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Note: Each month, The Rosy Blog highlights a different theme in our weekly posts. In March, our theme is Branding 101. What do people mean when they talk about brand? As a business owner, when is it the right time to invest? How do you know? What should you get?
Last week, Kate talked about the value of a brand during startup. But suppose you’ve been around for awhile as a company and have had some success. You’re switching gears, growing your customer and employee base, and facing a whole new set of challenges.
Is your brand one of those challenges? It can be hard to know if it’s part of the problem, because symptoms of an underdeveloped or out-of-date brand can feel very much like other things: organizational dysfunction, bad hiring, or just plain old indecisiveness.
Don’t get me wrong: sometimes, the symptom is the cause. We’ve all had an underperforming team, or hired the wrong person, or had to pause before making a move. But sometimes, the heart of the problem is that your brand isn’t serving you well—not, as Kate said last week, helping you clarify priorities, make decisions, or bringing people along with you.
Here are some examples we’ve heard over the years, when growing pains were really symptoms of a need for some brand work:
“We just expanded into a new market, and I’m not sure how to talk to my social media audiences.”
If you can’t articulate why your business matters to a new audience, they won’t be able to either—and you can spend a lot of time and money proving that point and frustrating yourself deeply. Having an outsider help you set your brand’s messaging strategy can be really helpful. And then, you have a solid ground from which to act, test, and adjust all of your messages.
“We brought some new employees into the fold, and found that they were hearing a lot of different stories from our current employees about what matters to us.”
Attracting and retaining talent may not feel like a brand problem. Isn’t that something that HR is supposed to handle? But a strong brand story, a mission and vision that your employees feel personally connected to, and a shared sense of community purpose can go a long way toward keeping employees satisfied. And those engaged employees? They often turn around to become your best brand ambassadors. That’s a win-win.
“We have some partnership opportunities, but I’m not sure if they’re the right fit for us.”
There might be great business-building reasons to partner with a company, but if that partner isn’t a good fit for your brand? It can be a real miss. Conversely, choosing partners whose brands have similar or complementary personalities can expand both your audience bases. What if we reframe the question to ask “would our brands sit together at the lunch table?” If you’re not sure, it’s time to do some brand-building.
“We’re interested in expanding our product line, but aren’t sure how customers will react to seeing us in a different part of the grocery store.”
Known for your killer granola? It might not be a logical next step for your customers to see your brand in the frozen pizza aisle, unless they know you better for something else—your standard of quality, your sustainable practices, or your commitment to total deliciousness, for example. When you’re known for a particular product (or service) and looking to expand, taking a step back and re-examining the heart of your brand can help you make the right choices to bring your customers along with you.
You know your business better than anyone else, so only you can figure out whether these issues are a symptom or a root cause in your particular case. But if your brand isn’t helping you sort it out it’s probably time to do something about that.
And a business owner’s work is never done! Even if you have strong brand right now, your business (and your competition) will change over time. Next week, Kate will talk about some of the ways you can know when your super-successful business needs a brand refresh or repositioning.
Photo by frank mckenna via Unsplash
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