Top 5 Ways to Build Profitable Brand Relevant Consumer Tech in a Storm of Massive Change

Discover How Consumer Tech Can Be Brand Relevant in a Storm of Massive Change and Grow Your Profits 

1. Brand Relevant Consumer Tech Has a Clear Brand Purpose, Mission and Values

Brands of any type perform more strongly and consistently when they have clear brand purpose, brand mission and brand values. Just as with a person, having a clear picture of what you want to do, how you might do it and why, makes it easier to focus with clear objectives. It also enables other people to see you in a consistent, clear light — this is the same principle for strong, high performing profitable brands.

Related: Top 5 Reasons Why Brand Purpose is The Essential Growth Driver in a Fast Changing World

One of the challenges that consumer tech often faces is that it can seem inhuman or disconnected from the realities of everyday life. Whereas many categories from travel to professional services involve some personal interaction, consumer tech often lacks that warmth of empathy to build resilient connection. 

Related: How Leaders Drive Profitability With a Strong Brand Vision Statement

Because strong brands act as the bridge between the ‘product or service’ and the customer it means that the brand takes on even greater importance in communication and psychological influence. The brand helps buyers and users understand why choosing that brand matters, what the brand stands for – what its brand purpose, brand mission and brand values are.

Related: Branding Psychology in Adversity – 7 Ways You Can Embrace Behavioural Shifts to Grow Your Business

Sometimes, there is a perception that a lot of consumer tech is about making money for Silicon Valley or creating some form of control through tech in the home. For example, while voice-activated consumer tech in the home offers many benefits, it can still be perceived as intrusive. So being clear about what a consumer tech brand stands for can help it stand out in a positive way and, most importantly, build trust.

Image via © Raspberry Pi

A case study of a consumer tech brand which is crystal clear about its brand purpose, brand mission and brand values is Raspberry Pi. This manufacturer of simple, low cost computers which people with no technical knowledge can use to build on their own has a clear purpose, mission and values. It is focussed on enabling access to learning about computing at the right age without having to spend a lot of money. The clear brand purpose, mission and values help determine everything from the brand tone of voice to its product lineup.

Related: How Your Brand Mission Enables You To Achieve Your Commercial Objectives

2. Put the Consumer Before the Tech so You Can Build Successful Brand Relevant Consumer Tech

A common mistake some entrepreneurs and decision makers fall into, whether the business is a disruptive young market entrant or a big company is focussing too much on tech in the beginning. The branding strategy gets ‘parked’ because the leadership team expects to sort the brand out later once they’ve got the tech right or because they think it is a bit of a simplistic cosmetic exercise needing a logo and some nice graphics which can be tagged on at the end of the process.

The fact is, if you build the framework for the house, it’s too late to go back and design the house from scratch – the same is true for branding. A well developed brand gives you cues on everything from form factor design to functionality and psychological influence so it needs to be thought through empathetically from the customer and user perspective — in the brand context — before you start to design the tech. In other words, it needs to be brand-led, not just tech-led because both are equally important.

Related: Increase Sales Using Buyer Personas, Your Guide to Understanding and Targeting Your Ideal Customers

It is best to do what large successful tech companies do and put the consumer up front and centre the process. The most successful exponents of consumer tech branding invest considerable effort in understanding their target users’ needs, wants, dissatisfactions and usage patterns. Only then can a business really understand the job to be done and then get on to building a tech solution against that brief.

Image via Amazon © Revo

Consider as an example Revo, a brand of U.K. designed radios. They are widely praised for their intuitive, simple interfaces and useability. But in fact they are quite specialised, complicated radios. It is clearly because Revo thinks about radios from a user perspective in the beginning that it is able to fit complicated functionality into elegantly simple interfaces in its consumer tech products.

Related: How Apple Does It, Five Tips for Getting Your $1Tn Brand Personality Right

3. Clear Buyer Personas Are Critical to Brand Relevant Consumer Tech

Not all tech users look for the same things even in a single product. Rather than trying to please the whole market with an unspecified offering, it is better to decide what your target market is then zoom in on what would help your offering appeal to them. 

There is a  simple way to do this. First, identify different types of buyers or users and understand their individual needs better. We call this purchaser personas or buyer personas.

For example, consider a scenario where you’re launching a two-way radio device. If your target user is parents and children you might want to develop your brand strategy a certain way to attract and engage that target audience. But if the target user is security guards or vehicle dispatch rooms, the branding that works well for an “anxious parent” purchaser persona probably won’t work as well for a “round the clock heavy commercial user” persona. 

Related: Using Buyer Personas to Increase Your Business Profitability

When you’ve developed your buyer personas, use them to help you sharpen your technical specification, and brand strategy in a way which appeals more to your target market. Improving useability for key target markets helps drive adoption faster and also helps create higher perceived value.

The U.K. Government Digital Service provides a compelling case study on this point. By developing different user personas, they are able to understand what  their tech solutions need to offer and the optimal format in which to provide them, even for a diverse set of end users [1].

4. Brand Relevant Consumer Tech Differentiates Itself Emotionally from Competitor Products 

For a lot of tech companies, it is easier to think in terms of tech than of user feelings. Tech is tangible and what they mostly focus on, plus consumer tech companies often emphasise an engineering way of thinking over an emotionally focussed approach. So consumer tech branding can often focus on features and technical details, but lack strong emotional appeal.

Strong brands need to offer consumers specific benefits. These can be functional but they must also also be emotional. In fact, the emotional benefits help deliver the functional ones. 

For example, the functional benefit of the two way radio above (being able to listen to a baby in a different room) ladders up to an emotional benefit (parental reassurance that the baby is safe). That may ladder up even further to other emotional benefits, such as a sense of peace of mind or freedom from being able to do things while the baby sleeps, or a sense of personal pride in feeling like a good parent or carer. Brands which can create emotional connections command a pricing premium and attract more long term loyalty.

Related: Use Psychology in Your Brand Strategy to Create Irresistible Brand Experiences and Increase Sales

Image via The Verge © Apple

Very successful consumer tech brands like Apple and Tesla understand this and use their branding to create an emotional bond with the brand which helps to set them apart from competitors, even if those competitors may be technically superior. In fact, branding done effectively makes users desire your products even if competitors have a significant functional or price benefit.

Related: Discover How to Use Brand Archetypes To Build Your Winning Brand

Image via Calutek Online © Jivo

A case study is the Jivo Jellies earphones. Jivo is based in Ireland, but its simple consumer tech accessory products such as earphones are sourced from Far Eastern manufacturers. That means that, like a lot of consumer tech offerings, they are not likely to be very differentiated at the product level and so risk being judged on price alone. Jivo uses a well-considered brand, from its tone of voice to a distinctive brand identity, to help set them apart. They are Apple accredited, an example of how smaller consumer tech brands can leverage the brand power of larger consumer tech brands to bolster their own credibility.

Related: Brand Profiling, How to Use Emotion to Make Your Brand More Profitable

5. A Seamless Customer Experience Helps Consumer Tech be Brand Relevant

Even simple consumer tech can require more support than some other categories because consumers have to figure out how to use it, keep it updated, and interact with it for example by connecting it to their home wifi network. So the product itself is only one manifestation of the brand – the customer experience around it is also very important.

Branding can help weave together different elements of this, which can help it to be more coherent if for example the tech is bought from a retailer with their own servicing plans.

Image via © Cello

A case study of the power of customer experience is Cello Electronics. They are the only LED TV maker manufacturing in the U.K. and so the brand needs to appeal in a B2C context but also for B2B customers such as the hospitality or corporate sector. 

Related: Boring Brand? How To Create a Unique Brand and Market Positioning

The British manufacturing base adds cost compared to other jurisdictions, so to position itself as a premium brand, Cello emphasises its customer service, from encouraging customers to see inside the factory and retailers to visit it for quality inspections, to a dedicated U.K. based customer service team.

Related: Top 10 Brands for Customer Experience and What You Can Learn From Them

Final Thoughts

We live in an age of even faster exponential change, and consumer tech in many ways is at the heart of that phenomenon. Consumer tech can stay brand relevant, even in a storm of massive change, but it is critical to integrate strong brand strategy principles with your business strategy. 

From a careful thought through brand positioning, putting users and consumers up front, to a compelling set of emotional as well as functional benefits and a thoughtful branded customer experience, your consumer tech brand can be and stay brand relevant now and into the future — so you can Be The One.