2019
Let's settle this right away: today you can't do without a brand, and a brand needs to be worked on every day (every hour, every minute) — you can't launch it on the market and forget about it.
The stages of launching a brand on the agricultural market are unlikely to differ from those on any other market. The specifics lie in the work on its recognition, in the key messages for the target audience, in understanding insights, in the colour palette, design and usage rules.
Let's start with the stages — internal, for the company:
1. Idea: what idea did you (the company) have in mind when you started the business? Bringing knowledge to the masses? Feeding the whole world? Instilling confidence? Making life easier? And many others.
2. The company's strategy in general and its marketing strategy in particular: what we want, in what time frame, why, with what portfolio, with which business units. This point deserves a whole article, or maybe even a book.
3. Market research: capacity, main players, their portfolios, market shares, brands, their level of recognition, their target audience, key messages, tactics and methods of competition.
4. Target audience profile: defining your brand's target audience, studying it (demographics and geography), understanding its deep motives, preferences, interests, behavioural patterns in various situations, role models (employee, husband/wife, father/mother, son/daughter), the problems you can help with, the needs you can meet, the triggers you can influence; dividing the target audience into sub-segments — you won't be able to reach everyone at once with a single set of tools.
5. Naming, motto and key messages: how the brand and its motto should sound, why exactly that way, how clear they are to your target audience, whether they reflect the idea and strategy, whether they are memorable, what emotions and associations they evoke.
6. Font, colour palette and brand book: everything is the same as in point 5.
Let's continue with the stages — external, for the market:
7. Building the information field for the brand launch: you haven't yet said what it is, but teasers and explanations of why the target audience needs it should already be heard (by the way, this stage comes after points 1-4). In agribusiness, this stage should start at least 6 months before the brand launch, and preferably 12.
8. Brand launch: the naming, motto, core values, accompanying storytelling, brand history and product portfolio appear in all available information sources (depending on the budget and the target audience profile). On the agricultural market, print media, online publications and social networks are still held in high regard, but the best and most effective of all are the fields, because seeing is believing, and farmers are a conservative people. Interviews with top executives are also most welcome at the launch stage on the agricultural market. Catalogues, brochures and leaflets, both printed and electronic, are very effective at this stage and afterwards on the agricultural market. Branded merchandise is a must have. Without it, there is no brand for farmers :)
9. Collecting feedback from the target audience after the brand launch and analysing it to adjust further steps. Analysis of brand recognition.
10. Maintaining and increasing brand recognition. On the agricultural market, this means a large amount of work in the fields, directly with farmers, since the market is highly personalised and conservative. This includes field events, consultations by sales managers/technical experts (sometimes 24/7), joint trips, workshops, conferences, round tables, interactive communication, creating great content (newsworthy events), developing the product portfolio and the company as a whole. Analysis at every stage.
What next? A brand can live for decades or centuries. It can go through a certain cycle and leave the market, with another one appearing in its place. Rebranding can happen for various reasons. How do you know what to do with a brand and at what stage? Analyse qualitatively and quantitatively, communicate with the target audience (by the way, the agricultural market is very lucky — you can talk to almost every farmer both interactively and in real time), draw conclusions, follow trends, understand the strategic directions within the company.
Launching a brand on the market is a responsible task for highly professional marketers: it requires a lot of knowledge, experience and strategic vision. And at the same time, it's a lot of fun. In a sense, it can be compared to the birth of a child, raising it and watching it grow up :)
P.S. The DEFENDA brand is already on the market, other brands are coming soon :) All the points listed above are based on the practice of launching brands on the agricultural market.
Yuliia Kamenieva, Marketing Director, LNZ Group
Source: agroportal.ua
