When is the right time to strengthen your brand? The short answer?
Right now.
Especially with the market challenges we face…
Savvy marketers know that when there are challenges in their category, or sector, or even the entire market, there’s a huge opportunity to not only master your marketing but emerge even stronger when things go back to normal. Now is the time to strengthen your brand.
With a strong brand foundation—core beliefs, strong messaging, and a solid strategy, you can create highly effective marketing. Without it, you are in deep trouble when times are hard.
Now is the perfect time to take a good hard look in the mirror. Double down on what’s working, taper off things that don’t produce results and shore up what needs to be improved.
Why is now the right time to strengthen your brand?
Your brand can help you through the storm. Effectively managing your brand during this time makes you bulletproof in four key ways, all of which are crucial if you want to win in your market when the economy recovers.
1. A good brand strengthens your marketing
We’re all going to have to do more with less in the coming months.
That means everything you do needs to have a bigger impact. If your existing brand is not as clear or resonant as it should be to the people who buy your product or services, your marketing challenge is massively harder.
The clearer and more aligned your brand, strategy and marketing are, the less time, effort and money will be needed to have the impact you need.
But that all starts with taking a critical look at your brand:: articulating what you stand for (not all things to people), clarifying your brand strategy, and creating strong messaging.
- Reassess your positioning to make sure you’re playing in the right market with the right product/service and targeting the right people.
- Tighten your messaging to create stricter criteria for storytelling, making sure your marketing only delivers the most compelling stories that convert.
Each of these actions can pay off tenfold in downstream marketing improvements.
Remember: A strong brand gives you clarity and a clear direction, letting you spend the rest of your energy on strategizing the most effective ways to create good marketing as effectively as possible.
2. A “slower” time is the ideal time to do the brand work you’re normally too busy to do (or finish, or fully execute)
The silver lining of a recession is that leadership’s mindset often shifts from “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” to “what changes can we make to survive this?”
If you’re in a brand or marketing role and business is slowing down, budgets are being cut, and you have fewer campaigns and initiatives, you can do the deep work now to become the brand buyers flock to in the future and make the things you do spend money on truly pay back.
3. People are less likely to cut ties with strong brands. So fight hard not to cut all spending
During periods of recession, brands make cuts to everything that isn’t considered essential.
Sometimes the wrong things and sometimes too much, and too many. Marketing in general and brand building, in particular, are some of those areas.
But, if your market can’t tell you apart from your competitors, you’re not going to make it.
A strong brand strategy is the key to differentiation— selective spending when others cut back too far, has significantly more ROI, and is a powerful way to form meaningful relationships that will keep you alive today and help you grow in the future.
4. You can become the market leader in the “after”
During a recession, the world is tough and no one is coming to save you. Fighting for survival becomes the focus. Which makes it very easy to forget that there is going to be an after, and you have to plan for that too.
Invest in your brand. Build a solid foundation to grow, evolve, and adapt. During recessions, best-in-breed brands adapt, cement their position in the market and get stronger.
When the market turns back up, they tend to grow first and grow the most, leaving others in their wake.
Brands that do not adapt quickly find themselves struggling for relevance and often watch their lunch being eaten by their nimbler competitors, including upstarts that see changes to the marketplace as opportunities to exploit and leverage.
How to Strengthen Your Brand Now
If you do the work now and play your cards right, you won’t just survive. You’ll gain ground in the months ahead and win in the future. But you need to get started ASAP.
If you want help:
- Focusing on your core target market to understand what they really value from you, and what they want and need from the category / your brand.
- Re-working your thinking on what your brand stands for today to create a truly future-proof brand strategy.
- Gaining competitive advantage by making sure the creative communications you’ve developed are relevant, resonant, and sharp enough to cut through.
- Filling your innovation pipeline with big, revolutionary, brand-catapulting ideas that will shake up your organization and get people listening.
Want to see some of the work we’ve been doing lately? Here’s a little video.
Written By:
Simon Dannatt
With over 200 years experience, Simon joined The Sound from Cello where he was President of Cello USA and CEO of the Value Engineers US. With his English accent and silver fox hair he's known affectionately around the office as 'the old English man with grey hair'. Claims to have a limp from running marathons but we think it’s a war wound.
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