Who is a brand manager and what do they do?

What does your job involve?

It may seem that if someone works in marketing list of armenia cell phone numbers they make ads. I myself used to think that the work of a Brand Manager in a large company comes down to creating communication plans, campaigns, PR, everything that makes up the visual and content world of the brand. However, it turns out that you work more often with MS Excel and decision-making than with the creation itself. Brand management is therefore much more about shaping strategy and making the right decisions.

What key competencies must a Brand Manager have?

For me, three managerial competencies are very important:

1. Connecting the dots, or collecting information.The Brand Manager collects insights, among others, from consumers who buy our products, also from sales channels. He listens not only to the brand’s recipients, but also to business partners. On this basis, he makes decisions, while understanding what goals the organization wants to achieve, what resources it has, what technologies it has at its disposal. In this way, he builds one common brand image.
2. Predicting the future, or translating insights into a coherent vision.The Brand Manager must consider what will happen in the near future, e.g. in a one-year or several-year perspective, based on all the information. It is not enough to know your brand’s portfolio, you need to be familiar with the market and be close to the needs of your recipients. The Brand Manager must predict how its market will change in terms of various insights, in order to weave the brand strategy into them. It is thanks to the Brand Manager that the organization knows in which direction to go, how the product portfolio should be shaped, where the brand should sell its products or services.

3. Making things happen, i.e. executing projects.

   On the one hand, you can have the best knowledge is it a cookie or a biscuit? pastime is inclusion! connect all the dots, but if you don’t draw conclusions from it, you won’t predict the future and you won’t have directions for action. On the other hand, you can connect all the dots, predict the future and do nothing about it, achieve no effect. That’s why a Brand Manager is the driving force of the entire organization. He doesn’t do everything alone, he cooperates with various functions in the organization and inspires everyone to act and implement the vision.

The top four skills of a Brand Manager:

• curiosity
  Is more important than knowledge, because everything can be learned. It is always worth asking yourself questions: who buys our products, what does the market look like?
• analytics
  It is understanding data and skillfully reading conclusions. Even creating ads is more of an analytical than creative process.
• independence and assertiveness
  Only then can we truly feel that we own and manage a given topic. If we don’t know something, we know where to ask.
• good communication skills
  A Brand Manager must be someone who infects the entire team with enthusiasm for the product. It is not just the ability to make a presentation, but very good, constructive and positive communication combined with the appropriate execution of action plans.

What are the metrics for a Brand Manager’s work?

Brand Managers tend to look first at metrics related to brand recognition ej leads its attributes, and how it is associated. These are, of course, important elements that tell us how we reach our users, but they are not the only metrics. A person in this position must be embedded in the business. A Brand Manager understands the profit and loss statement. Not only does he understand how many people he reaches and how many of them buy, he also knows what market share his brand has and this is where he tries to build his position. Byron Sharp, in his book How Brands Grow , emphasizes that brands with the largest market share have the greatest chance of market success. Therefore, building this share is one of the most crucial tasks of a Brand Manager.

My task is also to create the scale of the business (these are external metrics that speak about the scale we reach and financial metrics that show the value, i.e. what we do: we reach new consumers, we expand the portfolio and build turnover). On the one hand, a brand manager is responsible for building the marketing mix so that it actually brings value, and on the other – for generating sustainable profit.

The foundation of a Brand Manager’s work is therefore the three most important competencies (connecting the dots, predicting the future and trying to make things happen) combined with business thinking. In addition, there are tools that every manager should use.

What are the tools managed by a Brand Manager?

The Brand Manager has at his disposal a marketing mix. In Kotler’s approach, this is the so-called 4P:

1. Product – quality, values, quantity, packaging, collections, design, etc.;
2. Distribution (place) – availability, distribution channels, delivery point, point of sale, retail, website, etc.;
3. Price – cost, retail price, shipping cost, transportation cost, margin, revenue, etc.;
4. Positioning (promotion) – advertising, newsletter, social media, etc.

They may be called differently, depending on the concept, but the idea is that each Brand Manager plays with their marketing mix in order to maximize business value. The qualitative determinant is the measure of presence in the market, e.g.: market share, product penetration, brand awareness. At the end of the day, it is the business value that counts, i.e. how much we sell and how much profit we generate.

Based on the ROI of each product, further decisions are made. So if we want to do a big campaign for our brand, our job is to show what ROI a given campaign will bring. Only when a Brand Manager thinks about ROI is he able to make things happen.