojis as them, you are connecting with them on a personal level.

3 Examples of Great Emoji Marketing

  1. Sports Center

Sports Center does an excellent job of making their posts interactive and relatable with their use of emojis. In this tweet, the emoji conveys the tone and emotion of the post. By just including the 🔥, they are showing that the video is impressive.

https://twitter.com/SportsCenter/status/1251710339659583488?s=20 

  1. McDonald’s 

This Instagram photo was posted during the COVID-19 quarantine, and McDonald’s uses it as a way to capture their audience’s attention. The caption includes “🍟📏 📏 📏📏 📏 📏 🍟,” which captures your eye because you have to think about it for a second, but once you realize it’s fries six feet apart, it’s funny and relatable. 

https://www.instagram.com/p/B-zxr43JLYO/

  1. The Bachelor 

When you think of the 🌹, it’s hard not to think of The Bachelor. The show has essentially hijacked the 🌹by including it in their hashtags, their posts, and all of their marketing. By using this emoji, The Bachelor has connected with their audience and stands out as a brand

Emojis are simple and easy to use as long as you know your audience. Plus, doing market research on them is as simple as clicking on the social media profiles of your target audience and seeing their most popular emojis. Once you find the emojis your target audience uses, it’s as easy as finding the right context to post them. 

Categories
Trends Marketing Target Marketing

Generational Marketing: Generation Z.

Generational Marketing is very effective when it comes to target marketing.  Every generation is different, which means you need to adjust your marketing strategies to reach out to each one individually. With birth dates from 1995 to 2012, Gen Z grew up with the growing age of technology. Gen Z is all about social media. Marketing on social media can give you one of the most massive audiences, and age ranges at one time for your company. Now, this doesn’t mean any social media. Some platforms are more preferred for your target audience. A few of the best platforms to use are Snapchat, Instagram, and YouTube. These are the most used social media platforms for Gen Z teens and adults.

Allowing you to send short photos and videos to friends before they disappear, Snapchat is famous for keeping in touch with friends with short snippets of what you’re up to. Snapchat has filters that can be used on their photos and videos. From the infamous dog ears to holiday photo frames, you can interact with your post.

Snapchat even adds filters to advertise different things. From movies to elections and also the Grammy’s and Oscars. Your company can make a Snapchat filter, and bring attention to your company in a fun and subtle way.

Generational Marketing Happens On Instagram As Well.

In the photo-based app, Instagram, users share photos of anything and everything. From food to pets to family, everyone gets to have their portfolio-like page of memories. Like Snapchat, Instagram also allows its users to post a story that goes away after 24 hours. They can add polls, stickers, emojis, and gifs to their photos and videos. Having an Instagram and posting on your feed and story are both great ways to reach out to the audience you are aiming for. You are putting yourself on their level and causing yourself to be more relatable. You are on their platform, and they will see your company.

YouTube is also a great place to advertise. Millions of people are watching videos every day. From playing music in the background to watching their favorite creators, countless ads are being shown before and during the videos. Even if they don’t see your ad, they may hear it. Putting an advertisement directly in front of someone so there is no doubt that they will see it, can be the most effective way of getting your company and product out there.

Overall, Generational Marketing Is Very Effective.

The best way to reach a generation is by putting yourself in their place. Learn their social media preferences, figure out what stores and products are more popular amongst them. These will lead you in the right direction when it comes to marketing to them. If your target audience is on Instagram everyday and watching YouTube, then an email advertisement is not going to do the job. However, if you are advertising on Instagram and you have an ad in front of the videos by their favorite creator or music genre, you already have a much higher chance of getting their attention and getting more customers. You need to go directly to your audience rather than stand, awaiting them to make the first move.

Tip: If you need some more tips on trends in 2020, visit our 2020 Marketing Trends & What You Should Know article.

Categories
Branding Trends

Brand Requirements & The Do’s and Dont’s

Variious Brands Amongst Each Other, What Stands Out?

Being a good brand, requirements must be met. Although it seems like it, a brand doesn’t become successful overnight. It takes hard work, dedication, and consistency for it to happen. Not sure what makes a good brand? Ask yourself what you want from a brand you purchase from. There’s your answer. Everything has requirements, and the requirements to be a good brand come with do’s and don’t’s.

DO be reliable. DON’T cheapen your product to save money.

An unreliable brand will go downhill and quickly. Forget repeat customers; forget positive reviews. If you have a good product, customers will come back. They will give you the positive reviews that will help to grow your business. If you opt just to save some money, then the chances are that your product is going to reflect that, and that pushes your customers away. You no longer have that great product they love. Reliability is key.

Brand Requirements Should Be Consistent. DON’T be scattered.

You need to stick to a schedule and time frame. When someone orders your product, they want it fast. They don’t want to wait weeks before they even hear that it was shipped. They want answers to their questions. You need a consistent time frame between an order being placed and an order being shipped. Having orders shipped quickly shows a brand that is on top of their game. But, if one person waits a few days and another waits a few weeks, you are losing a customer. They will find another place to get the same or similar product at a much faster pace. It can be hard to answer customer questions, but responding within a few days shows that you are reliable. And, again, you need to be consistent with the time it takes to read and respond to inquiries.

Keeping up-to-date brand guidelines help you avoid lacks of consistency.  As a result of lacking brand requirements, your company could fall short in sales due to your clientele not being satisfied with the effort put into your brands outlook. Due to the gradual decrease in the human attention-span, your brand has to focus on providing your clients with quick, clean, and moreover effortless communication.

Brand Requirements Deserve Uniqueness. DON’T follow everyone else.

This one should be visible—unique means standing out amongst competition. It may be hard to come out with new products that don’t have something similar, even the slightest bit, out there somewhere. But you can adjust your product to be different than the rest. Don’t make a logo that sounds like you focused on catchy words and bold designs. You need a logo that stands for your company, because this is your brand’s label. It is important. You want your logo to represent your brand and have the ability to draw customers in.

These are just a few of the requirements for being a good brand.  Basically, you want to be unique, reliable, and consistent, because without the latter two, your brand is going to struggle. They go hand in hand with each other, and will only benefit your brand. Following the requirements of a good brand is a choice, and one that only you can make. You can opt-out, and have a failed brand, or you can go all in and set yourself up for success. Stand behind your brand and do what is best for its growth. As a result, your audience will value your brand the same way you do.

Categories
Branding Marketing

50 Marketing Jargon Terms You Should Know – PDF

Marketing Jargon can change the way you communicate drastically.  We’ve all been there; we get stuck reading files or documents with jargon we don’t know. Then we take longer to read through because we may not want to admit we don’t know what some things mean. So, instead of stopping every few words to look up definitions, this article is here to help.

Starting out in the business world can be tough. With all there is to learn, definitions just may be the most tedious. We all want to succeed in our fields of business and it can be made more complicated when some employers may not be the most willing to help aid their new hires. Without the proper help, learning new things may be even harder or they can get more confusing.

We all learn at different paces, so what may work for one person won’t necessarily work for another. Some can read the textbook definitions and be on their way, while others need a more broken down version. This article contains some of the most common marketing jargon used within the business and marketing world. They are simplified and to the point, in hopes of being the most helpful to those who need it.

 

 

Download our 50 Marketing Jargon Terms You Should Know for FREE Now.

marketing jargon

Maja Jaredic  explains more jargon terms you may need to know.

Please remember that we here at unmatte like to provide resources that we have found helpful in our careers.

Categories
Branding Marketing

Brand Guidelines: Where’s The Heart?

Why Do Brands Have Guidelines?

Being a brand is an achievement. Regardless of what your brand is for, clothing, shoes, sportswear, etc., brands still have specific rules they need to follow. Ruby Porter can co-sign, brands should be respectful of those interested, but most importantly, a brand needs to be honest.

A Promise Is A Promise, Dude.

Brands want to make sales, especially now, to try to keep their company going. The only problem is that they might be taking the best route to do this. Brands may post advertisements that they are having a promo, or that prices have dropped, or that sales will benefit those still working. As long as a company is fulfilling these claims, everything is okay. But, when they are promising things, they cannot keep is when there is an issue.
Brands should not take advantage of their customer’s being in a vulnerable state.

They should not use that to make sales or to manipulate their customers into buying during a time where they may not be able to afford it. This ruins that brand-customer relationship being people are not going to want to buy from you. They lose their credibility, and, more than anything, makes the customer feel used. It’s degrading to the individual, and the result is them no longer buying from the brand.

No one likes to be manipulated or lied to, and it seems like a brand doing this is worse than someone we thought we knew. ‘You can have this if you get that,’ and only getting that initially ordered item will make us made. We will reach out to the company about the issue, and if our complaint is ignored or we are told, the expected order cannot be completed. We then realize we were manipulated into ordering because of the promo, but nothing about it is different than a standard order.

Respect Is Given, When Respect Is Received.

A brand needs to respect their client, or they will lose their following. It can be hard to rebuild your reputation after self-sabotaging for the sole purpose of making a sale. Being hired and having more responsibilities can get to all of us, and in a time where money is tight, or we don’t know when our next paycheck from work will be, the last thing we need is to be humiliated by our favorite brand. Being humiliated by something, or someone, who is not a direct person we can communicate with, it may be a long wait before an apology. However, before that time even comes, more customers than not have already made the subconscious decision that they would no longer support the brand.

In The End

Brands do not have free range over how they act or what they choose to do to benefit themselves, and unfortunately, some brands may still think they do. But this hurts the customer; this serves the relationship and shortens the spread of mouth about a company. People can be vulnerable. And then they are taken advantage of by a company they thought to be loyal to their customers. The clients’ opinions/feelings about the company is a significant representation of how the company treats its clients. Growing the amount of negative opinions and feelings only decreases the respect that a company is receiving from the public.  Avoid doing that by being a genuine brand, that truly appreciates and respects their clients. Learn about unmatte.com and how we choose to provide our family of clients with the BEST service.

Categories
Branding

Your Brand Should be the Leading Character

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Figuring Out Brand Representation

When it comes figuring out how your brand should be represented, think of it as the leading character of a novel. It should be the one running the show, and at the forefront of it all. When I think of a character that has three of the top qualities that a brand should have, I think of Harry Potter.

Harry Potter & Brand Coincidences

Everyone knows Harry Potter. Whether they have or have not seen the movies or read the books, everyone knows something about Harry Potter. Throughout seven novels and eight movies, he continuously shows top qualities that include determination, reliability, and respect. Just like that, a brand should consistently show the same characteristics: both in and out of the public eye.

Harry lost his parents to Lord Voldemort, after being given to his mom’s sister and her husband, he spends eleven years living under a staircase as a regular human being whose family life wasn’t ideal. When he gets thrown into the wizarding world, he finds out the truth about his parents’ death, and it’s within this first novel that he is faced with Voldemort. Every year he faces Voldemort, and every year he is determined to do so and to win. If an eleven-year-old boy can begin his journey of fighting a man who killed thousands, then your brand should be able to have the determination to stick to your product.

To be successful, you can’t back down or take breaks. You need to go full force and with everything you have. If you show your employees and your customers that you have the determination to deliver a great product, chances are your employees will have that same determination, and your customers will be drawn to that.

 

You Can’t Go Wrong With Harry Potter, Don’t Go Wrong With Your Brand.

It is undeniable that Harry Potter is reliable, he never second-guesses his fight with Voldemort. When Dumbledore needed his help, he accepted without question. He wanted to help and knew it could bring him closer to Voldemort, and either the end of him or the man who killed his parents, and that didn’t stop him. Harry was determined and reliable to help get the job done.  Your brand should be the same.

  • Your customers should have a product of exceptional quality each and every time.
  • You can’t flake on your own company – Give your best 100% of the way.

This will ensure that they come back and continue to use your products.

Finally, Harry Potter shows respect to those who deserve it. Now, this doesn’t mean you can pick and choose who your brand is respectful too. But it does show how far respect can go. Harry respects his friends and, in turn, they respect him. They stand by and fight alongside him. He even shows respect towards his aunt, uncle, and cousin even though they don’t respect him. Your brand should always respect its employees, and it should respect its customers: whether they respect your brand or not. The level of respect that you and your brand give out speaks volumes about the brand as a whole.

So, What Does It Take?

It doesn’t take much to be a brand with good character. Determination comes when you start your brand, but now you need to put in the hard work and effort to become reliable. As for respect, that should come naturally and shouldn’t be an issue. Popular brands have many qualities, but these are just three of the most important ones. Let Unmatte provide you that brand character. We value great storytelling, and your audience do too.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]