What role does brand really play in your organization? Is it at the center of all strategic and tactical decisions – from product development to campaign planning and even company culture? Or, do you find that it’s siloed within the four walls of your marketing and customer insights teams?
While some organizations associate “brand” with a logo or color palette, business innovators and category leaders know that it encompasses so much more. A powerful, resonant brand connects with consumers on a deep level, creating value across product, people, place, positioning and even purpose. And, as some of the world’s most valuable companies know, a great brand can lead to significant business value.
We created the Brand Management Maturity Model to help marketing and brand leaders better assess where their organizations currently stand, and create an actionable roadmap to share with senior leaders across the organization.
What is the Brand Management Maturity Model?
The Brand Management Maturity Model represents the five key ways we’ve found organizations use brand to guide strategic and tactical decisions. It’s no surprise that Boards of Directors, investors, and corporate leaders are putting more pressure on marketing and brand to prove the value of their investments. The brand maturity model is designed to help executives take stock of where they are today, how they invest in brand-building, and whether they’re able to prove the impact of these investments in a tangible, quantifiable, and even predictable way.
The BERA leadership team developed this model, as well as a tactical guide, to help marketing executives understand these stages, identify their current state, and uncover insights and best practices to help them progress.
The five stages of the Brand Management Maturity Model
Stage 1: Brand latent
Stage 2: Brand measurement
Stage 3: Brand growth framework
Stage 4: Brand integration into marketing workflows
Stage 5: Brand building is a corporate priority
Understanding the brand maturity model
Stage 1: Brand latent
Companies at this stage of brand maturity usually know that brand is important, but they make little to no investment in brand measurement. They may rely on gut instincts, internal discussions and not take the time or effort to truly understand consumer expectations, preferences and perceptions of the brand.
Stage 2: Brand measurement
When companies are at this stage, the entire leadership team agrees that brand has a tangible value to the business. They invest in conducting brand research and consumer surveys to become more “data-driven,” however, they often find that their methodologies do not give them the level of insight they need to make smarter, more profitable decisions.
Stage 3: Brand growth framework
Brands at this stage have adopted a company-wide framework for measuring and driving brand growth. These companies have measurement systems in place to connect brand positioning and touchpoints to brand equity, and then connect that brand equity to current and long-term enterprise value.
If the marketing team is tasked with annual brand measurement and growth strategies, and is empowered to assess and improve brand strategies against key goals, you may be at this stage.
Stage 4: Brand integration into marketing workflows
If you’re at this stage of maturity, research and data enrich common workflows, empowering marketing teams to develop more accurate and impactful strategies. Brand building and performance marketing are able to work in lockstep, and align around a common set of KPIs.
While this convergence drives significant value for the business, senior leaders may feel like brand research and audience insights are still siloed within marketing and consumer research. There is a desire to democratize this data, but team members do not know how to move forward.
Stage 5: Brand building is a corporate priority
This is the highest stage of the brand maturity model – and for good reason. Companies at this stage make marketing the steward of the brand, but ensure that all functions within the organization leverage and amplify it. Companies with the most advanced approach to brand management use brand equity as a KPI and ensure that brand growth strategies are integrated into broader business processes and investments.
All teams, from finance to product, operations, sales and HR, rally around the brand’s purpose, and ensure that they’re delivering upon this purpose across channels. Brand building is accepted as a tangible, credible, and accountable business process, so all teams ensure that their people, processes and practices revolve around this goal. They also use advanced analytics to predict brand performance and continually seek ways to measure, manage and maximize the greatest return on their investments.
How to use the Brand Management Maturity Model
The Brand Management Maturity Model is designed to provide a tangible framework for success that is built upon internal assessment and reflection. Your marketing and leadership teams can use this model to see where they stand today, and most of all, what they need to do in order to maximize the impact of their brand investments.
However, the most powerful part about the brand maturity model is that it doesn’t just center on the actions of the marketing and analytics teams; it offers a precise, enterprise-wide view of what it really means to use brand as a lever for business performance.
All stages of the brand maturity model go into greater depth in the report, and also provide pointed questions to help teams self-identify their standing. Then, they’ll be able to look to later stages to set a clear path forward. The goal, of course, is to not only make brand a leader driver of organizational processes and decisions, but empower these teams with real-time data and analysis to quantify the impact brand investments make on business results.
Measuring brand maturity with BERA
When brand building becomes a corporate priority, the entire organizations has the power to understand and use Brand Love to their advantage. By using BERA’s Predictive Brand Technology, companies can say goodbye to static measurement practices and embrace always-on, AI-driven insights that allow them to turn Brand Love into a strategic growth lever
In fact, a recent Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study from Forrester Consulting found that over a three-year period, a company using Brand Love via the BERA platform would see:
$8.7M increase in attributable net profit from faster brand growth.
$1.9M in cost savings from eliminating prior solutions.
$1M in productivity gained due to increased marketing efficiency.
Get started with BERA
If you’re ready to bring your brand strategy to the next level and make investments that lead to tangible business outcomes, request a demo today. One of our experts will walk through a unique scenario, so you can see how BERA can provide actionable and predictive insights to guide your decisions.
