Throughout the year, and especially at year’s end, companies take a good look at their KPIs—revenue, growth, and reach—to gauge overall health, plan for the near term, and adjust long-term plans as needed. And while this analysis of your well-being is necessary and baked into your business practices, there’s another key performance indicator that should also be considered—your brand health.
A company’s brand health—how your brand is standing up to your brand vision and promise—impacts performance. Your customers’ overall impression of your product and/or service quality (do they stand up to expectations), and of the experience of doing business with you influences whether or not customers will continue to do business with you, and whether or not they would recommend your wares to their friends and business associates.
“More specifically,” says Owl’s Head Solutions’ CEO, Kate Greene, “your brand is whatever your customers say it is. While your company exists to solve a problem, fill a need or improve upon a circumstance, the experience that stakeholders can relate to while making that transaction with your company—the value you provide and how you provide it—is your brand. Your brand is the subtotal of all the experiences your customers have with your business. It’s how you make them feel.”
Where do you start?
There are many ways to gain perspective on your brand health, but where do you start? To best align and evaluate your brand standing, we feel it’s best to start with your leadership team to gain insight into their current expectations and impressions of value offerings, core values, perceived company culture, ideal clients, and the like.
Once your leadership team understands a) what a brand is; and, b) that the goal of this exercise is to ensure that everyone is aligned on what the company’s brand is;—ask for their feedback on these six points:
- What business problem or need does your company satisfy?
- What are your company’s core values?
- What do you think your company is best known for?
- Please name one thing that stands out about the company culture.
- Please describe an ideal client.
- Why would your ideal client continue to work with your company?
Next, rinse and repeat. Ask your employees the same set of questions. Let your team know it’s important to everyone’s and the company’s success to understand how the brand is faring—where you are, where you’re going and how to get there—together.
Then, consider sending a similar set of questions to your clients and partners as appropriate.
Once you’ve completed all surveys, it’s likely you will uncover some addressable gaps in perception. This is very common and a good thing. It will afford you an opportunity to bring things back to center and showcase your collective commitment, expertise and appreciation for delivering to your targets the solution(s) they are looking for in a manner most everyone appreciates.
And, with respect to coming back to center, how you deliver your message of inspiration, demystify an approach, or shine a brighter light on the solutions you provide will have a great impact on narrowing those gaps. Creative solutions—and possibly Owl’s Head creative Solutions—may be just one of the tools you need to clear-up, support and guide your brand efforts and the creative messaging your brand needs to be successful—and successfully relatable. If we can support you in any way, please contact us.