FAQs from businesses like yours.

A Brand Strategy, is phase two of three phase Brand Plan creation process. It is the part of the process that defines the structure and the focus for the brands growth over the next 12 months. WIthin the strategy are defined the target audience, how the brand will be positioned, what objectives the brand is aiming to achieve, and what the brand architecture will be (in the case of multi-brand enterprises).

Let’s imaging a simplified process of building a house. Step one is setting the foundation that the structure of the house will sit upon. Without a strong foundation, or any foundation at all, the house might stand initially but most certainly not for very long. With a foundation in place, the structure of the house can be built, but it will not be very livable or appealing without some aesthetic external and internal finishing touches.

Continuing with the house analogy, a Brand Plan, is the physical/tangible outcome (one could print it, hold it, read it, and share it.) of a the complete “plan for brand growth “ process. For a brand, this process begins with a foundation of research on the business and it’s chosen market. On this foundation is built the structure that defines where and how the business is going to focus its resources in order to strengthen brand equity and grow revenue. Finally, added to the structure are the marketing tactics that will best help the brand accomplishing the objectives as stated in the strategy.

The time it takes to create a new brand plan depends largely on the size of the enterprise, whether a current brand plan is in place, and the size/scope of the project. I have completed brand plans in an little as one month and others have taken upwards of six months to fully develop.

Businesses of all sizes struggle with budget limitations. For small and emerging businesses, through no fault of your own, your product is less known, less available, and therefore purchased less. To break the disadvantage relative to larger competitors and gain attention, you need to get exceptionally creative with your marketing. I can guide you on this path and I can also show you the very simple, methodical, and proven solutions to brand growth. These solutions begin with a deep understanding of your brand, your customer and your competition.

Regardless of your budget, I can help you precisely understand how your customers view you and what makes you more valuable to them relative to their alternative options. Let’s begin building your strong brand.

ROI is indeed top of mind for business owners regardless of the size of your business. Business owners and marketing directors need to justify every dollar spent and they aim to track what's working with clear metrics. Where some people go wrong is not understanding that brand building campaigns and performance marketing campaigns are very different and require a different time frames to measure ROI success. “Performance marketing” is evaluated within short time frames (weeks to just a few months) where as brand building campaigns should be evaluated annually.

With proper evaluation timelines in mind, measuring ROI for performance and brand building campaigns also requires a different process. I am happy to advise you once I have a clear understanding of your specific marketing mix and objectives.

I will largely leave this question to the social media marketing experts of the world. However, here are two frequently observed missteps that are killing your brand growth:

• Insufficient or improper use of distinctive brand codes.
  It is vital that you do everything in your power to be instantly recognized as you. That may sound silly but I am no longer impressed by just how many brands get this wrong. In any media but especially social, attention is a game of fractions of a second. Recent research by Ehrenberg-Bass Institute has show that at any given moment, only 5% of your potential buyers in in the mindset to buy. 95% of those who see your post will need to store a memory of your brand and recall it when they are ready to purchase in the future. No one buys a product or service from brand they cannot recall in the exact moment they are shopping. Your distinctive brand codes (the select bits of branding that make you look like you, and only you) are critical for buyer recall and you must ensure that you use them carefully but also frequently and ubiquitously.

• Placing far too much significance on easy metrics: Follows, likes, clicks, comments, etc. are largely insignificant measures of brand awareness among the mass market or even your target market segments. Hold the 90:9:1 rule in mind. This “rule” states that 90% of people who use social media are just watching, lurking and scrolling. For these people social media is just like watching TV - it’s passive entertainment and they almost never engage. 9% of people may from time to time, engage with creators and content by following liking, and commenting. And only 1% of people will actively create content. Keep this in mind when you are gauging the effectiveness of your social media campaigns and setting budgets.

If you’d like, I can improve the effectiveness of your marketing efforts and help you better define the metrics of brand growth success.

Growing a brand is a game of patience and small incremental steps. Rarely does a brand explode in popularity over night and it’s quite likely that you’d want a more sustainable approach to business growth anyway. There is no silver bullet to competing in any market, nor is there one magic marketing tactic. You can win in time if you (among a long list):

• Gain deep understanding of your market, audience, and competitors.

• Understand what drives purchase and how your audience perceives your brand relative to these drivers.

• Properly position your brand in alignment with your audience and against your competitors.

• Consistently show up distinctly.

• Ensure a proper marketing mix of short term and long term brand building campaigns.

• Ensure your brand is available at the exact moment your buyer is ready to purchase.

Market research designed for targeting customer or market segments is a fundamental step in brand strategy. I do, however, have concerns when target becomes conflated with define an “ideal customer profile.” The persistent directive to “niche, niche, niche” when it comes to buyer audiences is well outdated and it’s keeping your brand from growing. Identifying and creating a niche offering for your category is very powerful. Be mindful that this is not the same and niching to a buyer “persona,” which is often a derivative of dividing an audience based on demographics. When a brand selectively speaks a target persona, its presence is hidden from the very large population of other potential buyers. For small brands already at a disadvantage relative to larger competitors, this is a bad deal.

For your brand to grow, you must reach beyond the customer personas that you can readily identify. You must reach the masses. I can help you accomplish this effectively and efficiently.

I’ll keep the nerdy acedemics to a minimum here but depending on who you ask, you’ll get similar but slightly different definitions of brand. I define Brand as the meaning, the sum total of all experiences and internalized associations, that a consumer assigns to you. Branding is the collective and various sensory assets that business uses as proxy for the brand name. You quite literally do not need to think beyond the cattle brand image that likely popped into your head when you read “branding.” – this cow with this mark belongs to this ranch. The feelings, emotions, meaning, or imagery the thought of that ranch or rancher brings to mind, is brand.

“Brand identity," “brand assets,” or “brand codes.” These all mean the same thing. They refer to the brand devices that act as a proxy for your brand name. Top of mind examples include your logo, tagline, and colors. The fast and short answer to the Q&A question posed is consider how often you would change your brand name once it’s been established. You wouldn’t, right? Do the same with your brand codes. Take time to carefully define and create them but once you do, for the love of all things holy in branding, don’t change them! It’s a near given that in time you, the person who sees the same branding everyday, will get bored of it. You’ll decided that you like light blue more that dark blue. Or you’ll think the new Pantone color of the year is the best answer to your branding issues. Or a new tagline is as good as money in the bank. STOP! The vast majority our audience does not yet clearly associated your existing brand codes with your brand. If this is true for Coca-Cola, this is true for you.

Here are a few recommended best practices for developing as using brand codes. [For a deep dive on brand assets, I highly recommend consulting the authority on the topic, Jenni Romaniuk and her book, Building Distinctive Brand Assets.]:

• Be distinct. Carefully consider your category competitors and the codes that they use. You do not want your brand codes to unintentionally bring your competitor to mind.

• Define your brand codes “palette” (ideally 3-5 codes) and use wisely but use them everywhere. If you think you are using them to much, double down. I don’t know you but I can just about guarantee that you are not branded enough.

• Think outside the “eye.” There are 5 senses, yet the majority of brand codes are visual in nature. A very fast way to stand out in a crowded space is to incorporate under utilized code types like sonic devices, jingles, mascots, textures, herbs & spices, scents, etc.

From my experience, a primary reason brands (small and large) struggle to maintain brand consistency across websites, social media, marketing, packaging, and physical locations because they have not identified the one thing that makes them relevant to their buyers and distinct from their competition. Failing to identify this anchor point leaves a business and marketing team to make decisions based on what feels right in the moment.  Don’t get me wrong, there is real strength in your brand’s ability to show up and gain attention in different settings with agility and creativity. This power comes from a clear understand of what makes your brand relevant and distinct. You must define and remain dedicated to a point of view. Season your story with the spicy trends of the day, but recognize a trend as the salt that it is. Your distinct brand must remain the star of show.

This remit, often sends brand managers and teams down the path of creating lengthy brand guidelines. Pages and pages worth of detailed instructions on how brand codes should but mostly should not be used or altered. My contrarian perspective on this is, what a monumental waste of human resources. So much time is taken to craft these brand books and no one, absolutely no one, reads them. A light skimming is a win. It’s not just a waste of time, I believe these guides diminish brand potential. Brands with very tight brand guideline documents can struggle with not being flexible enough to incorporate relevant trends in their marketing efforts. To avoid brand rigidity, I like to help brands develop a “brand universe” mentality – a frame that helps anyone inside of a business understand the basic universal brand laws in order to properly execute on-the-fly decision in a rapidly changing world while remaining “on brand.”

Although customer loyalty is real, many studies in the past decade (most prominently by the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute) have shown brand loyalty (and similarly, retailer loyalty) as we believe it to be, needs significant reinterpretation. [I’m about to bring in some Byron Sharp academics here so skip to the next paragraph if that will make your head hurt.] All brands in a market share a majority percentage of their customer base. The largest brands share slightly less of their customer base because they are large, more well known, and more likely available at time of purchase intent. Smaller brands share a slightly higher percentage of their customer base because they are small, less well known, and less readily available at time of purchase. Likewise, over a reasonable time frame, repeat purchasing from the small percentage of a brand’s loyal customer base has a significantly smaller impact on brand growth than does the infrequent and light purchasing from the vast majority of a brands customer base.

So what does this all mean and what should you do? My take, in short, think about customer loyalty as polygamous loyalty among a frequently chosen set of brands, of which you are only one. Do what you can to help both frequent and new buyers feel delighted by their purchase but focus your resources and growth efforts on attracting many new buyers that will buy from you infrequently. All brands regularly lose customers for reasons that are completely outside their control. If you focus only on repeat purchases from loyal customers, you will go out of business. The only question is when.