Why You Should Keep the Focus in Your Brand Development
We’ve all heard of “shotgun marketing,” where a campaign’s messaging is, without much direction or specificity, “shot” into the market place, with the hope that something along the line will hit.
We’ve also seen how poorly these campaigns often perform, banking on long odds and a sense of faith that the campaign may connect with a minor percentage of the target audience. Not only is this a high-risk, often low-reward tactic for a brand’s messaging, it’s also one that fails to establish any momentum beyond its own time frame.
This is because even if there are a few, scattered instances of success with the audience, there is little opportunity to record and analyze what exactly made it work. As such, the tendency will be to follow a similar game plan for subsequent campaigns.
When it comes to brand building, this constant starting over and relying on chance-based efforts take up time and money, two crucial components to successfully build and create a brand. Especially in the beginning of the brand’s life cycle, it is vital that momentum is built to allow the brand to launch with a strong foundation and keep it moving through the ups and downs.
On the contrary, a focused, targeted and well-strategized brand building campaign will yield results at a much higher rate, and will provide the necessary data of what works and what doesn’t works to help build the road map moving forward. These brands are built by identifying early on who their target audience will be, and catering the messaging to fit the wants and needs of these consumers.
Additionally, because the brand is employing repetition and familiarity in its messaging, the audience’s recognition of the brand will take hold quicker and more firmly throughout the campaign.
In other words, building a brand can be compared to a marathon race. The starting line is your initial brand strategy kick off, and the finish line is the product launch – but in between, you must navigate numerous hills along the path, powered only by your growing brand equity and messaging success.
With an unfocused brand building strategy, it will be a slow and bumpy road, as the brand moves forward with each scattered success and then stops as the other poorly aimed efforts fall flat. Trying to cross the hilly terrain and reach the finish line will be a trip filled with false starts, more difficult than it should be as the brand yearns to find momentum.
However, a focused brand building strategy allows for gradual building of brand equity and a higher success rate, so as the brand runs up the first hill, it is growing faster and stronger, allowing for the subsequent ups and downs to become minor bumps in the road.
What are some other ways brands can ensure a focused strategic direction? Aside from having a clear and well-defined target audience, the consistency of the remaining brand elements also play a part. In particular, this means that the visual and verbal branding efforts must work in tandem to build the brand, instead of staking out on their own and hoping there can be some sort of connection established later on.
Additionally, these two elements must tie back to the overall brand positioning. The brand name in particular is a highly visible aspect of a brand, no matter where in the building process is currently falls, and making it difficult for the audience to connect the name back to the core purpose of the brand is an unnecessary hurdle to create, and will turn off some key members of the audience.
There’s a reason brand building and brand strategy discussions often include the words “road map” – a good brand is built when the process is planned and the end goal is within sight. When embarking on this journey, keeping the focus is key to staying on track and ensuring that your brand ends up where you want it to be.
Has your company recently experienced change or growth? Due to changes in business strategies, acquisitions, internal organizational changes or the addition of new products to a portfolio, your brand strategy may need to evolve over time. Click here to download your free copy of “Your Brand’s Guide to Corporate Change” today, and learn how to align your brand and business strategy for success!