Performance branding

Branding is multi-dimensional and can be applied to different areas of human engagement. We have heard of personal branding, destination branding, employee branding, sectoral branding and even environmental branding. A common saying is that there is nothing that cannot be branded. Along this line, this piece speaks to performance analysis or what I call performance branding.

Performance branding describes a multi-dimensional analysis that gives companies instant insights into the performance of their brands—in real time. Such results are good resources that company management, as well as the planning, sales and marketing departments can use the results to react immediately or even plan or act in advance.

What is special about performance branding?
For many organisations, the measurement and quantification of brand success is a sore spot—and fervent wish all at once. Performance branding solves this problem with a combination of big data and brand-strategic expertise.

How is it different from performance marketing?
The widely established practice of performance marketing, as the name suggests, is geared toward marketing efficiency. Performance branding, on the other hand, provides a 360° view: of customers, competitors and company. It lets you examine the many developments from all perspectives and use them as a basis for decisions.

Read also: Branding Nigeria with Owambe

What insights does performance branding give you?
Performance branding delivers insights and solutions in six dimensions:
Brand persona
Brand marketing
Brand strength
Internal and employer branding
Brand market audit
Brand ad-hoc insights

All brand-relevant market activities are checked for efficiency, using customer, employee and stakeholder reactions. The company receives a real time snapshot of current brand perception at its relevant brand touchpoints.
The company finds out which campaign was successful, why it was effective and with whom. The competition’s campaigns can be analyzed the same way. With the results, marketing and the entire communication can be precisely tailored to focus on the different existing target groups as well as new desired target groups. Performance branding helps to reach the right consumers and compare the competition’s buyers with your own customer base.

Use in employer branding
Performance branding can also be used to optimize and focus measures in employer branding. It provides answers to questions like “How great is our employee pride?”—”How attractive is our employer brand?”—”What is important to our employees?” or “Who is my employee persona?”

Use in distribution and sales
Performance branding also allows you to create a geographic illustration of where your customers, fans and community live. Such an analysis is a great way to show where a flagship store would make sense or where a community event should be held. Further, you can identify white patches on the map that you can conquer. And you’ll see where you are expending pointless effort to fight the competition.

Why we developed performance branding:
Transparency: The method reveals the optimization potential of brands in real time, both on a topical level and in for specific brands.
Guidance: The tool delivers appropriate solutions for the analyzed problems.
Control: Brand and market developments are constantly monitored.
Frequently used methods of analysis—an overview
Market research: Usually topical in orientation, it gives answers to individual questions based on experience or preference (e.g. survey, observation of a defined group, etc.).

Social media monitoring: All social media activities of a brand can be illustrated and analyzed by channel.
Sentiment analyses: Barometer of topics and brands in social or also linear media.
Performance marketing: This specifically shows direct resonance to a certain activity in a selected channel. However, it provides no reason for the result in question, no glimpse behind the scenes.
Performance branding: Comprehensive illustration of all relevant company activities and their impact on the brand, customers of different age groups and differentiation from the competition. It combines brand-strategic expertise and data-based facts generated with big data and artificial intelligence. The goal is to make planning for the future more reliable, strengthen competitiveness and boost the brand’s earning capabilities.

Last line
Performance branding is critical and strategic and it delivers more to the organization than you can imagine. Many organisations are wary of measurement, not so much because of what it may reveal but what they may be forced to address or put in place.