When we talk about digital marketing and its forms, there are countless strategies that can help us to build a solid image as a company. Let’s remember that the qualities of the brand influence the consumer’s decision making and for this we have the brand ladder or ladder of benefits.  

The brand ladder is basically to start showing the benefits that your customer will get from consuming your product or service in order to achieve better results. In that sense, the idea is to offer a unique and unparalleled experience to your customers.

This strategy has its beginnings in 1980 when marketing professionals and great marketing researchers such as Philip Kotler and Kevin Lane Keller, began to develop strategies, not only based on the practice of products, but also on what additional benefits could be obtained by using other attributes of the product or brand. 

HOW DOES THE BRAND LADDER WORK?

The brand ladder precisely connects product and brand properties with the social and personal links of the customer’s lifestyle. 

The brand ladder is further divided into four steps or categories that specifically point them out so that customers know what they are and are aware of them.

Attribute benefits

This first rung defines the unique virtues offered by the product or service that the consumer will purchase. 

Functional benefits       

Beyond solving a basic need or concern with what the customer has just bought, it is necessary to define what the person will obtain with what he/she is buying. 

Emotional benefit

This may be the most difficult step to achieve, but if we manage to create a sense of security or an emotional connection between brand and consumer, we will achieve a unique impact that will be difficult for the customer to forget.

Transformational benefit

Here we talk about how the product or service managed to transform the buyer’s life and if the brand is able to elevate the customer within their social circle.

Social benefit

In this last step of the brand ladder we must clarify how our work or our product will be able to transform society and the way it develops a certain activity. As an example we could take Apple with its flagship product, its iPhone Smartphone that changed forever the way human beings communicate. 

The brand ladder will help to communicate a fabulous brand presence to the consumer and bring long term benefits such as customer loyalty, increased ROI and trust. 

For this strategy to be effective it is necessary to get real data on how the company is viewed and how customers perceive it.