The role of effective brand contact planning process & internal marketing of Nedbank South Africa

Effective Brand Contact Planning

Brand contact involves every point of contact that the consumer has with the brand. According to Klopper and North (2011:155), effective brand contact planning is crucial for firms such as Nedbank South Africa to have a strong market presence. It comprises creating an integrated strategy for reaching out to the target audience at every possible point of contact in order to build brand value, attract new customers and consumers, boost customer loyalty, and drive corporate success. A brand is a social construct. And brand building involves the development of a specific and unique meaning that holds value and connects with people (Klopper & North, 2011:156).

It is important to note, however, that brand contact planning and management is more than just a generic process of creating positive experiences (Klopper & North, 2011:156). Marketing research to establish the intended audience, competition analysis, messaging, communication strategies, and measurement are all key components of the brand engagement strategy. One of the country's largest banks, Nedbank South Africa, has employed a very well brand engagement planning strategy across various channels to better communicate with its customers and maintain market dominance.

The role of an effective brand contact planning process and internal marketing is essential for any organization, and especially for banks like Nedbank in South Africa. The Klopper & North (2011:161) model of five steps for brand contact planning and internal marketing can be useful for this purpose.

1. Step 1: All points of contact 
2. Step 2: Primary brand contact patterns
3. Step 3: Most important brand contact points
4. Step 4: Brand contact cohesion strategy
5. Step 5: Managing the brand contact cohesion strategy

The first step in this methodology is to conduct a brand audit. Nedbank must first evaluate its present brand positioning, brand recognition, and the disparity between customers' opinions and perceptions of the brand performance. Such an evaluation will offer the bank with information into how to improve its market positioning.

Step two is to identify the audience, often called stakeholders. Clients, employees, investors, and regulators are all potential stakeholders in a bank, by identifying these groups, the bank may tailor its message and mode of communication to its target demographic. A contact pattern looks at the common touchpoint journey of interaction between a stakeholder group and the brand (Klopper & North, 2011:166).

The third step involves determining the most effective methods of contacting the target audience. This might involve a mix of traditional and digital media, such as billboard or social media. The most important thing is to select appropriate channels which will have the most influence on the bank's investments and reach the most people, assessments of brand contact planning is critical for the bank to sustain its market dominance. Some of the essential measurements used in keeping a cohesive strategy plan include tracking feedback from customers metrics, maintaining statistics on network communication usage rates, and assessing social media engagement rates.

The fourth step comprises developing relevant, entertaining, and persuasive marketing materials and communication instruments. Making informative and entertaining media material, or producing efficient sales copy for various marketing platforms are all instances of this.

A brand contact strategy will always be driven by the perception of stakeholders, the brand identity system and the first three steps of the brand contact planning process (Klopper & North, 2011:171).

The fifth and last step in the process is to track and evaluate this is implemented by the leadership, management and employees.

For an efficient brand contact planning method to be successful, employees need to comprehend and believe the brand message in the marketing strategy as a whole. In addition to the external strategy, an environment which promotes the company's brand and top down generating shared opinions about the brand among employees is essential to increase communication consistency.

“the task of successfully hiring, training and motivating able employees to serve the customer well” (Kotler & Keller, 2006).

Effective Internal Marketing

These four elements help to build effective internal marketing and ensure committed employee engagement. However, despite the advantages of effective internal marketing and branding, there are a number of guidelines that companies should be aware of (Klopper & North, 2011:203).

• Internal marketing efforts should not just be isolated to internal marketing, but should be done from a holistic viewpoint and incorporated into other activities.
• Ensure that there are enough resources, support and capacity to guide internal branding initiatives.
• Avoid isolating internal branding efforts to the function of marketing and communication. It should be regarded as a company-wide function.
• Ensure that the right people are consulted at the right time and that they have buy-in. Failure to get the commitment of key stakeholders could result in ineffective internal branding initiatives.

The first step to effective internal marketing and branding is creating a company culture that encourages and inspires employees to live and embody the brand’s values. These values need to be embedded in company culture and established internally among the employees before they can be communicated externally. According to Gapp and Merrilees (2006:164),Internal marketing is an important aspect of Nedbank's brand interaction planning. This is due to the fact that workers are the bank's face and play a crucial part in delivering on the tagline to its clients. Employees who believe in the brand message are better able to communicate it to potential consumers, which increases the trustworthiness of the bank's offerings and services.

Furthermore it is important since it encourages employees to become ambassadors externally This creates a culture within the company that encourages everyone to work toward the same objective of offering customers with a memorable brand experience. Nedbank South Africa has maintained an excellent level of client satisfaction through tying every employee's role to the bank's purpose, which is an important predictor of the bank's long-term performance.

 Internal marketing can be used as a strategic tool to meet and exceed the expectation of the consumer (Papasolomou & Vrontits, 2006:179).

Conclusion

To summarize, efficient brand interaction planning & internal marketing are important to driving success inside a highly competitive marketplace. To build a strong brand, sustain growth, and keep customer trust, Nedbank South Africa uses a well-structured brand interaction planning approach that includes analytics, communication strategies, & player culture. Understanding brand views, target audiences monitoring progress, and maintaining internal alignment with stated outer depictions are all part of executing an integrated marketing strategy. Nedbank's South Africa's marketing strategy might be improved and marketing objectives met more successfully using this technique.

Sources

Gapp, R. & Merrilees, B. 2006. Important Factors to Consider When Using Internal Branding As A Management strategy: A Healthcare Case Study. Journal of Brand Management, 14:162-176

Klopper, H.B. & North, E. 2011. Brand Management. Pearson: South Africa

Papasolomou, I. & Vrontis, D. 2006. Using Internal Marketing to Ignite the Corporate Brand. The Case of the UK Retail Band Industry. Journal of Brand Management, 14: 177-195