5 Ways to Set Your Brand on Fire

Nothing successful in business happens without a plan, especially when it concerns branding. A branding plan is essential to the lifecycle of your business. Here are five reasons why:

1. Information & Analysis: You gain valuable insight when researching market positions and trends. You find out where you stand in the marketplace, where you stand with your customers, where your competitors stand, what’s the climate like for your product, and what are the market projections. It’s vital to know where you are before you can map out where you’re going.
2. Differentiation: In gathering the research, certain qualities about your product will begin to rise to the top. You’ll discover differences between your brand and your competitors’. This will form the essence and launching pad for your message. If you’re not different, then you are white noise, and no one will be able to distinguish you from your competitors. Differentiation is key to a brand’s viability.
3. Leadership alignment: With a brand plan, you will form common objectives for growth and direction, meaning everyone in the company will be using the same map. Everyone, regardless of his or her role, will be on the same page with the same goals in mind.
4. Appeal, Action, Achieve: A brand plan should include implementation strategies with the end results meeting your objectives. Implementation defines how to appeal to your target, how to speak your target’s language and where they will hear you, thereby giving your brand the tools to achieve its objectives.
5. Evaluate & Adjust: Brands live and breathe. The plan should as well. It should include measurable benchmarks and tests to see if you are reaching your business objectives. See where the needed growth areas are and make adjustments to strengthen those areas.

“Architect of Change”: 3 Steps to Growth

Whether you are growing an existing company or starting a new one, change happens…cutting-edge technology, partner/employee transitions, the addition or removal of services and/or products or tectonic economic shifts, just to name a few. It takes skill, attention to detail, and a finger on the world’s pulse to create a blueprint for successful change. Being an architect of change can be a massive undertaking. However, internalizing the 3 steps below will put you on a firm foundation to getting started, staying on top, or just refreshing your memory.

1. Know where you are headed. 
   Seems obvious, but these words are not always heeded. Don’t cut corners. Plan for both professional and personal outcomes. Define the conditions of satisfaction: growing professionally, making a profit, giving back, having fun, etc. Share these with your team and/or organization, be prepared to stand by them, draw on them to overcome the fear of change, and use them for targeted action.


2. Evaluate the situation and set the direction.
    Find out what’s working and what isn’t. When urgency is needed, remember, as the leader of change, this is not a democracy. When someone is “Code-Red” you don’t hold a committee meeting to decide whether to give CPR or not, do you? Of course not, so do what needs to be done, make the hard decisions (which can sometimes be unpopular), take responsibility for your actions, and continue to move forward.


3. Grab the reins and “git movin.”  
   From the boardroom to the mail room, establish direction and vision, cultivate buy-in, and consistently be your team’s guide. Motivate them to believe that the best days are ahead and that there is a goal worth achieving. Remember, that you set the mood. From happy-hour Fridays, a new coat of paint in the break-room, to letting naysayers go, “Whatever it takes” should be your mantra.

Sometimes it can be a lonely experience out in front of the heard, but as the architect of change you are charged with leading your company toward success and that means knowing where you are headed, having a vision, establishing a plan, and sometimes steering through bumpy rides. However, having the satisfaction of accomplishing your goals is, as MasterCard aptly puts it, “priceless.”