We Have Been Around For 70 Years, So Why Would We Need To Invest In Brand Strategy?

500 years

Age does not mean you have a brand that customers love, recommend, provide referrals to, and return to willingly. I am reminded of this every day with our postal service, a private-public company with an impressive existence spanning over 500 years. My business relationship is strictly out of necessity, and I continue to seek many alternatives before using this service.

70 years

I once helped an industrial dealer, in business for 70 years, move beyond this excuse by visiting one of their largest customers, who had a long history of doing business with this dealer. After the usual pleasantries with the founders about the market environment, the conversation moved to an inquiry about their perception of their relationship with the dealer. The founders insisted we travel to two different job sites and meet up with one of the founders’ sons and one of the other founders’ grandsons, as they had been actively transferring most of the operational strategy to them for nearly two years.

1. The dealer’s perception did not equal the customer’s perception of the relationship. Perception in this case involved customer behaviours that equated this dealer-customer relationship as strictly transactional.

2. A common challenge among many sales and marketing cultures is to fall into trapline- behaviour, which involves a consistent approach to a target audience, yielding short-term gains and improved region efficiency. However, long-term, it is one of the symptoms of an average (at best) sales and marketing culture.

A brand strategy is one of the key pillars of a successful sales and marketing plan. Your customer acquisition, communication, sales enablement, recruitment, employee satisfaction, culture, etc., will all hinge on a well-considered brand strategy.

Before Changing Your Brand Strategy: Evaluate its health

Many of us concur that when it comes to taking care of one’s body, mind, and spirit, it is helpful to have regular health checks from a nutritionist, physician, mentor, pastor and life coach. Similarly, consistent observation, adaptability, and monitoring are necessary for a company’s brand health.

1. Awareness: Through regular market samples via surveys, social media metrics, content engagement, and competitive comparisons, one can continuously assess how easily someone can recognise you. Further, with some quantifiable metrics, you can adjust appropriately. For example, 47% of customers view 3–5 pieces of content before engaging with a sales representative. Is this true for your business? Are you measuring?

2. VOP (voice of prospect): Market share trends, or consideration, measure how likely a customer is going to deal with you. Measuring can be acquired through surveys, usually via direct research with the target audience that is currently using a competitor’s product. Many industrial industries have independent associations that monitor market share through OEM collaborative agreements.

3. Perceptions and associated brands: This measure shows the brands customers associate with your brand. You can use these connections to identify your brand partners, competitors, and potential partners. For example, when I worked in product support, I regularly encountered strong relationships between our principal OEM suppliers and our servicing brand after doing many VOC interviews and surveys of key and target accounts. The news was good. But occasionally, the OEM supplier brand had a different market perception than ours, which needed to be addressed with additional sales and marketing efforts.

4. Customer satisfaction and NPS: Patronage is positively correlated with customer satisfaction, and customers who award a 5-star rating to an experience are more than twice as likely to make another purchase. Additionally, 80% of satisfied customers spend more money than dissatisfied ones. These numbers are aggregate and need to be streamlined and focused on your industry and niche.

5. Salience differs from awareness: Salience focuses on specific businesses the customer can consistently recall when looking to acquire a service or product. If the target audience surveys consistently mention my brand among the top 3 preferred companies to service specific machine categories, that could be a good sign of having significant customer mindshare and quality service.

What are your quantifiable brand health metrics?

Depending on your unique brand health metrics, you can decide if your brand strategy must be updated or changed. If you do not already have a comprehensive brand strategy that includes measurable metrics, you should seek assistance in developing one.

Reference:

Brand Tracking Metrics: What to Measure | Qualtrics [WWW Document], 2023. Qualtrics. URL https://www.qualtrics.com/uk/experience-management/brand/brand-tracking-metrics/ (accessed 11.9.23).

Although the founders were taking steps to relinquish the reins, the dealer was still interacting with them without any knowledge that ownership was about to change!