Get your brand back in focus

Brand strategy, communications, and marketing are not one-time investments. They aren't tasks that live on your to-do list. In the life of your brand, business or organization you will need to continually evaluate and align your marketing and communication efforts with your vision, values, and goals. Once you've done this, you can measure your successes and failures, then evaluate what changes you need to make to keep moving towards your goals for your company. To help keep things on track, here are a few things to consider:

Map out your brand initiatives and track effectiveness

You might be surprised by the amount of clients we have worked with that don’t have a master plan for their marketing. Truth be told, it doesn’t have to be complex. Ask yourself: how do you want to grow your business' revenue, how can you reach more people, how can you make the most impact? Once you've answered these questions you can begin to go deeper, adding details, assembling a team and assigning tasks to complete the initiative – whether it's selling more products or connecting with more people. To be highly effective you need to know what direction you are heading in.

Know the hazards

Each journey has it's hazards. As you map out your brand's marketing initiatives, take note of the things you see ahead that might affect each initiative. Knowing each hazard will help you recognize them and easily allow you to course correct if necessary.

Celebrate success and analyze failure

For each of your marketing initiatives, determine how and when you will measure their effectiveness. Consider gathering valuable insights like user research, audience analysis and customer feedback to assist in your analysis. When the time comes, celebrate the wins and talk about what worked and why. When failure happens (and it will), recognize it. Talk it through and determine what you can do in the future to prevent it, then move forward.

Don’t settle

It can be comfortable, even easy, to settle for the way things have always been and do the things you've always done. Don't. Resist the urge to settle. Keep an open mind to explore new ideas or different solutions to each challenge you face. Amazing things can happen when we take a chance and do something different.