Keeping Your Brand Relevant

I’ve said many times that the best product doesn’t always win. I’ve blogged before about the need of positioning yourself as being different. In essence, you’re trying to make the case of your own relevance. Here are 3 suggestions on how to keep your brand relevant.

Be Unique
No need to over-complicate this one…be noticeably different from available alternatives. Position yourself as different as your competitors, especially if you’re going against a well-established brand. Additionally, you’ve got to prove your differences to avoid confusion with the well-known brand and to avoid looking like a replica of the well-known brand.

Meet Their Needs
Identify the needs of your target audience and develop a plan of how you’re going to meet those needs. Then, be sure to tell your audience of your work. Go ahead and connect the dots for your audience by informing them of the problem you are attempting to solve and how you are doing it. The success of many marketing campaigns has been attributed to telling people how a product or service would meet the needs of the target audience, sometimes even before the target identified the issue on their own.

Be Sustainable
Don’t be a one-trick pony. Sure, short-term success is fun to achieve and celebrate, but think about the long haul. If you don’t have a way of engaging your customers over the long-term, your success will last only as long as you can find new customers who can benefit from your short-term wizardry. Develop a plan leading to long-term engagement with customers.

Now, here are 7 traits of relevant brands presented by Brodeur Partners CEO Andrea Coville, via a webinar to PRSA members on June 13, 2013.

The 3 points I introduced above were always in mind as I programmed radio stations. I credit these “big picture” items as being responsible for subsequent gains in audience and revenue. These points can also work for those in consulting services, retail products, and beyond. As previously noted, the 7 traits listed in the graphic come from strategic communications firm Brodeur Partners. Fact is, there are many ways of carrying out a plan that is in line with my 3 points. Develop a “big picture” plan, figure out the details of achieving it, then measure the results of your work!