Resource
If you liked this month’s exploration of brand strength, be sure to download the white paper by Brian Davies, Movéo Managing Partner here: 10 Simple Truths About Strong Brands
Building brand strength not only has great benefits, it’s essential to your company’s long-term success. Even the organizations who consider their brand built have to put extensive effort into tweaking it and keeping it top of mind for their customers. If you want to find your own “special glow,” we’ve got some basic steps to help you get there.
Four ways to build brand strength:
1. Clarify your vision
Though this might sound like a no-brainer, you’d be shocked to discover how many companies haven’t truly clarified their vision. Once it’s developed, it becomes clear that it impacts the brand and every part of company strategy, from big-picture goals to daily decision-making.
2. Survey customers regularly to stay relevant
As we said before, relevance requires renewal. To build your brand’s strength, develop a plan for frequent customer surveys. Gauging their interests regularly is the best way to meet their needs consistently over time. Even better, finding a way to do that will make you their top choice for years to come.
3. Unify messaging across all departments
At the heart of your brand is a promise. That message cannot be communicated effectively to prospects without careful attention to your company’s messaging. Whether it’s a tweet, an email or a piece of mail, every detail matters. Strong brands are unified, from the inside out.
4. Bring in the experts
It might go without saying, but getting an outside assessment of your brand’s strength is the best way to look at it objectively and build it effectively. Building a powerful brand is no easy task, and it makes sense to call in the experts. As always, feel free to get in touch with us to learn more about our work at Movéo.
Resource
When you’ve been in business a long time, it’s easy to become jaded, but this never happens with strong brands. When “firing on all cylinders,” brands acquire a special patina. They develop an air that attracts, charms and influences. They pull you into an orbit and keep you there.
Truth #10: Strong brands glow.
Have you noticed the vibrancy strong brands seem to have? It’s impossible to put your finger on that “special something” of companies like Apple, Coke and Nike, but it’s certainly there. The elusive nature of their glow has been proven time and again when companies who attempt to imitate them fall short.
Peter Drucker once said that “management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.” Simply put, strong brands have an uncanny ability to deliver on the things that truly matter. This inspires people to become devoted followers and purchase their products.
Here are three ways to make your brand glow:
1. Be human
Never sacrifice your brand’s human voice. Use it to connect and engage customers, and they’ll become your advocates. Whether it’s a tweet, a phone call or your website copy, take every opportunity to show you’re not a robot.
2. Be timeless
Trends are great, but timeless is better. Give your brand a look and a feel that will stand the test of time and be relevant for years to come. Never be afraid to make changes to keep it that way.
3. Be authentic
Mean what you say, no matter what form of media or communication you’re dealing with. Every touchpoint on your customer journey should demonstrate authenticity, from the inside out. Your customers will notice and become loyal fans.
Does your brand draw people in?
Resource
“This is one of the saddest days of my life…indeed, it is sad for the American people. Apparently, there is just not the need for our product in today’s scheme of living.” When Martin Ackerman, president of The Saturday Evening Post, spoke those words in 1969, a brand that was a weekly staple of American life for 72 years was no more. It, like many other brands before and after it, failed to remain relevant.
Relevance requires renewal. One of the most important things a brand can do is make the commitment to evolve alongside its customers. By constantly adapting, strong brands are able to survive everything from aggressive competitors to shifts in consumer tastes. That brings us to our ninth brand truth:
Truth #9: Strong brands stay in motion.
IBM, for example, purposefully transformed itself from a mainframe maker into a systems integrator and reaped great rewards. McDonald’s is another company who has constantly tweaked its image, menus and advertising to stay at the top.
Staying relevant requires a deep understanding of your customers. Here are four ways to stay in touch with your community’s needs:
1. Use your customer service team
Your customer service team has a wealth of valuable insights that your company should leverage for future plans. Collect data from them regularly, and always consider customer needs and preferences in product development. You’ll be able to shift along with them and gain strength each time you do it.
2. Conduct an annual survey
Poll your customers annually to gauge how well your products or services are meeting their needs. The most important part? Make sure you move quickly to adjust to the data gathered. Responsive companies are agile in their renewal.
3. Organize personal interviews
Having your customer service team reach out to customers for personal interviews is highly recommended. Phone and email both work, but either way, call the customer by name and ask for their opinion. They won’t soon forget your company’s willingness to take their suggestions seriously.
4. Social listening
Social media has given us quick and immediate access to customer opinion. People usually share unbiased opinions on social channels, giving companies an opportunity to listen in and respond. Customers appreciate the conversation and attention, and brands who use these issues to make their company better gain incomparable strength over time.
How is your brand staying relevant?
Image via (cc) Peter Castleton
Resource
Have you ever thought about who actually owns a brand? People tend to automatically think the answer is the company it’s associated with, but think again. Increasingly in the digital era, customers seem to have the final say.
Interaction between brands and customers is evolving. Today when brands act, they get an instant reaction on the internet. In fact, brand participation has become a birthright of purchase.
Truth #8: Strong brands are shared.
Here are three key ways customers are influencing brand decisions:
1) Social media
Social media elicits instantaneous response from customers, and that real-time interaction encourages brand participation like nothing else. Many B2C brands rely on social media popularity to increase sales, so their ability to make customers feel like insiders is crucial.
2) Co-creation and Crowdsourcing
Co-creation is becoming one of the most popular ways to engage brand fans. Think of the Doritos Super Bowl competitions – participation skyrockets, and Doritos customers suddenly feel more valued and appreciated because they’re given a seat at the table. Crowdsourcing ideas for new products or brand direction is also wildly successful. My Starbucks Idea, for example, gives customers the opportunity to enact change, and they love it.
3) User support
Perhaps more practical for B2B companies than co-creation or crowdsourcing, user support forums are an excellent form of brand participation. Customers get to become a more integrated part of the brand community and help others while they’re at it. In response, their appreciation of and loyalty to the brand often grows.
These examples of brand co-ownership signal increasing opportunities for customer self-expression and creativity, and overall, a greater voice in the decisions that shape brands. Strong brands will always need strong owners, but interestingly, they’ll need to be aware of when to take a back seat and let customers take the wheel.
How can B2B companies inspire brand co-ownership?
Image via (cc) Michael L. Baird
Resource
Have you ever purchased AppleCare, Apple’s product protection plan, to accompany a new device? If so, you’ll know it’s delivered in a box that’s austere yet still somehow elegant. Apple is the brand responsible for elevating our collective sense of design these past few decades, so it makes sense that they deem a simple card important enough for such housing. That brings us to our seventh simple truth about strong brands.
Truth #7: Strong brands get design.
Though Apple mastered good design, they didn’t pioneer it. Years before, a select group of brands including BMW and IBM led the way by spreading the message that “good design is good business.” They shared this with anyone who would listen, and today, companies like Starbucks, Pinterest and IKEA continually raise the bar.
For these companies, design is an inseparable part of their brand experience.
Steve Jobs once said that design is the soul of man-made creation. He was right, and luckily for us as marketers and consumers, it is also the heart of strong brands – B2B companies included.
Here are three things brands must consider to embrace good design:
1. Intuitiveness
A customer should experience your brand as intuitive. Put another way, you should know what your customer wants before they know they want it. Intuitive design should play a role in your web and product development and even shape your customer journey. This will make every touchpoint a customer has with you surprising and pleasurable.
2. Beauty
Even B2B brands can be beautiful. Making every element of your company attractive in appearance, whether ‘s it’s your logo or your newsletters, goes a long way with prospects online and off.
3. Simplicity
The last thing your company should be to customers is a hassle – even visually. Everything about your design, from products to customer experience, should be crafted with simplicity in mind. As we said before, good brands make consumers’ lives easier.
Does your company make design a priority?
Image via (cc) Michelle Brunner
Resource
Have you ever been in love with a company only to have them disappoint you? It might be in person, over the phone, or in a customer service email, but at some point it’s bound to happen. Depending on the situation, your devotion to the company might have never recovered.
Brands make implicit promises with every customer touchpoint. Once a promise has been kept through a positive interaction, it creates an expectation that the next one will be too. When a negative “touch” occurs – even if it’s a small detail, it can have a horrible impact on the overall experience. That brings us to our next simple brand truth.
Truth #6: Strong brands keep promises.
Strong brands excel in achieving consistency across all touchpoints. They perfect the user experience from beginning to end.
Here are four ways you can extend your company’s brand promise to every department and touchpoint:
1. Commit to internal branding and positive company culture.
Before you can expect external relationships to be positive, you have to invest in your own employees. By demonstrating brand promise internally, you’ll model the way customers should be treated.
2. Intentionally design each step of the customer journey.
Unfortunately, customer touchpoints can’t be left to chance. Your company should intentionally design the entire sales cycle, crafting touchpoints for every step of the way. This puts information in front of customers exactly when they need to be influenced and creates a customer experience roadmap for your brand. To ensure positive interactions at every stage, leave no room for surprises.
3. Integrate design, marketing, advertising and customer service.
A positive customer journey is unified and consistent. Make sure every customer touchpoint is stellar by integrating the strategies of your design, marketing, advertising and customer service teams. This guarantees that customers receive the same message from every angle.
4. Form company communication guidelines.
Companies can’t expect employees to know best practices without providing direction. Create communication guidelines on behalf of your organization that explain how emails, phone calls and social interactions should be shaped. This makes customer experience consistent, even if multiple sales representatives are involved.
Is your brand keeping its promises?
Image via (cc) jeanbaptisteparis
Resource
At some point, brands went from recommended to required. As the importance of branding developed, companies became more adept at spreading their values. At a good company, every employee can recite the brand promise forwards and backwards.
Unfortunately, talking about the brand in the mailroom isn’t the same as using it in the boardroom. At too many companies, “brand” is just a buzzword given lip service by executive leadership instead of being what it should be – the impetus behind every decision.
Truth #5: Strong brands drive the business.
Companies who struggle with this must find a way to allow the brand to emerge from its place as a simple marketing buzzword.
Here are three things a brand must do to become a true business driver:
1. Guide the mission.
A company’s brand must be the force propelling its mission into action. Brand values not only shape the mission initially, they invite it to shape everyday activity. This influence starts at the top and trickles down to every corner of every department.
2. Be enshrined in internal values.
It might seem like common sense for a company’s brand to shape its outward-facing decisions, but internal focus is just as important. After all, people are every company’s most valuable asset. Brand values must shape the way employees are managed, and in turn, the company promise will extend to their interactions with customers.
3. Shape every aspect of strategic planning.
Every single aspect of strategic planning, big and small, should be driven by the brand. Companies that give their brands this kind of prominence operate in a unified way from the top down, and they’re often most successful for that reason. They remove “brand” from the pile of marketing dogma and hand it the steering wheel.
How is your brand driving your business?
Image via (cc) Steve Snodgrass
Resource
Did you know that Disney has a professional development arm called The Disney Institute? It’s true. They offer organizations “time-tested best practices, sound methodologies, and real life business lessons that facilitate corporate culture change.”
We know what you’re thinking. That’s a strong departure from spinning teacups.
Truth #4: Strong brands s-t-r-e-t-c-h.
Successful extensions as far afield as this one belong to strong brands. Think of other companies, like Ralph Lauren and Virgin, who have grown far beyond their original concept. They’ve done so by leveraging the power of their core brand to their advantage.
This type of growth is just as possible for B2B companies as it was for these B2C examples. What extensions in both camps require is strong branding, commitment to values and sound relationships with customers.
Here are three ways stretching your brand pays off:
1. 80% of new products are extensions
Many successful new products rely on the power of their core brand. The consumer psychology is simple: when faced with a new decision, people stick to what’s been reliable in the past.
2. Competitive advantage
Products that stem from existing brand strength have a competitive advantage from the start. Imagine releasing a product and facing no introductory period. People are ready to trust – and buy – much sooner.
3. Less risk
When selling to prospects who already rely your brand, there is less risk associated with new product development. That means your investment is safer and more likely to be profitable.
What are you doing to strengthen and stretch your brand?
Image via (cc) johndal
Resource
Today’s consumer is overwhelmed by choice. Being forced to make too many daily decisions – including small things like what toothpaste to buy or where to eat – can be a source of anxiety and stress. Whatever this says about our culture, the undeniable truth is that brands play a role in that decision making.
The psychological state of consumers is an important consideration in buying situations. If overwhelming choice creates a lack of structure, the desire for simplicity increases. That brings us to the third simple truth about strong brands.
Truth #3: Strong brands simplify.
Consumers with decision-making fatigue tend to buy from brands they know have met their expectations in the past. They typically reject others vying for their attention to make the choice easier. Put simply, when customers have too many options on the table, they stick with strong brands.
Here are four ways to streamline, gain strength and stand out amidst the noise:
1. Stay true to brand promise
Keeping brand promises should be at the heart and soul of every company decision. If companies do what they say, customers trust them. When that trust is built for a brand, it becomes the natural choice when too many options are at play.
2. Meet and exceed expectations
Strong brands don’t simply meet consumer expectations – they exceed them. This is achieved by identifying every customer touchpoint and making it a simple expression of brand value. It takes dedication, but the return is worth it.
3. Put customers first
When a company is positioned to help customers solve their biggest problems, they will notice. Making customer service a priority goes a long way in building brand strength.
4. Integrate content for advertising and marketing strategies
Strong brands operate as one cohesive unit across all platforms. Each message is carefully crafted to express brand promise and to fit within a larger content strategy. That strategy builds power by thoughtfully addressing all aspects of company communication.
How does your brand simplify decision-making for consumers?
Image via (cc) Edwin Steele
Resource
On Monday, we shared the first of our 10 Simple Truths About Strong Brands: strong brands are forgiven. Developing a powerful brand is an investment, but the value it brings to its company makes it worth the effort. Here’s the second benefit of strong branding:
Truth #2: Strong brands know themselves.
Think about today’s marketing landscape. Brands have countless approaches and platforms to consider. In the social media arena, for example, there are more networks than most companies can handle.
For strong brands, this isn’t a problem. They know themselves and understand exactly which channels fit their brand values and customer base. In return, they experience optimal results. Their marketing spend increases their bottom line, because they’re starting conversations in the right places.
Red Bull is a perfect example. Their “pushing the limits” content strategy is a perfect fit for Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Google+ and YouTube. They use each network to tell their story and drive sales as a result. Is this right for every company? Absolutely not. The important thing is that they can answer that question for themselves.
To discover your own company’s voice and strengthen your brand, ask these three questions:
1. What needs do my customers have?
There are countless ways to discover your customers’ needs. Examine social data, analyze website traffic or conduct a survey to explore what they want, and think about how your company relates as you shape brand values.
2. How can my company help meet those needs?
How does your product relate to your customers’ deepest needs? Once you understand your customers’ pain points, you can shape your content marketing strategy in a way that demonstrates how your offerings provide relief. Your brand will be strengthened as you relay its message in ways that resonate, and your sales will increase as a result.
3. What marketing strategies help fulfill those goals while reflecting my brand’s truth?
Your marketing strategy should be shaped by your brand values and your customers’ needs. Combining those in an integrated approach brings brand strength and confidence to companies of every size.
Does your brand understand where it can be most powerful?
Image via (cc) Tela Chhe
