5 Strategies to Focus Your Brand to Meet Your Customer's Needs
1. Uncover what your customers really think and feel about your brand
It is important to understand the emotional reasons your audience buys your product or service. Brain scans tell us that we make decions 70,000x faster emotionally - and then we justify our gut reaction with rational facts.
Focus groups can be swayed by a few vocal participants. To really understand your audience - give them an individual experience to participate in, instead of asking them rational questions. Element Three’s proprietary Deep Dive Process gathers 8-12 of your customers and, through a series of brand experiences, elicits verbal and visual evidence of what is left unspoken about your brand.
As a result, you get audience dossiers showing the rational reasons and emotional responses that compel customers to pick your brand. You’ll also learn about their key concerns, goals and values.
2. Help you distinguish your brand from your competitors
We review your communications and your competitors’ web sites to identify common themes, colors and imagery. We’ll also identify best marketplace practices and rate your brand’s communications compared to your competitors.
3. Help you see your brand from a broader marketplace perspective
Choreograph a discussion with your key team to elicit goals, cultural insights, strengths and potential brand promises. A neutral facilitator (like Element Three) makes sure all voices are heard and biases are kept to a minimum.
4. Assure that your brand communications align with your customers’ needs
By comparing audience insights with communication audit results and Discovery Session outcomes, we show you your brand’s current state alignment, giving you ideas to guide you toward a more ideal state – in which these three areas align.
5. Make sure that your entire brand team is on the same page
It is important to document the findings and decisions made by your team through the brand development process. It ensures common understanding and alignment within your organization. Here is an example of the outputs of the Element Three brand development process.
BRAND WHEEL: Boils down the rational and emotional brand assets, arriving at the essence of your brand. Guides brand decisions and actions.
BRAND BRIEF: A one-page overview of your brand’s promise, supporting facts, audience insights,market opportunity, legal mandatories and inspirational story. Guides creation of brand communications.
BRAND BOARD: A visual and verbal expression of your brand. Informs brand communications.
MESSAGE MATRIX: Sorts out the key concern and the primary and secondary messages for each of your brand’s audiences. Guides sales and marketing messages.
Being deliberate and thoughtful about what your audience wants, the perspective of the marketplace you compete in and what you uniquely offer that marketplace - will help you get laser focused on how you communicate your message and brand experience. Without the context of the external world - too often we fall into our own perspectives and become too product or service oriented. Focusing on what we bring to the market - instead of the value our target audience receives. Come up with useful brand tools to align your unique brand promise with what your customers most care about, and you have taken the first step to being successful with marketing.
