Is Your Brand Prepared to Capitalize on Recent Growth?
Is Your Brand Prepared to Capitalize on Recent Growth?
By Matthew Harris
Congratulations! For your company, 2014 was a banner year. From revenue and profits to number of employees and offerings, growth was the theme. The company is set up for continued success in 2015 and beyond… if you can continue making the right choices, specifically when it comes to your brand.
For companies that are coming off of a year in which they experienced their first true taste of success, the following year’s brand strategy actions and decisions can go a long way to determining how far the company can capitalize and continue to grow. One factor in this is understanding the power of your brand.
This growth has almost certainly increased your brand awareness and impacted your brand positioning. A company on the rise is likely to pique a heightened interest among its target audience compared to a company that has seen a growth plateau. Now, the challenge is to continue to increase your brand awareness and evolve your brand positioning with the goal of building a brand while not forgetting what got it to this point.
Long-lasting, successful brands are built on a foundation of meaningful brand strategy, one that provides a strong framework for what the brand is and what it represents. A successful brand strategy serves as a roadmap for where a brand should go in the future, and how to take it there, without wasting time or money going down the wrong path.
Additionally, strong brands know the benefit of not only focusing on externally-facing touch points, but also putting in the time and resources necessary to build brand awareness and strengthen the brand with internal audiences. For an employee of a growing company, the feeling of ownership and pride for the brand is a valuable asset to have for motivation and self-satisfaction in their role within the company.
Because your company has experienced success, there is a good chance that your brand is in a strong place and has some of the tools in place that can continue its success, so a complete brand strategy overhaul is likely unnecessary. However, the market is constantly evolving, and the risk of complacency for a growing company can quickly halt any momentum gained in the past. A company’s brand positioning needs to evolve as it does, following the growth from where the brand is today to where it wants to be tomorrow.
Before you begin to create your brand strategy, you should take stock of where you are. You will have many questions regarding your business on a number of important topics, including whether you are communicating the right thing to your target audiences, what brands in your portfolio hold the most potential for continued growth, and whether a rebrand would be a successful step to take. When faced with organizing and recognizing where you are as a brand, it is a good idea to bring in a third party to handle the research and analysis, who can provide objective results that cannot be reached when the work is done internally.
There are a few areas where many growing companies can find benefit in setting a strategy of evolution, including product and service lines, social media strategies, and how you position your company to your consumers. The main focus should be on ensuring that your brand can adapt and excel in an ever-changing business environment, without compromising your core characteristics.
Set yourself up for future growth – plan and strategize with the mindset that your past success was just the beginning and soon, your brand equity will carry enough weight to begin driving a portion of your business.
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How to Leverage Social Media for Your Brand
There are a number of social media best practices to keep in mind related to leveraging social media for your brand, many of which center around the idea that keeping the “social” in social media, an often-forgotten but very important aspect.
Let’s start there – social media, at its essence, is a conduit for conversation. But many brands forget this aspect of social media marketing, and treat their channels as one-way communication platforms, pushing their messages out and virtually ignoring all incoming communication from their fans.
Actively engaging its customers is one way to personify your company’s brand, giving it more of a “human” identity rather than one of a faceless corporation. This humanization of a brand has been shown to play a positive role in potential consumer decisions.
Engagement can be both positive and negative. Positive posts can include pushing out conversational content and responding to positive feedback from fans. But responding to negativity is also important, if not more, to effective social media engagement. Responding to negative posts in a timely and polite manner can help calm the poster, and also prevent any potential crisis from forming over a negative situation.
A great rule of thumb to keep in mind is the “one-in-seven rule.” As discussed by Chris Litster of Constant Contact, this rule states that companies should only overtly promote their business in one of every seven posts. The remaining six should be focused on valuable content sharing for their audience. Pairing promotions with solid content extends the reach and engagement level of your posts with your audience.
Generally speaking, people pay more attention to content that interests them than they do standalone promotions, which tend to fly more under the radar of the audience. If you follow this rule, even with some leeway, your brand will be more recognizable to the audience due to your habit of sharing great content. This way, when you do post a promotional message, it is less likely to be overlooked.
Social media best practices tend to revolve more around what a brand shouldn't do rather than what they should.
First, a word of warning when creating posts centered around social media trends – proper research is necessary to avoid creating a crisis for your organization. For instance, in 2012 the hashtag #Aurora was trending because of a mass shooting that occurred at a midnight showing of The Dark Knight Rises in Aurora, Colo. The day after this tragedy, the company Celebrity Boutique tweeted the following message: “Aurora is trending. It must be because of our Kim K. inspired Aurora dress”
Following the understandable and considerable uproar, the company released a statement saying they did not check what background of the social media trend for “Aurora” was prior to composing the message. Had the company done their due diligence and performed seemingly simple research, they could have avoided this unfortunate situation rather easily.
Additionally, the goal shouldn't revolve around “going viral.” Taking a viral marketing focus has such a small rate of success that attempting to find positive ROI will prove difficult. There is a reason why viral posts carry the social and cultural weight they do – the attention comes due to their rarity. Just like everyday occurrences don’t warrant substantial news coverage, the dime-a-dozen nature of viral marketing attempts fall by the wayside unless they contain a truly memorable and differentiating aspect.
When used correctly, social media marketing can be a valuable tool to leverage your brand. In today’s society, a company that knows how to use this resource to its advantage holds an important leg up on the competition, and puts itself at the forefront in the minds of consumers.
Sources:
https://mashable.com/2012/07/20/celebboutique-misguided-aurora-tweet-sparks-twitter-outrage/