Brand Strategy Tips: Is Your Brand Having An Identity Crisis?

The most successful brands never fall victim to an identity crisis because they know who they are, and the responsibility they have to those who they serve.  Their innovations are consistently delivered, genuine and true.  They are focused on what matters most to their consumer (B2B or B2C) and on continuously making the experience better.

Today, we are constantly challenged to create a brand that customers want to identify and grow with, and one that earns their trust, reflects their values and makes them feel valued.

Whether you are a Fortune 500 company, business owner or entrepreneur, here are my top 3 tips to help you create and maintain a strong and differentiated brand:

1. Create an Engagement Experience

Create an engagement experience that you want to have with your target audience. Be consistent, but at the same time mix it up, and don’t be too predictable. Your customers are reevaluating their needs more often than you might think, so instead of being reactive to your audience’s needs, be on the front end and help guide them.

2. Establish an Identity That is Easily Relatable

Keep it simple. Your customers don’t have the time to figure out what your brand is trying to convey. Too often brands complicate their unique value proposition (UVP) to get attention.  In their efforts to reinvent and renew, they complicate things that frustrate their customers and shareholders.

A brand identity is most powerful when it evolves and its value proposition strengthens in alignment with the changing demands of its audience. Your customers want a brand to be deliberate with their identity – straightforward while at the same time forward thinking.

3. Educate and Inspire

Even for B2B businesses, it is important to make sure your brand educates, communicates and inspires your audience about the totality of your brand – what it represents and what it stands for.

Your brand’s value proposition must come to life and have an impact on your audience with messaging that is educational and innovative.

A winning branding strategy must be ambitious in its commitment to knowing your audience inside and out.  Always be accountable to the needs of your audience and take responsibility to keep the momentum of the relationship moving forward.

What experience you are attempting to leave behind for your brand, and what will your audience remember most about how it impacted them? I look forward to your comments below.

Does Size Really Matter?

In the realm of social media, more likes and more followers increases your brand’s recognition, engagement and ultimately sales.  So it seems simple that from a strategic view, your social media plan should include ways to increase your fan base and thereby increase leads if not sales.

This is straightforward, honest marketing: you try to showcase your activities or your brands offers and uniqueness and in turn you gain fans and followers. Did you know, though, that in an online platform, marketers are able to gain “fake” brand love by buying fans on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Google, Pinterest and even Yelp testimonials and LinkedIn contacts – all in the name of increasing the perceived size of their audience?

Many have questioned if “buying” these fans effects the bottom line?  Do more numbers/fans actually increase ROI?  “How can I trust anything online if it is all fake?” Ahhhh yes.  Well the jury is still out as one must question the legitimacy of these “fans”  – are they real people, are they bots, are they part of a general conspiracy for Facebook, for example, to look like they have a huge fan base of 85 million when in fact some of these are just “fake profiles”?

One large indicator of a Facebook page with purchased fans is to look at engagement.  If for example they have 5,000 fans and the engagement (shares, comments and likes) on any one post is 14 people then I might question the legitimacy of their followship.

As a marketer dealing with smaller brands, social media is not so much about the size of the numbers as it is about the engagement and lead opportunities.   If buying fans can lead to your ultimate goal, then perhaps it is something worth considering.  Do your homework though as there are literally hundreds of “agencies” selling fans – make sure yours are legitimate or you could do major damage to your brand.

The bottom line remains that you really can’t “spam your way” to Facebook brand love or Google review love. Either you have a genuine brand and a genuine approach to the market… or you don’t. If you don’t, you can’t buy customer/client love- it’s really that simple.  So if you buy fake profiles it won’t make your brand any more loved, as the people don’t exist to engage with your brand and fake people don’t buy products or services.

Would you ever consider buying social media fans? Would an increased number of fans outweigh actual engagement on your social media sites? I look forward to your thoughts below.

Facebook Wants to Know WhatsApp

What’s a workday without cutting a $20-billion dollar cheque? 

Last week, Facebook purchased mobile messaging company, WhatsApp, for the astronomical sum, even for industry standards, and for 16 times as much as they paid for photo-sharing application, Instagram.

Facebook has a history of scouting out competing apps, so this hefty purchase comes as no real surprise.  But why does this simple messaging service interest Facebook so much? As an application that does not run advertisements on its services, growth, and not profit, has been more of a focus for WhatsApp, according to co-founder and CEO, Jan Koum.

With 450-million users, WhatsApp boasts only about half of the users that Facebook has, however 70% of WhatsApp subscribers are daily active users, which is of great interest to Facebook.

 So what makes WhatsApp worth $20-billion dollars?

• A younger, loyal user-base
• Daily engagement by a large percentage of users
• A message volume of an estimated 7.1 trillion message a year
• The ability to unite all smartphone devices, iPhone, Android- even Blackberry- through one messaging service

 Instant messaging within personal networks is where the public is engaged the most- connecting instantly with family and friends, sharing photos, videos and web links.  As a marketing expert, I know that you can’t put a price on consumer engagement. It’s truly no surprise Facebook wants to capitalize on a built-in, captive audience.  

Do you think Facebook had strong foresight with this business decision? Do you use WhatsApp? Do you think it’s worth $20-billion dollars? I look forward to your thoughts below.