Is your brand in a rut, not getting the traction you expected or were promised? There are many factors that influence a brand’s success. It can be frustrating trying to figure out what the culprit is for the lack of business traction. Brand strategy and proper development of that strategy can go a long way in leveraging your brand for business success. Here are six potential signs to consider if your brand seems stalled.
1. Your brand doesn’t appeal to the right market
Finding and understanding your target market is a pivotal step in successful branding. If your brand attracts the right people, they will more likely to convert into a customer. The messaging aligned with your products or services will resonate more with your audience when they are able to relate with it. When creating a brand, we build detailed customer/ buyer personas to communicate our clients’ voice and visual identity to the right audience.
Who cares about this product or service? Why do they care? How do they prefer to be communicated with? What inspires them to interact with you instead of your competition? These are some of the first questions to ask yourself while thinking about your target audience.
2. Your brand is inconsistent in its implementation
Multiple variations of business cards, so many versions of a logo that you forgot which is the right one to use, a different color palette and font online than in your offline materials? Does any of this sound familiar? If so, you are not alone. We have sat down with many clients who experienced these and similar concerns.
Discrepancies within your brand can kill brand loyalty and recognition, fast. Inconsistency = a lack of trust from your audience. Working through a brand audit to uncover these inconsistencies can be one of the best and most enlightening tools you can use to begin gaining financial traction through your brand.
3. Your brand hasn’t been updated recently
You don’t need to be trendy. However, you do need to stay relevant. If you’re still using Comic Sans, in a non-ironic way, you are not achieving that. No matter how classic a look, brands, logos and messaging need to be tweaked and cleaned up over time. We understand that the idea of changing parts of your brand, or even the word rebrand can be daunting. But a brand refresh, following an audit, can be easy, painless and effective when done in an intentional and meaningful way.
4. You didn’t have time to invest in your brand early on
Start-ups move fast. Some clients we meet with, who are about a year or two into building their business, are just starting to realize the reality that not setting up their brand correctly is hindering their image and ability to scale. Without proper brand standardization and clarity on the official look and voice of a company, gaining new clients or customers can be challenging.
5. Your brand looks or sounds too much like the competition
It is easy to fall into the trap of following what everyone else is doing. But when has following the competition built an industry leader? Companies in similar markets tend to interact with each other’s branding to inform consumers on what is normal. You can reach your market without having to look like everybody else. By defining your business’s unique qualities and identifying core competencies, you can create a brand that highlights your key differentiators and builds a solid base for competing in the marketplace.
6. Your brand’s core message isn’t being understood
Who are you and what can you offer me? If a potential customer cannot access the answer to those questions within the first moments of interacting with your brand, they will likely move on. A well-developed brand is able to answer these questions quickly and clearly. Intentional communication about the strengths, values and offerings of your brand are key in adding to and keeping your customer base.
Building and maintaining an effective brand is a challenge for businesses in almost every industry. However, there are strategies to begin working through these communication and positioning issues. Through tactics such as a Brand Audit, Brand Discovery and intentional materials implementation we can get your brand on track to seeing business results.
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