Why Is Brand Innovation Strategy Important?
According to Forbes, brands need to constantly innovate and evolve in order to survive in an ever-changing market. A major way to stay ahead of the game is Brand Innovation. Products and services are constantly adapted to suit customer requirements and maintain relevance. But, how can you make sure the changes you make will improve sales and earnings? And what about marketing strategies?
In this article we’ll look at Customer Centric Brand Innovation. We will cover what is Brand Innovation, discuss its importance and explore innovative marketing solutions.
What is Brand innovation?
Brand Innovation is usually defined as anything new a brand does – like launching a new product or making changes to an existing one. Think about Apple launching its first Iphone or Disney adding computer animation to its repertoire. Of course, all brand innovation is accompanied by extensive marketing strategy planning.
Brand Innovation relies on several components:
- Intention – Identify brand’s intent. Long-term marketing strategy design depends on setting clear goals and Marketing opportunities analysis.
- Information – Understand brand’s market. Customer experience (CX) analysis can give valuable data for understanding targeted customer groups.
- Articulation – Explain and express brand’s innovation concept. Connections need to be established between existing products and services to new ones.
Successful Brand innovation is achieved by embracing new ideas and encouraging creativity whilst corporating them in an organized data driven decision making.
Why is product innovation important?
Brand innovation is the driving force behind brands that have been running for decades and is an imperative aspect of brand marketing.
Brands need to demonstrate innovation to keep customers interested and engaged. By launching new products or services, businesses feed into the infamous “FOMO” (Fear Of Missing Out) that has become a major driving force in today’s market. Customers will make repeat purchases and form a loyalty to a brand that provides them a feeling of novelty and product evolution.
Additionally, innovative brands are perceived as having groundbreaking products. If a brand differentiates itself by constantly innovating it can establish a sense of uniqueness, even if their product or service are similar to the competition’s. This creates an image of expertise that attracts customers to a brand. Buying “the best” or the most “professional” product builds trust and confidence with customers that often increases sales.
How to find innovative ideas for branding?
Well, maybe the obvious answer is to use your head. Brainstorm ideas with others. Marketing teams are there for a reason. But basing your marketing strategies on bright ideas alone won’t provide you with customer centric branding ideas. You risk missing customer groups and hurt sales and earnings.
Customers will often let you know what they like to see improve in a product or service. Online reviews and social media posts are a gold mine of brand innovation ideas. Moreover, customers will appreciate brands that notice and pay attention to customer’s suggestions and desires.
Combining CX analysis with creative ideas helps develop an intelligent marketing strategy. Customer feedback analysis can provide you with a better understanding of customer sentiment and improve brand innovation. Data driven brand innovation and marketing will allow you to tailor your new product or service to customer needs.
How do companies use social media for innovation?
Social media is an essential tool for Brand Innovation. Social media posts provide a glimpse into customer attitude towards a brand, also called Social Sentiment. Posts can contain valuable insights on customer satisfaction or critique of a product or service. The information also contains clues into what customers are missing in the current market, like certain products and new features customers would like to see in an existing one.
Social Media Monitoring allows you to gather Social Sentiment. Businesses use specialized software to monitor social media (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) activity and automatically detect all comments, posts and tweets mentioning their brand. The data is analyzed and classified as “positive,” “neutral,” or “negative.”
This information helps track customer feedback and used to design brand innovation strategies.
Relying on social sentiment analysis helps brands to make an informed decision as to how and when to launch a new product. The analyzed data can also identify competing brands and market vacuums that can be filled with innovative products.
How to combine product innovation with brand identity?
Brand identity is the brand’s visual representation – color, design, and logo. For brand innovation to be successful it has to match this visual identity. A brand has to be consistent in visuals and concept, or it might confuse and alienate customers.
Consistency in packaging, labeling, advertising, etc. is crucial, especially when adding new products. Customers need to identify a product with an established brand. If customers cannot identify the brand they won’t be able to build a sentiment to it.
Granular customer sentiment analysis aids in keeping brand innovation consistent with the brand’s identity. Innovative marketing strategies benefit form CX analysis that explains customer perception of a brand. A clear picture of customer sentiment informs data driven marketing, improving brand innovation success rates.
How can Revuze help with Brand Innovation?
Highly granular Customer Sentiment analysis is at the base of successful Brand Innovation. Human driven CX analysis technology often takes a lot of time and resources. So, businesses often rely on a single feedback sources and use a singly analysis tool. This provides a restricted view of customer sentiment that can hinder brand innovation.
Revuze developed the first self-training, low touch AI technology that collects and analyzes customer feedback automatically and serve back valuable consumer insights.
This innovative AI technology collects data from a variety of sources simultaneously, like online reviews, social media monitoring, emails, surveys, call center data, and more. The data is scanned and analyzed automatically by self learning algorithms.
The end result is highly granular CX analysis that informs Customer Centric Brand Innovation and marketing strategy design.