Branding Strategy
“To Evolve: to change or develop often into a better, more complex, or more advanced state: to develop by a process of evolution.”
The world as we know it is in a constant state of change. So it is imperative now more than ever that your brand must evolve and adapt to changes in both the market and your customer base. Why? Because your customers’ needs are always changing and your brand needs to ensure it can keep up or be at risk of losing them.
Know your Customer
When undergoing any change it is critical to always keep your end goal in mind. Ask yourself who are you selling to? Who does your messaging need to resonate with? In most cases this will be your end customer, so evolving and adapting from the bottom up will ensure you can now only listen to your customers’ needs – but you can effectively and efficiently deliver on them.
Remember, it’s not always about being the biggest or even the best, it’s about engaging with your customer so they feel like they belong with your brand. This brings brand loyalty and returning customers.
Adding Customer Experience
Brands need to be streamlined to communicate efficiently with customers who are becoming more demanding than ever. You must offer them more than a product or service; the most successful brands offer their customers unrivalled positive customer experiences.
By being proactive about your brand experience, you can position yourself for success. Additionally, by fine tuning your design and messaging, you are creating consistency across all of your brand touchpoints which will lead to great customer experience. Customer satisfaction (analysed with surveys and focus groups) can be a powerful and cost-effective tool, which can help you maintain a successful brand.
It’s not just about creating awareness or a persona – you need to create meaning for your end customer and stay ahead of your competition. This process needs to be thought through in detail, and a great way of doing this is to conduct an in-depth workshop. A quick fix is never a good solution and if you don’t adapt to address this in detail, it can derail future plans and projects. Quantitative and qualitative research can bring valuable results and help your roadmap your journey to success.
Stand Out From The Competition
Competition is increasing, as hundreds of startups emerge from the market, more enthusiastic and willing to do more to gain a customer base. One of the most important steps to gaining a market share is your website. To succeed in delivering your brand messages effectively, you need a sleek, modern website design that is easy to navigate and presents information quickly. Attention spans are decreasing, so brands needs to be aware of this ever-changing landscape in order to keep all elements of their business up to date. Websites are crucial, as these are one of the main points of contact with your customers. It is also very important when designing and developing your website to make sure that it is built in such a way to allow scalability. If your brand evolves and changes over time, you need to be able to update your website to reflect this.
When analysing your brand and business plans some can hold an “it’s not broken, so what is there to fix” view. IDEA would champion the alternative view that while your brand may not seem broken it could benefit from some maintenance. A machine that isn’t regularly oiled is more likely to fall apart.
Look at Apple – the world’s largest information technology company. Founded in 1976, the company’s logos has been re-envisioned and redesigned several times. Each revamp represents a fresh approach for Apple – yet while certain elements such as colour have changed, it’s apparent who the company is. Ask yourself this, would Apple now be worth an estimated $178.1 billion if they were still promoting their brand using their 1976 logo? Admittedly your company might not be Apple, but why not aim to be?
Strategy for Success
Always analyze and review your branding – you can either be moving forward or standing still. So ask yourself this where are you, and more importantly – where are your competition?
We believe there is always something you can improve on. Being stagnant will not bring success, so why not choose to be a champion? IDEA are here to advise on how you can build and develop your brand to help you engage with your customers and bring customer loyalty. Why not get in touch?
