What are your business objectives?

According to Avinash Kaushik*, they should be:

Doable
Understandable
Manageable
Beneficial

When fleshing out your business objectives, they must be rational. Expecting to realize a 20% increase in revenue in the first month is not only “dumb” in the truest sense of the word, but is completely unrealistic. By using the “DUMB” construct, you can devise objectives that are within reason, and are specific toward reaching your overall brand strategy. Goals must be centered on creating awareness, cultivating interest, generating desire, and stimulating action.

Business Specific Goals

Depending on the type of business you have, these steps will all be different. Make sure they are specific to your business. This requires identifying the key performance indicators (KPI) that track progress in the realization of your business objectives.

These KPI’s Must Also Be Realistic.

Awareness Phase:

Create an analytics report that measures Visits/Unique Visits

Interest Phase:

Create a report that measures page views, number of pages viewed, and time spent on site.

Desire Phase:

Create a report that measures specific item landing page visits, and if you have one, a membership enrollment page, and a wish list creation

Action Phase:

Create a report on shopping cart fulfillment and conversions would be appropriate.

Satisfaction Phase:

Results in a completed Conversion report, and a positive comment on the feedback page.

Why Analytics Are Important

These analytical reports are positive aspects of solid business goals. They would be useless without setting realistic targets to measure progress, or indicate problems to be addressed. Analytics reveal the good and the bad. Capitalizing on the good, and rectifying the bad are all part of setting business goals.
When creating a strategic marketing plan, creating analytics reports to monitor all facets of that plan is a good business practice. The ability to adjust keyword strategy, content composition and keyword placement, replace poor performing landing pages, correcting and eliminating broken internal links, and ultimately, increasing conversion rates are all segments that are correctable, and being aware of their existence is a direct result of monitoring analytics reports.

* Digital Marketing and Measurement Model: Web Analytics. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/digital-marketing-and-measurement-model/?utm_source=analytics academy&utm_medium=text lesson&utm_campaign=lesson 2.4

Brand Persona & Identity

The brand persona garners credibility and familiarity with the consumer, thus increasing the authority of the brand message. Brand personas serve to differentiate the brand from competitors and, the brand persona is a useful tool that disables the inner cynic that lives in every consumer.
The first step in developing a credible brand identity is to understand the consumer you are trying to reach. Demographic and psychographic research is necessary for identifying the market segments that are most likely to need or want your product.

Bonding With Consumers

Once the ideal consumer is identified, developing a relationship with the consumer requires cultivating “a sense of natural comfort and fit, a feeling of emotional connectedness and bonding, a deep integration with a consumer’s core values, a heightened level of desire and interaction, a commitment to it’s long-term use, attitude valence and strength”(Batra, R., & Bagozzi, R. 2012).
Developing a connection with the emotional attraction that is associated with strongly held values, provides intrinsic rewards, and creates an emotional bonding with the consumer, and is the goal of creating a brand identity (Batra, R., & Bagozzi, R. 2010). Once consumers are attached to your brand, they become fierce advocates and ambassadors.
For instance, take Apple; Apple fans and ambassadors are viscerally connected to the brand. They are price insensitive, are more apt to upgrade to a new product offered by the brand, and will defend the brand fiercely. Apple brand advocates and fans are engaged in “frequent, interactive behaviors with” the brand (Batra, R. & Bagozzi, R. 2012).

Developing Consumer Generated Content

Consumers who identify with your brand will also engage in word of mouth promotion for three fundamental purposes: social, emotional, and functional (Lovett, M. J., Peres, R., & Shachar, R. 2013). Word of mouth (WOM) advocacy is better characterized as consumer generated content. Advocates use social media to promote their preferred brand. Creating fans and ambassadors who use social media to cheer for the brand are the most cherished of consumers. A positive comment or brand review is just a click away.
For those brand advocates who engage in word of mouth (WOM) behavior, “The main social driver is the desire to send signals to others about one’s expertise, uniqueness, or social status; the emotional driver is the need to share positive or negative feelings about brands to balance emotional arousal; and the functional driver motivates people to provide and supply information” (Lovett, M. J., Peres, R., & Shachar, R. 2013).

Conclusion

So, creating, developing and promoting a brand identity must be able to attract dedicated fans and advocates, provide quality and utility that stimulates “Brand Love,” and create a relationship with the consumer that facilitates the consumer’s desire to enjoy, promote, and protect the brand. Creating a brand persona that attracts these important consumers creates a groundswell of brand awareness that draws the casual consumer into the anointed throng of brand advocates.

Barra, R., & Bagozzi, R., P. (2012). Brand Love. Journal of Marketing, 76(2), 1 – 16. doi: 10.1509/jm.09.0339
Lovett, M. J., Peres, R., & Shachar, R. (2013). On Brands and Word of Mouth. Journal of Marketing Research (JMR), 50(4), 427 – 444)