You know how important it is for potential and existing customers to feel good about your brand. Their impression of it creates expectations around the quality and value of your offering and how it will feel to use your product or service. Create positive expectations, and your customers will buy from your brand before they think of others in your market — that’s branding 101.

To create that kind of brand loyalty, every business needs to tell a memorable story about who they are, what they stand for, and why that’s valuable. Once you’ve got this story down, you’ve got to tell it consistently across all touchpoints to foster a clear, reliable, and strong recall of your brand story and its value.

That’s where your brand style guide comes in. It’s a branding checklist that bundles up all the information and resources your internal and external teams need to represent your brand. With clear instructions on how to use all your brand assets, you can create and maintain brand consistency.

Every customer interaction is an opportunity to build customer loyalty. And brands that consistently deliver compelling, accurate, and relevant experiences are able to rise above their competition.

But this is no small feat! Even one misstep can put a brand’s reputation at risk.  

That’s why companies of all shapes and sizes need brand management to safeguard their identity and control their narrative.

Every marketer knows that brand management is extremely important. After all, the strength of your brand is dependent on customer perception. But influencing how you’re perceived in the market is extremely complicated, and unfortunately, there’s no magic formula or quick fixes for earning customer loyalty.

To build a brand that customers choose over competitors takes dedication and hard work. It starts with a clearly defined brand vision, organizational self-reflection, and company-wide discipline. Easy to say, harder to execute. But having a solid understanding of the components of brand management will help you get there.  

The Portals app in Widen’s digital asset management (DAM) solution offers a flexible, attractive, and easy way to share content within a branded environment. 

Our blog post Portals Examples and Use Cases showcases a range of creative and powerful ways that our customers are using portals to share assets, connect teams, and advance brand stories. In this article, we’ll share functionality details and best practices that will help you build a portal that meets your unique content and business needs.

Brand storytelling is an increasingly popular approach to marketing that taps into the foundational human need to connect with others through story. It’s a method that centers your customer as the main character in the narrative, not your brand or your product. When you share relatable stories about life experiences that matter to your audience, you create strong emotional connections with your ideal customers.

Those connections build brand awareness, keep attention on your marketing channels, and establish trust. Not everyone agrees on the best approach to brand storytelling, but everyone knows it matters. Let’s examine why brand storytelling is so important, look at examples of best practices, and explore some ideas for getting started. But first, let’s agree on a clear brand storytelling definition.

Your brand is your company’s most important asset. It’s more than just words on a page or images on a screen ⏤ it’s how you communicate with and attract your audience. From your logo to every customer interaction, it’s the identity of your organization.  

To stand out in a competitive market, consumers need to easily understand who your company is and what you provide. Brand consistency helps consumers feel confident in their decision to become a customer because they know exactly what to expect from you with every interaction.

So, how do you ensure a consistent experience that builds brand loyalty? Develop strong brand guidelines.

A brand is more than a name on a label or a logo on a website; it’s an identity. It’s what companies use to distinguish themselves from every other business out there. Just as humans embrace a certain style, have a unique personality, and carry themselves in a particular way — everything a brand does, says, and conveys helps define who that company is and what they stand for. 

But brands are delicate. Consistency, quality, and the all-around experience a brand delivers impacts customer perceptions. One wrong step and a brand’s reputation is at risk. As a result, companies of all shapes, sizes, and caliber are adopting brand management practices to safeguard their identity and control their company’s narrative.

In this guide, we’ll provide a detailed overview of brand management — from basic principles and use cases to who needs it and overall benefits. But first, let’s start by defining what brand management is.

Getting people to know and trust your brand requires more than a great logo. You need a focused brand strategy that defines what your brand believes in, who your customers are, and how you plan to engage with the world.

Once you’ve developed a strategy, you have to infuse your brand in all your marketing collateral, distribute it across every channel, and ensure it creates a consistent brand experience. Sound intimidating? It can be but it’s also entirely possible to design and execute a successful brand strategy when you break it down into manageable parts.

Whether you’re a new organization looking to make a mark or an established company going through a brand relaunch, many of the same principles and steps to a successful brand strategy apply. This guide includes the most important components of brand strategy and tips on how to get started.

What is a brand? Let me illustrate with a brand I'm partial to — New Balance. I used to think of New Balance as the maker of all-white, extra wide “dad” shoes. Now, as the proud owner of a dozen different pairs, I think of New Balance as a trendy, modern shoe that goes with my jeans and shorts. I can wear them out to dinner or to walk five miles. I can wear them anywhere!

New Balance fits my dad lifestyle. I feel that lifestyle when I check out their mobile app, open an email, see their sponsored posts on Instagram, or when I walk into the New Balance store and try on a new pair of shoes.

New Balance understands me well enough to offer suggestions for shoes I don’t even know I need – at a time when I’m not necessarily looking for new shoes – and I still want them!

The creative and marketing team at New Balance laced together an incredible string of technologies and workflows in order to create my omnichannel experience. They have shaped my impression of New Balance through a series of purposeful, memorable moments. Simply put, New Balance has mastered brand asset management.

One of the biggest psychological influences on customer behavior is brand association. This can be the silent difference between someone buying your product or a competitor’s. It’s a complex phenomenon that every brand wants to establish in the minds of their audience but few understand how to create.

What brand comes to mind when you think of Bill Gates? Jeff Bezos? Arianna Huffington? Microsoft. Amazon. Huffington Post. How does that work? 

Let’s start by establishing a solid definition of what brand association is. Then, we’ll go into the different kinds of brand associations, some specific examples, and direct you toward getting started on your own brand association strategy.