It’s time for manufacturers to set a positive outlook for the next decade by mapping out a strategic vision for their brand in 2020. Setting ambitious goals for your brand shouldn’t be intimidating. Here are three tangible ways to reboot your brand for the next year and beyond.
1. Audit your logo, marketing materials, and website
It’s important for your logo to be an accurate representation of who you are and what you do. Despite the recent trend toward acronyms and shortened brand names (remember how everyone buzzed about how Dunkin dropped the Donut?), research shows that descriptive logos more favorably impact consumers’ brand perceptions than non-descriptive ones, and are more likely to improve brand performance.
It’s also the perfect time to step back and see how where your logo stands in the overall marketing landscape. Put yourself in your customers’ shoes and see how your logo stacks up against the competition. Is it distinctive? Does it represent your unique value proposition? According to the Harvard Business Review:
“A well-designed logo can offer substantial benefits to brands. It can help pique the interest of consumers, differentiate brands from competitors, facilitate brand recognition, influence investors’ decisions and convey what a brand is all about.”
While a distinctive logo that represents your brand is important, a healthy brand is not limited to just the logo. It’s the overall brand identity. To do a complete brand audit, assemble a cross-functional team and collectively pull together as many marketing materials as you can. From business cards to pamphlets and PowerPoint templates, spread the marketing materials out on the table and ask thoughtful questions such as: Is our brand distinctive in the marketplace? Do all of our marketing materials reinforce our brand identity with consistent messages and imagery? And does our website do the same? The dawn of the new decade could present the perfect opportunity to shed old, outdated materials and emerge with a fresh, new brand identity.
2. Create a unique customer experience
As you see how your brand image stacks up against the competition, give some thought to your unique customer experience. Why should customers pick you over the competition? It needs to be more than product features and benefits. There needs to be a specific value proposition you offer. Defining your unique customer experience takes self-awareness and a collaborative, cross-functional approach.
Once you’ve defined your unique experience, make sure your marketing materials clearly say what you do. Show empathy for your customers’ problems and presenting a solution. Use testimonials, reviews and case studies of happy customers as validating supporting points to your claim.
3. Use your brand to unify operations, sales, and marketing together as one
The marketing department should not be the sole steward of the brand. When done right, a brand unifies and inspires across all business functions. Because it unifies a visual identity, messaging, and customer experience, it takes cooperation and collaboration across business functions.
Instead of a hurdle, this should be seen as an opportunity to unite all employees around a common goal. Does your brand offer an exceptionally quick turn-around? Transparency about the manufacturing process? Or are you innovative? No matter what your niche, everyone should be able to rally around the brand and reinforce the value proposition within their function.
When aligned, all business functions support the brand. Allocating budgets, training and even making new hire decisions — every decision should support the brand. For example, if your unique customer experience is centered on transparency, then the business should prioritize spending budget dollars on technology that provides visibility into the manufacturing process and the real-time status updated on the goods being manufactured, and deprioritize items that do not support the brand promise.
Ready to reboot your brand in 2020? Work with an award-winning branding agency with a strategic vision on how to create successful manufacturing brands. The experienced team at id8 will ensure your brand is set up for success in 2020 and beyond.
