How Brands get benefited from Marketing & Communication

As a marketing & communication professional we all must have come across one common question asked by almost all our clients. How are all the marketing activities you suggesting for my company are going to help me?

So here is how companies / brand benefit from Marketing & Communication activities: 

• Branding / Communication helps create sustainable competitive advantage i.e. the most powerful barriers to competition are no longer controlled by companies but by customers. Factories and even access to finance are not as powerful barriers as the barriers erected inside customers’ minds. Only a few chosen winners are allowed inside. These are the successful brands with which customers have relationships. Successful brands build differentiators. The CEO of one of the world’s greatest brands, Coca-Cola, reputedly once said: ‘They can take everything we have, our machinery, our plants, our distribution – as long as they don’t take our brand – and we will be able to rebuild our organization in six months.’
• Boost relationship between the user and the company
• Branding / Communication boost sales by helping customers make their purchasing process easier. Brands are easier to recognize and to associate with quality; it is easier to understand their benefits, and they are less risky than unknown commodities.
• Branding / Communication helps increase profits. Brands,rightly or wrongly, can command premium prices, which results in increased profits, which consequently allows more money to be spent on better (relevant and tested) communications with clearer messages – which continually strengthens the brand.

Customer benefits from Marketing / Communication / Branding

• Saves customers time i.e. Marketing / Communication / Branding helps customers find goods / services quickly. Unilever’s chairman, Niall FitzGerald, calls a brand ‘a storehouse of trust which matters more and more as choices multiply’ and we face what David Ogilvy once called ‘the misery of choice’. People want to simplify their lives, simplify their decision making and get on with the rest of their busy lives.
• Reduce perceived risks i.e. a strong brand is an implicit guarantee or promise of consistent quality, image and style. A brand is built on trust. Customers trust the promise made through several communication campaigns, advertisement and on the pack, which helps customers form relationships with brands.
• Satisfy Aspirations i.e. Brands give status and recognition. Brands reflect aspirations, images and associations that are carefully gleaned from in-depth customer motivation research.
   

The above mentioned pointers also answer the question why companies should spend on Marketing / Communication even thought it might not affect their sales directly during the initial marketing period.