Successful brand builders know their product or service offering does not define their brand. It is critical to connect with your audience around your brand story. But before you can do that, you have to know who you are and what value you offer.

Kathy Rauch, President of The Satori Group, Ltd., joined us for a Doing Business Better session on how small businesses can have big impact when armed with essential brand-building basics. Kathy discussed the six steps to successful brand management as well as how marketing/branding strategies should be shifting as a result of the pandemic.

Six Steps to Successful Brand Management

1. Know Who You Are

Your company’s positioning & value propositions are the fundamental building blocks of brand power. The first step to creating a curated brand for your company is sitting down and figuring out who you are as a company.

2. Talk to the Targets

Your messaging will have big impact when your customer need and brand value meet. In order for that to happen, you must have a deep understanding of your audience.

3. Stop them in their tracks

Develop a brand signature that compels the marketplace to take a new look at your company. You want your brand signature to compel the marketplace to take a new look at your company. This includes brandmarks, tagline, imagery and creative execution (fonts, headlines, voice, etc.).

4. Plan and plan again

Create a cohesive plan that works across your brand’s diverse array of products, services and partnerships. One way to do this is by developing a brand brief. This process will allow you to codify your brand and give you a guidebook to follow.

5. Pull, don’t push

Maximize spend by deploying an efficient, integrated “toolkit” that engages target audiences. Engagement marketing is a must here – you don’t want to push your brand onto people and just see what sticks. You want people to seek you out. Engagement marketing is about the four C’s: content, connection, community and commerce. Likewise, mass marketing is not the way to go anymore. You want to go directly to your audience with consumable content. Success in this step will be determined by how well you understand your target audience.

6. Own the Results

Understanding the results and then using them is key. Determine key metrics that you will use to measure the impact of your plan.

Brand Strategy in the Time of COVID

We all know that COVID has changed how we live, and thus how we do business. Kathy discussed changes that companies have made, and should continue to make, in order to be successful through the pandemic as well as in our new normal.

• Positioning Pivots – our world is not the same as it was before COVID, so you shouldn’t be acting like it is. Stay relevant, offer solutions and focus on people over profits.
• Content Shifting – make sure that the content your company is producing speaks to what is going on now, deliver that content in bite-sized pieces and ensure your audience knows that you are on their team.
• Dialing Up Digital – now more than ever, your digital presence needs to be strong. Kathy said “be better, be found, be social.”

Resources

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Resources and information that matter to you. Doing Business Better, presented by Wells Fargo, are virtual, high impact sessions featuring insightful and informative presentations tackling small business owners’ greatest challenges and providing resources for their continued growth and success.

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