Many people associate brand with a logo, strap line or marketing campaign which is pleasing on the eye and conveys a certain feeling or emotion to the buyer, but a brand is so much more than this. Your brand should embrace your business as a whole, embodying your own values and belief systems, how you interact internally with your own staff and externally with your clients or consumers.
However, in a world of shareholders and quarterly results focus, many businesses often fail to understand the importance of brand awareness and stray from their core beliefs to deliver short term financial performance. Others look to modify or tweak their brand on an annual basis, treating it as a product or service to support growth, rather than embodying their core values and beliefs. Both may have short term benefits, but ultimately your brand will lack stickiness with your client, requiring ever increasing investment in marketing to manage positive perception with your client.
For an existing business, your brand is typically related more to your reputation rather than your marketing activities. Your brand should be unwavering, repeatedly demonstrating your business’ core values and offerings, in which your clients and staff alike should share in the same experience.
For a new business, your brand is more related to perception from your target market. A well-constructed brand that matches market opportunity can help to bring significant leads, however this must be supported by a robust product or delivery capability, to match client expectations and mitigate any perceived risks.
Assuming your core values and beliefs meet the need of your target clients and staff, long lasting and sustainable growth can be achieved when you embrace your brand wholly within your business and marketing activities.
Many companies embark on transformational growth journeys from the confines of their board room, strategizing based on historical performance and current market conditions, without any realization of brand importance, and whether their growth strategy is aligned with their brand. In my experience, this is one of the main reasons why most companies fail to deliver their growth aspirations.
Understanding your brand is of critical importance when you are looking to transform your performance. To help you understand, ask yourself the following questions:
- Do your clients recognize and understand your brand?
- Does your own business understand your brand?
- Does your organization’s culture embody the brand in their day to day activities?
- Does your company stay true to your brand in difficult situations?
- Does your company embrace your brand in all decision making?
If you can answer yes to at least 3 of these questions, you are in a good place to grow. If not, then there is plenty work to do to build stronger foundations which will eventually support your future growth.
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