Actions speak louder than words. A man is judged by his deeds, not by his words. Saying is one thing, doing is another. Cliche overload but you get the message. You need to actually execute your brand strategy. And you need to execute it well.
But why do I need to execute my brand strategy?
As your clients start drifting off towards your competitors, waving your nicely typed up brand strategy document in their faces is not going to win them back. If you don’t execute the brand strategy you spent precious time preparing then there was no point to it at all. It was just an exercise in creative writing. Has anyone ever lost 10lbs by reading about healthy eating and buying a new gym kit? You need to bring your brand strategy to life.
So how do I execute my brand strategy?
You’ve worked out your essence, you know the emotion you want to evoke in your audience and you’re working on your customers’ experiences. We’ve already explained how important it is that your audience’s experience of your brand is consistent with your essence across all touchpoints.
Executing your brand strategy is closely related to ensuring your customer experience is perfect but now you take it one step further. For a brand strategy to work you need to make sure that your whole company is living your brand. That your employees are involved in creating your brand essence. And that your suppliers and business partners are also experiencing your brand in the positive way you intend.
Why do employees need to be involved in my brand strategy?
Did you know that employees only stick around for an average of 18 to 24 months before moving on to their next job?¹ Think about how much it costs you to replace an employee. You’ve got recruitment and training costs plus a reduction in efficiency and profits when you’re short staffed. Creating a brand strategy that involves your employees not only means they’ll transmit your brand essence to your audience (= more profit) but they’ll stay around longer and perform better while they’re there (also = more profit). So think, is your brand strategy prominent when recruiting and rewarding employees?
Why do I need to execute my brand strategy to my suppliers and business partners?
Not only do you need to be a good business for your clients but you need to be a good client for other businesses. Companies rarely work in a vacuum. If you’re a painter you need to buy paint, if you’re an ecommerce store you need to use a delivery service. And if you’re expanding your business you may need investors. Treating your paint supplier in the same way you’d treat your customers means you’re going to get a better service from him and a better service from him is better for you and your customers.
Business is rarely a straightforward upward line on a graph, it’s more like a roller coaster ride, with the idea being that the general direction is up. So when you’re in those momentary downward curves you’ll be able to call on the trust that you’ve built up over time.
Executing your brand strategy is not just the responsibility of the marketing department
The understandable temptation when executing a brand strategy is to bundle it up nicely and leave it with the marketing department to implement. And ensuring that the brand message, visuals and voice are consistent with the brand essence across all touchpoints is an important job. But that’s not a branding strategy, that’s a marketing strategy.
Your brand strategy is the foundation of your business
Your brand strategy can’t just be a coat of gloss that you paint over your business.² If you decide that the essence of your IT business is to be the “friendly, supportive IT consultants” but you fail to inform the actual support consultants, or worse, don’t treat them in the same way you’d expect them to treat your clients, then you’ve got a problem. There’s a dissonance there that will make your clients doubt your brand even more. As Marty Neumeier said “If a brand looks like a duck and swims like a dog people will distrust it”.
Bringing your brand strategy to life
So when you’re writing up your strategy, make sure it is integrated into business activity and plans across the organisation – your business plan, marketing plan and operations plan. Include an “Actions” section where you list all of the people in your organisation and their responsibilities for rolling out your brand strategy across the business. This means you can make sure that everyone, from warehouse staff to account managers to the CEO can all work together to bring your brand strategy to life.
¹For more about this read Great Mondays by Josh Levine or watch our chat with Josh here
² In her book Empathy Edge Maria Ross discusses the problems of just putting a veneer of empathy over your business. We’d recommend reading her book or listen to our chat with her here.
At Frejz we work with you to develop a brand strategy that you can implement across your company. To find out more about getting started on your brand strategy fill in our diagnostic tool and one of our directors will get back to you with a verbal or written report.
Recent Comments