Is Your Brand In Adolescence?
It happens to the savviest business owners and brand champions. The brand that you know and love and that bears the markings of your careful stewardship seems to have run out of steam or plateaued.
It could be that you have a Brand in Adolescence on your hands. If you are wondering if your brand has become the new teenager in your life, ask yourself the following questions:
- Has your brand’s growth stalled? Though you have been doing the same things you have done for ages to market the brand, performance has stagnated or become inconsistent. Something has changed, and you can’t put your finger on what it is.
- Is your brand between 9 and 25 years old? Yes, 25. Adolescence can last far longer than we’d all like to admit!
- Has your brand rebuffed your attempts to influence it? To boost the brand, you created a new ad or changed the logo. Unfortunately, this effort did not improve sales and you knew it was not getting to the core of the problem.
- Have conversations about your brand become strained? You are not sure what to say on your website, in your ads or even in sales pitches. You wonder what message will get through. Even once decided, it feels like throwing at a dartboard.
- Has your brand been sidelined from the in-crowd? Customers who used to buy your brand regularly buy less frequently or have gone elsewhere. They departed without saying a word to you about anything your brand might have done wrong or anything they wished the brand would do.
- Is your brand trying to find itself? To restart your brand’s momentum, you have been experimenting. You have offered new products, tweaked your existing ones or unleashed a marketing blitz. But your efforts feel random and nothing has clicked yet.
- Does your brand oversleep? In watching competitors or talking to customers, you realize that your brand has been missing out on opportunities to upgrade or to offer something new. You feel like your brand is behind but are not sure how to catch up.
Like the challenge of parenting teenagers, the struggle to get through the day-to-day operations of any business makes it easy to get mired in the details. It’s hard to remember to step back once in a while and take a strategic look at your brand. This is especially true if you’ve been shepherding the brand for a long time.
Don’t sweat it. But do heed the call now and give your adolescent brand the attention it needs if two or more of the symptoms above strike home for you.
Contact me today to talk about how to regain your brand’s momentum.