You’ve always been fascinated by those colorful images of logos, the big posters and billboards, celebrity endorsers, and those catchy tag lines. Those things that help create a lasting impression on consumers’ minds about a brand. You still have a year or so at the university before finishing your degree. Your goal is to become a brand manager early in your career. You’re working hard in school, volunteering for every school project, for research that needs to be done using the latest market survey tools, and finalizing the reports and making the presentation.
You figure that to be successful, you might as well start now and get as many insights and information as you can. Would your effort in school be enough to make you a successful brand manager?
Background on Brand Management
Branding is all about creating an indelible positive impression in the minds of the customers. Instant product or service recognition is at the core of branding strategies. The difference between marketing and branding is that the strategy for the former focus on the business, while for the latter, the focus is on the customers.
From an assistant level to a senior brand manager level, the salary range could be between $78,000 to $117,000.
How to Become a Brand Manager
Completing a relevant program at the university and putting in all the necessary work will pay off for you. But you also need to validate if you have the skills to have a long and successful career as a brand manager. Here are additional ideas to bear in mind:
- Working in the creative world. A career as a brand manager requires unlimited creativity. You must also be able to tie-in your creativity with your understanding of the market and your ability to translate your ideas in financial terms.
- Further studies and certification. You want to stay ahead of the curve and get promoted from the ranks. Pursue further studies, like a graduate program, and get yourself certified as a brand manager. Some international associations provide this certification.
- Key skills. Apart from creativity, you must have the ability to strategize and analyze. In addition to working with data, where you have to use your analytical skills, you will also be tasked to create and implement brand plans for an entire year, the goal of which is to enhance the performance of the company brand in the market. For example, your understanding of the consumer demographics and their patterns of consumption will be considered what kind of branding campaigns are useful.
- Know the job. The role of a brand manager may vary from company to company. While you can use your insights from a previous post at another company, know that it might be different for your current job and company. Study and understand in clear terms what’s describe in your job description and focus on fulfilling your responsibilities as outlined therein.
A brand manager must possess strong communication skills and the ability to influence both internal and external stakeholders. You need to justify your branding campaign to colleagues across different departments, and you need to convince them that your campaign will continue to reinforce the relationship of your products with customers. To be successful, your goal is to ensure the buy-in of your stakeholders.
