There is a lot of talk going on about brand, visibility and promotion. Does everyone know what it is all about and how to make the right strategy for a certain market?
Since the beginning of April, for the third time in a row, I have been asked to help in developing of start up company’s brand strategy.
In the first part of the request, I read a very short description of the company in question, while the largest part is devoted to questions, doubts and potential ideas – Why didn’t we achieve greater visibility, if we updated all social networks regularly? Why don’t the clients know our entire portfolio? Why is it so difficult for them to reach us? Why does a competitor monetize their services better, when we have more experience and are more flexible? And maybe we should pay for a more aggressive outdoor campaign?
Why, why, why?
Let’s start over…
How much do you really know about brand strategy? What do you consider under a brand strategy?
The answer I usually get doesn’t go beyond posting content on social networks, organizing some external event and possibly sponsoring.
Is that all or the most important in the field of brand strategy?
Absolutely not!
First, let’s see where we are at the moment – what is our current position on the market, what are our weaknesses and what are our main strengths? Where is our chance and where are the obvious failures? Let’s take two strong competing houses for comparison and do a joint analysis, but very objectively.
This first step usually reveals a lot that we missed at first glance.
Then we continue with a more detailed analysis of the business which brand should be developed. Depending on the company we work for and in close cooperation with its internal team, we jointly define proposals for improvement:
- Where can we be more flexible?
- How to personalize the offer according to the requirements of each customer (as much as possible)?
- Are after-sales services feasible for us?
- How much can we actually do business according to the custom principle?
- Do we have a clear overview of the base of satisfied customers and do we have any contact with them?
- What about customers who are not satisfied and do we know what is the reason for their dissatisfaction? Can we eliminate the causes of dissatisfaction and contact them with new proposals?
Only after an exhausting, but essentially important internal analysis, we can talk about promotion, this time fully confident. We know what we promote and what we can offer more and better than others and we should spread the news!
Until next Tuesday, when we reveal the promo secrets 🙂
