REALIZE THAT YOU ARE NOT IN CONTROL OF YOUR BRAND.

You only set the initial vision and desired direction for your brand. Even though your initial brand identity is determined by you and your brand development expert, your audience is the true boss of it in the end.

Branding isn’t a one shot deal, it is NOT an event. Branding is an on-going juggling act of continually tweaking your brand foundation and brand experience through research and conversation. If you’re not tapping into those conversations with your audience, how do you know what their real impression of you is? How do you know WHY they buy from you? What they were looking for before they bought from you?

Brand growth comes from a clear, internal foundation and consistent, external behavior alignment. Ensure that your actions, corporate identity system, website and marketing efforts put out the right vibe…but you can’t stop there. These are pre-sale activities that get you noticed and hopefully bought. You also have to ensure that all actions and engagements pre-sale, during-sale and post-sale are positive and in line with your desired brand, and deliver a consistent outstanding customer experience. If your audience has a different view of you than you’d like, then you need help. And it’s probably best to bring in an outside perspective.

It is very important to:

1. Always ask for feedback.

2. Listen, listen, listen.

3. From this valuable feedback, make small, but consistent “course corrections” along the way.

4. Reward for valuable feedback.

Here is the thing, asking for feedback is the most powerful way to grow your business and your brand. You will learn things about you, your product or service and your experience that you would never have imagined. Most great ideas and innovations come from problems or difficulties learned from asking feedback.

Asking for feedback not only gives you invaluable insight as to how you are doing, but it also gives you important “INTEL” about WHY people buy from you and WHAT THEY WERE LOOKING for before they bought. And I promise you that half the time, it’s NOT AT ALL what you think.