A Direct Marketing Agency - Helping Brands Acquire and Retain Customers

While flipping through a Target Marketing magazine I came across an interesting article discussing how great brands remain great. The article "Great Brands Never Rest" contains six not-so-secret steps to a strong brand. The six steps the article highlights that will guarantee your brand never rests are:

Step #1: Know Your Position: First determine who your top three competitors are and then try to understand their brand strategies (strengths and weaknesses). Evaluate your brand by comparing the competitors' strategies. Do you have a clear position? Are you making it easy for your customers to "get" you? Then ask yourself the following questions about your brand and leading competitors' brands: What would make a customer, with several other choices, pick one over the others to do business with? Where are each brand's channel strengths? How clear is this to the customer? To complete this step successfully, spend time as a team looking at your brand through both a competitive and customer lens.

Step #2: Know Your Customers' Positions: In order to continually maintain the growth of your brand you need to thoroughly understand who your customers are. Ask yourself the following questions to determine your customers' positions: What is it you know for sure about your customers' lives? What would you like to know? How are you going to find out? Who will keep track and synthesize this information so that it is at the core of every brand decision?

Step #3: Share Your Position: Remember it is important that your employees know your organization's and customers' position. If employees know about your brand and your customers they will be able to relay this information to anyone they meet. Employees are the face, the voice and the "experience" of your brand to your customers. An example of organizations putting Step #3 into action are Cabela's employees wearing and using their outdoor gear in order for them to understand the customer side of their business.

Step #4: Stay Focused on Your Position : Don't take your brand strengths for granted or your competitors' weaknesses for granted! Remember to always stay alert, curious and know what your brand's growing edge is. Big and small companies often lose their way and struggle to make a comeback. Big companies that are currently trying to refocus their brand and establish a new reputation are Blockbuster, who lost a significant part of its audience to the convenience of Netflix. Blockbuster might not have lost their way if they would have remained focused on their brand position.

Step #5: Leverage Your Position : When leveraging your position look at your brand heritage. Are you using your company's story to the fullest potential? Many companies underutilize their heritage. L.L Bean is an excellent example of an organization using their heritage to leverage their brand position by incorporating one detail at a time since 1912. L.L Bean has been an outdoor specialist for years that matches its brand promises to its actions. Every connection, every detail, is a chance for them to connect people outdoors. Their leverage position is that they have guaranteed outstanding products and customer service since 1912 and are not about to change any of their promises.

Step #6: Delight and Reward Those Customers Who Support Your Position: Communicate a sincere appreciation to your customers that have chosen to do business with you by saying a heartfelt "thank you." Sam Walton founded Wal-Mart with the belief that "There is only one boss. The customer. And she can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending her money somewhere else."

Great Brands Never Rest! Don't forget that brands are disciplined, focused and action-oriented.