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Nowadays many companies feel obliged to cut to the chase and create a lot of social buzz without even building a backbone for their brands. I totally get the panic and rush. Today, many brands from B2B to B2C, are facing a serious attention scarcity in the age of media abundance. Hence, they end up spending cosmic amounts of money to fight for a short glimpse of people’s attention; which is indeed what they will get at best circumstances.
You may be running one of those brands. The question is how you will make it count.
What will you say? What experience will you offer?
Will you chase more likes and followers through giveaways and cool video edits, assuming the mindless double tap will turn your audience into a buyer? Well, it might, but only until the next, tactically cool brand.
Or you can choose to bring meaning to their lives through your products and services by positioning your brand based on long lasting and differentiated relationships. And more importantly, you can choose to stick to your plan and remain consistent, so you get to create a desired perception among your audience.
Strategic Sweet Spot refers to an intersection of where your company’s capabilities match customer needs in a way that your competition can’t (Collis and Rukstad, 2008:7). In order to find that "spot", strategists like me are trained to analyse the entire marketing environment, including various internal and external forces, that affect how your business should position itself to be at the top of your game.
The framework is old, but the challenges today are the same as decades ago. The human brain has not changed. Even though we are living in a busier world, we still crave a sense of belonging and a way out from our pain-points; and brands play an everyday role in meeting these expectations.
Remember! Social media is about communicating what’s already been established. If your brand story is not yet settled, whatever you communicate is destined to play a temporary role, given the attention fragmentation out there. There is no way you can create a long lasting image on people’s minds about your brand unless your communications are super consistent around the brand identity that you have developed. Just, please, stop investing in social media before figuring out what your brand is really about, unless you have limitless money to waste.
You can keep shooting until you hit the sweet spot. Or you can learn how to aim better.
How to aim better?
There are 4 very important stages to go through, if you want to grab more than attention. Whatever your end goal is - increasing market share, becoming an opinion leader, hiring the best talents, generating leads, better TOM scores, bigger social buzz, etc. - it all comes down to creating an emotional bonding with your audience in a way that they would appreciate and find refreshing. Something familiar yet unusual.
Strategic planning offers a special kind of market research, specific to your service or product portfolio and how it can excite the target segment in a differentiated yet relevant manner based on consumer insights, global trends and competitive analysis.
The following next steps are what you need to unleash your brand’s true potential in the market.
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4 Steps For Sustainable Brand Success
Study your battle field
Situational analysis (market analysis incl. consumer insights + competitive analysis (inc.- Social media audit )
Current position in the crowd (for existing brands)
Come up with a battle plan
You goals and challenges
Barriers and opportunities
Segmentation and targeting
Claims, differentiating points, scenario planning
Attack and defence strategies etc.
Equip yourself with a differentiated yet relevant armour
Strategic identity package
(essence, personality, values, vision, mission, purpose)
Positioning statement, USP, Value proposition
Execute the strategy on a creative level via communication channels
"A strategy, even a great one, doesn't implement itself." - Jeroen De Flander
Make sure you execute your strategy with creative solutions on tactical communication channels
