How To Become A Brand Manager: Role, Salary & Skills
What is the role of the brand manager?
Earlier, I talked about the importance of brand marketing. Go check that article out if you haven’t already done so 😉
And in this article, I’ll follow up with a few relevant topics related to a brand manager’s career path:
What exactly is the role of a brand manager?
What is a brand manager’s salary?
What are the skills and brand management qualifications needed to be a brand manager?
Let’s delve right in, shall we?
What is a brand manager and what does a brand manager do?
1) Core function - develop an overall brand strategy
So what exactly is the day to day role as a brand manager?
Is the function of a brand manager at a consulting firm the same as a brand manager role at Unilever? Quite similar. But not exactly.
In FMCG firms, the role of a brand manager is more ‘product’ focussed. Many of them do branding for the brands under their portfolio such as Dove (UL) and Gillette (P&G). Most of the time, however brand marketing executed with the aim of branding a company or organisation the person is working for.
So the overarching job performed by brand managers really depends on where they work at. At the very core, a brand manager’s role is to develop the overall branding strategy for a particular brand. But this is just the main function of a brand manager. He or she will have other duties to perform.
2) Coordinate with multiple stakeholders (internal and external)
As I’ve established in my previous article on brand marketing, branding is not exclusively a marketing team’s role.
One of the key reasons why companies create the position of a brand manager is to oversee the collaboration between internal and external teams.
At a managerial level, brand managers need to work closely with other team leads to set goals and lay out the work that needs to be done, and establish deadlines. This also needs to be done with external stakeholders. For instance, perhaps you need to hire freelance content writers to outsource your writing needs. Or maybe you’ll need to outsource design work to a creative agency because you lack the internal capabilities. A brand manager needs to be able to set clear goals and deadlines with these external stakeholders.
3) Ensure branding efforts help bring in profit
In her article about what good and successful marketers need to thrive, Regional Head of Marketing and Comms at Randstad Rena (Tan) Ling said that marketers of the future need to be drivers of sales.
Great brand managers need to be growth-oriented and help companies grow while achieving the goal of shaping the brand’s perception in the minds of their consumers.
At the end of the day, brands are corporate entities and profits matter. And for someone in a managerial and leadership position, it is essential that this person is goal-oriented and focuses on the numbers.
What is a brand manager’s salary?
The average brand manager’s salary in Singapore according to payscale.com
Of course, if you’re trying to find out what a brand manager does, you’ll be interested in the amount of money you’ll make as well.
I can’t speak for people from other countries, but in Singapore, you can expect an average salary of around $66,000 per year.
What are the skills and qualities needed to be a brand manager?
My experience is limited to my six months at Shopee but from speaking to Brand Managers in FMCG companies like Unilever, P&G, and Reckitt Benckiser, here’s what I concluded would be the most important skills needed to succeed in these roles.
1) Analytical Skills to understand data and draw insights
Market research is a fundamental skill that any good marketer should have.
Especially for someone who is in a leadership role, the decisions you make will make a significant impact on the organisation. This is why a brand manager needs analytical skills to make data-driven and informed decisions.
However, depending on the company you’re in, the stage of market research that requires your involvement may differ.
At Shopee for example, we would craft the questions and have an agency run the fieldwork for us. Then, we’d analyse the data and draw insights and recommendations for different teams in the organisation.
On the contrary, FMCG companies would derive data from their Consumer Markets Insights (CMI) team and similarly draw insights and recommendations from there.
But in general, brand managers at FMCG companies get exposed to ground research as well which can be really exciting and meaningful to speak with the end-users of your products.
2) Communication Skills
Another skill would be internal and external communication skills.
As a brand manager, you’ll have to work with different teams either to run research projects for their team or even propose recommendations for their teams.
At Shopee for example, the Regional Brand Team served as the in-house Market Research experts as we would liaise with external research agencies to gather data on topics that other teams such as the Creative, Online Marketing, or CRM Team wanted to learn about.
Externally, it’s crucial to understand how to communicate your brand difference to the end-users through different means. And this would play out in the crafting of recommendations backed by research data.
3) Curiosity to stay up-to-date with the market
An essential quality and habit to have is to keep up with the latest market trends and new things that companies and competitors are doing.
Observations lead to hypotheses which you test through market research and then gain new insights.
Observations would be what helps you discover something new that could help you stay one step ahead of your competitors. One way would be by connecting with other marketers on LinkedIn and following various marketing magazines such as Marketing Interactive.
4) Empathy
Arguably one of the most important qualities any leader or manager should have is empathy. As team leaders, the biggest mistake a brand manager can make is to treat their team members as mere workers. As means to an orgnisation’’s goals.
It is essential to create a comfortable team environment where their voices and concerns can be heard. Happy employees make for happy customers and you don’t want to end up having high turnover rates due to bad management teams.
At the end of the day, despite all the years of experience, brand managers themselves are only human and are limited in their perspective. It never hurts to hear what others on the team have to say about processes and strategy.
Rounding off
Brand managers play an absolutely critical role in shaping a brand’s image and driving growth. It is crucial that you develop yourself in the aforementioned areas if you want to become a brand manager.
The list of brand manager skills above are not exhaustive. And if you realised, design or art isn’t the key component of brand marketing. So if you think branding = logo, that might be because it is usually left to the creative team who are experts in that.
I hope this article helps assure you that you don’t need to be good at design to be a brand marketer. Check out other posts in our marketing mag too! It’s free 😉
