How to get your sick brand healthy again
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Your sales numbers are not on target.
Your audience is not engaging or taking action, let alone buying.
Your content have not been working.
Your target segment is bouncing from your website.
Your media pitches are not landing.
What is going on? It can be very frustrating when it seems everything you are doing makes sense, but the metrics tell you that it’s not working. Instead of trying to fix everything, it’s necessary to pinpoint the real issue. Here is a three step framework for you:
The Healthy Brand Diagnostic Framework
STEP 1: COLLECT
Taking the time to look at all the metrics so far sets the stage for us to understand how the brand is performing. Pull together information across all the dimensions of activity:
Pre-purchase
Advertising, landing pages, content marketing, PR, anything that comes before a purchase. Is your audience coming into the funnel? Is a healthy percent of them progressing towards purchase? You’ll want to scrutinize the metrics across all the pre-purchase activities.
Purchase
How is your product or service bought? What is the contracting process? What are all the touch points needed for a customer to buy? Mapping these out and understanding what’s working and whats not will help us make decisions on what to do about them next.
Post-purchase
Once the product or service is obtained, are they being utilized? Are you retaining your customers or are they buying more from you? Is the experience of the product and service matching the expectations before the sale? This is where the rubber meets the road.
STEP 2: CONSIDER
Once you have all the qualitative and quantitative data in place, it’s time to consider and figure out what is actually happening. Generating hypotheses is the key activity in this stage.
Is there an awareness problem? (meaning we are not getting many people into the funnel, but once they are there, they are progressing nicely)
Is there a targeting problem? (meaning the “wrong” segments is receiving your ads and message, so you don’t see any pull through)
Is there a messaging and consistency of content problem? (meaning the audience is not clicking through, or when they do, they don’t stick around)
Is there a technology problem? (meaning the tech stack you have in place is not working, where the complexity or disjointedness of the system is letting customers fall through the cracks or receiving non-relevant messages)
Is there a training problem? (meaning customers buy it but fail to utilize it consistently)
Is there a visibility problem? (meaning customers use it and love it, but that experience is invisible to non-customers)
Is there a positioning problem? (meaning the product or service is great, but doesn’t meet the expectation of the target segment or it fails to be distinguished from the competition)
Is there a brand personality problem? (meaning the tone and the creative expression of the product and service just doesn’t fit with the target audience’s own persona)
Is there a product/ service problem? (meaning the experience of the product or service is just poor)
STEP 3: CLASSIFY
This is where we focus on the key problems to solve. By mapping all the problems on a 2x2 matrix (Figure 1 below).
Figure 1: CLASSIFICATION MATRIX
On the Y-axis is IMPACT and the X-axis is RESOURCES. The four quadrants will help you to focus.
ACT NOW: these are the problems that have high impact and low resources, where it doesn’t take a relatively heavy lift and solving it would mean making other problems easier to solve or sometimes even a pre-requisite. (For example repositioning a product or service, since all the messaging and creative expression will depend on the new positioning).
PLAN: these are the problems that have high impact and may require high resources, where you need to solve them, but it will take relatively high financial and time commitments. (For example retooling a product or improving a service) One consideration is to brainstorm ways to solve the problem in a less resource intensive way, pushing it to the ACT NOW quadrant.
OPPORTUNISTIC: since these are problems that have low impact and require low resources, look for ways to solve them as part of the current work. How can we get them resolved through the work we are already doing? (An example is updating digital copy or design).
ABANDON: say no more, if it’s relatively resource intensive and doesn’t really do much, don’t worry about it!
By going through the three step framework, you will arrive at a set of key problems to solve and when to solve it. Good luck on building healthy brands!
Ways I can help you
Download free guides (Healthy Brand Blueprint & Branding 101) to help you build healthy brands
Work with me as a fractional CMO/CBO or through Healthy Brand Consulting (Schedule a 15 min intro call)