oday we invest an increasingly large proportion of time in our personal identity. That identity is active and fluid, changing with our evolving self, our presentation of that self and our negotiation with external perceptions of it. The same is true for brands, yet many businesses aren’t evolving their brand strategy or brand experience to create the differentiation and communications to meet evolving audiences needs and expectations. They are passive brands.
The more traditional collage of associations with personality, such as age, sexuality, relationship status, education, occupation, interests, etc. have become more complex as the methods by which we express ourselves and share our thoughts and opinions with society have changed. Physical and digital representations of personality have merged and in doing so have created a far more complex negotiation between how we present ourselves and how society perceives us. Previously unavailable data about personality, opinion and popularity is now actively published, shared, liked, and commented on. Conversationally explaining that someone is ‘well liked’ or ‘popular’ has a more tangible quantification now than ever before. In a world where an estimated 3 billion people are now using social media, such a statement can often be analyzed and validated.
Thankfully the tools and methods for measuring and quantifying the value of a brand and brand experience have outpaced those for personality. Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter and Instagram often feature alongside website, culture, CRM, service, sales and valuation data to give a view into brand and business performance, brand engagement and brand experience.
In this evolving world of communications, in order to remain relevant, brands need to proactively understand who they are and what they stand for. They also need to constantly monitor, manage and evolve their customer communications across all their customer touch points / channels of communication in order to ensure that their brand experience delivers on their promise and engages audiences.
Thankfully the tools and methods for measuring and quantifying the value of a brand and brand experience have outpaced those for personality.
So how should a brand become more active and relevant?
Active brands achieve their business objectives by answering their consumers needs and delivering against their promise.
1.
Understand your relevance to your customers, what do they want from you?
Brand strategy defines who your organization is. Brand strategy should harnesses the findings of comprehensive research in harmony with business aspirations to define what you stand for in a meaningful and valuable way to your customers. It frames opportunity by understanding needs at the intersection of brand, consumer, offering and industry. It translates business and customer aspirations into a road map of actions.
Effective brand strategy builds the foundation for an organization to:
• Differentiate their offering competitively, and clearly communicate that position
• Allow internal and external audiences to understand and clearly articulate the function and purpose of the organization
• Lay the foundation upon which to build brand equity
2.
optimize collaterals to allow communications to resonate
Brand creative and design turns opportunities into tangible strategies and creative that align with brand and business objectives, to:
• Drive brand awareness, improve reputation and increase revenue
• Offer clear and well-organized brand communications
• Streamline communications with customers and partners
• Optimize your investment across all communications by simplifying and standardising your approach
3.
Allow your customers to be a part of your brand’s evolution
Experience design purposefully guides interactions between a business and its customers. It expresses brand and business strategy in a meaningful and measurable way through every product, service, communication and interaction. Plan each customer journey with your brand, every response and interaction whether human or automated, across every appropriate communication touch point to:
• Ensure that your brand experience delivers on your brand strategy
• Deliver a customer experience that directly aligns with your brand aspirations
• Proactively engage audiences and drive brand awareness across channels
• Integrate your customers into your brand experience so that it resonates with them
• Increase customer retention
• Nurture your customers to become your advocates
4.
Build analytical processes into your business operations
Brand experience is relatively meaningless unless you can tie your investment into quantifiable metrics. Integrating metrics into the fabric of your business allows you to:
• Define quantity and quality benchmarks for communications
• Analyze and share communications data analysis internally
• Modify your communications roadmap based on data analysis
• Evolve your brand strategy and experience design approach
• Implement and test, again and again
Brands are built on the experiences of those who interact with them. Brand experience is how your audiences perceive your company through your brand collaterals, brand communications, products and services and the customer service you provide - activate them!
If you want to activate your brand but aren’t sure how, start by asking yourself these questions:
• Do we know who we want to be and how to get there?• Have we clearly articulated what we do?• Do we understand our competitors and communicate how we meaningfully differentiate from them?• Do we know our customer archetypes and their individual needs?• Are we meeting those needs?• Have we mapped each customer archetype’s journey with our brand through all communications options and optimized the experience we deliver?• Do we understand how to deliver consistently on our promise to our customers?• Do we constantly strive to evolve our offering and experience to meet our customers needs?• Are we measuring the impact of our investment in brand experience?
If you answered ‘yes’ to five or more questions, not bad! If you didn’t, or you want to enhance the brand experience you deliver then drop us a line. Contact@versive.us