Brand Building Strategies
for Turbulent Times
You probably thought this would be a page about the ongoing recession and how to build a lasting brand with a smaller budget.
It’s not.
It’s about brand building for every time period, because all times are turbulent; and the rate of change seems to be increasing on a bell curve. Your online brand management is a good example. How in the world can you build a brand online with all the change that’s happening? Simple, you can get to work adding value for your prospective customers with videos, lots of thought-leadership content for your category, bog postings, social media engagements and more. Build lots of original, useful content. You’d be amazed how few companies do this. If you’re one which does, you’ll stand out for years!
The changes keep coming
Just last year it was Google Instant, the new way Google began to present results as you typed in a key phrase. This scared a lot of marketing people, and rightly so. As your prospects are typing in a key phrase, they might not finish it and find a list of phrases which very well might not include your company. I’m sure that active companies began evaluating key phrase work based on this and opted to put their most relevant words first. These changes in approach to key phrases cost companies real money.
Now it’s Google Instant Previews. As you look at a results page, you can roll your mouse over the little magnifying glass icon and get a sneak peek at the web page before you commit to clicking it. The key phrase is highlighted in the small screen-grab they show of your homepage. Google Instant Previews is just one more thing that brand managers must manage when inventing strategies for building their website. Now your homepage must look interesting in a tiny screen grab, or your prospects might not click it.
Social media, Droid, iPad… the formats and options change and change, and you must keep up with all of it. How will your brand “degrade” from your main website all the way down to a blackberry screen? Brand building must now deal with so many more elements.
Brand building strategies amidst constant change
- If the core of your company’s brand building strategy is focused on creating something of value for your current and future customers, and to the world at large, then you’re off to a good start.
- Add thought-leader content to the conversations in your category. Be a leader in all your communications. When you do a TV commercial, make sure it’s not just entertaining but also is in the “voice” of a leader.
- Stop jumping around so much in your branding, your tone of voice, your advertising messaging. Create a long-term brand and stick to it. Coca Cola used to do that. Then they veered into New Coke and one of the worst marketing disasters ever. Why? Because they lost focus and new marketing directors wanted to put their own stamp on a great brand.
- Don’t rush into a campaign. Companies charge into building and choosing campaigns. This gives consumers the impression that these brands are expendable. Talk several months to map out the strategic direction for your brand, and then give your advertising firm a lot longer to come up with a solid branding campaign that can weather all sorts of changes for years. Or, dare I say, decades.
I’ve honestly never seen a time in which business is in so much flux. Yet even now brands can be built with strategies that will guarantee them a long, valued life.
ion Leap builds lasting brands with valued content.
