If you are keen to know about the multi-faceted endeavours of the branding department of Propel Industries, read on. Ms Vidhya Senthilkumar, Director – Branding and CSR, gives answers to questions posed by the Equipment Times team.
Branding is an essential promotional tool. How do you channelize this tool effectively?
Propel Industries provides innovative, technologically-sound and cost-effective solutions to the crushing and screening industry. We provide a comprehensive range of products with high reliability and performance.
Lot of introspective thoughts go into our branding activities. We understand that it is a multi-faceted endeavor. Propel has emerged as a brand to reckon with, thanks to the careful steps that we have taken in the last 10 years, to ensure that our products capture the attention of the target audience. We place advertisements in industry-based magazines in a phased manner. We also participate in exhibitions like EXCON which help us build our brand in a big way. The Propel team ensures that we are seen and heard, everywhere.
Tell us about the different branding strategies used to create a strong customer connect?
Apart from advertising in magazines, we use social media as a promotional tool. We post straight-forward promotional messages as well as other interesting industry-related content. We ensure that we do it at regular time intervals. We ensure that we don’t overwhelm people with information. We let the marketing wing of our company handle their job, which in turn helps in brand building. We go for corporate branding wherein we use one brand name for all of our products. This helps us create a higher brand awareness at lower cost.
Logo / tagline is an extremely critical element for brand recall. Tell us about the factors that contribute towards the same.
Our tagline is ‘Engineering Excellence’. We wanted to capture the customer’s attention in the best possible way and retain it. We wanted to keep it short, simple and straight. It has worked. Customers who aim for excellence, choose Propel products. Our tagline and logo help our customers remember our products. It increases their propensity to buy.
How does effective branding aid to garner trust among various end-user segments?
We maintain high level of authenticity in all our communications. We are open to feedback and work towards making corrections, if need be. We interact and have healthy dialogues with our customers. We treat customers with highest regard and are conscious of the impact each conversation can make. This helps build trust on the brand.
Through our strong bond with the customers, we have created a base for referrals. We have customers who will vouch for our quality.
The best customer service that we provide round-the-clock and the transparency of our operations have won us the trust of customers.
We focus on doing great work consistently and this is helping us multiply our clientage.
What is the distinguishing marketing factor that makes you stand out in the competitive construction equipment sector?
There are many factors that helped us carve a niche. We are building our brand online and doing our best to present our company well, digitally. Our website gives all the information needed to educate the customers about the industry.
On the field, we address the needs of our clients directly. The integrity with which we work is helping us grow our business. Our product quality, expertise and customer support are our unique factors and these market our products to the customers.
We empathize with our customers and understand the internal and external challenges that the customers face. We are being looked upon as a trusted leader in this sector because of the way we handle the unique business challenges and also by the way in which we help our customers wade through tough situations.
This interview first appeared in Equipment Times, September-October 2020.
