As you look back on what’s been a wild and memorable year, have you taken a recent assessment of your brand? How have you reacted and how have you treated one of your business’s most valuable assets? It’s been proven that the impact of brand building becomes visible after six months. That includes the lack of brand building. December is always a great time to do a health check of your brand.
In the following matrix you can see the most common actions and outcomes for brands in 2020:
If you are on the left side of this matrix, how can you change direction? Many people think it’s all about advertising and some businesses can’t afford that right now. There are other great ways to build your brand awareness in your core markets. Forget about mass advertising, you need to focus on your addressable market. Build a marketing roadmap that puts your brand and key messaging in focus for target customers. As part of building your brand, not all of these activities need to sell or be focused on creating leads.
So where do you start? One of the keys is to keep your long-term focus on your brand, don’t sell out for a few short-term leads. I recently purchased a specialty golf item on a brand’s site and within days, had half a dozen emails from other golf companies. This approach quickly changed my perception of this company and I don’t plan to do business with them again. Here’s a shortlist of ideas that you can implement and things to consider:
Another fundamental objective to consider is if you have backed off in 2020, don’t wait for business to come back in 2021 to re-start your brand building. In every recessionary environment in the past, companies making the biggest share gains have routinely invested in their brands during the downturn. If you wait too long, it could be too late to regain or grow your share.
My posts on LinkedIn this month have been focused on this very topic. Now is the time to assess your brand building efforts! For more information on this topic or any others, reach out to us at www.randinc.cc or email tjobe@randinc.cc.
