Helping Leadership Prioritize Your Brand
We speak with a lot of marketers in our work, and most of them are well aware of the challenges facing their brands.
Marketers are often the ones having to juggle their organizations’ messages and visual elements, and for this reason, it can be tempting to think of “brand” as a marketing problem. However, the implications (and benefits) of a strong brand go well beyond marketing.
Getting Everyone On Board
So how do you make the case to senior leadership to prioritize your brand?
Here are a few methods we’ve found effective over the years:
Conduct a survey - A simple survey can be a great way to begin processing what your brand means to various audiences and/or stakeholders. Perception can be tricky. After all, it is invisible. Sometimes it takes direct and penetrating questions to reveal just how much confusion exists around your brand. You may find that the questions you take for granted, such as the unique value you’re offering, inspire the most diverse answers. For a free survey template, download our Brand Pack.
Compare your brand against competitors - Create a presentation that displays your logo as well as core branded assets (such as your website’s homepage) alongside competitors. This should make it very clear which ones stand out and which ones you - and your organization’s leaders - feel most drawn to.
Audit recent communications - Pull some examples together of recent communications, such as emails, social media posts, print collateral, etc. Depending on who’s handling each channel and the different design capabilities/restrictions of each, brands can sometimes look drastically different from one channel to the next, making it difficult for audiences to recognize your brand and, in some cases, undermining trust. (Think of how you would feel if you spotted someone in public looking completely different from how they usually look.)
More Than Marketing
The problem with focusing exclusively on communications is it can enforce the idea that your brand is a marketing issue. So be prepared to discuss how your brand’s values, attributes, personality, and positioning impact sales, development, human resources, recruitment, and other aspects of your organization.
Your brand - and particularly, your brand strategy - is an opportunity to make sure everyone is on the same page and moving in the same direction. In addition to making your brand more effective, it will improve the way you communicate about it internally.
Here are some free resources to help kick start conversations about your brand.
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