Time For A Strategic Review

Once upon a time annual business reviews were the order of the day.

Times have changed and well-managed brands now conduct strategic reviews every quarter.

A review gives you the chance to look back and look forward, to explore innovative new paths, consider resourceful marketing tactics and weigh-up alternative growth strategies. 

Next time you review your business performance, have three questions on your agenda:

1. Is our company fulfilling its true potential?
2. What can we do better?
3. What are we overlooking or ignoring?

Answering these questions will transform the performance of your brand.

Don’t Wear Your Audience Into Submission

Repetition used to be the order of the day for advertisers.

They would rollout the same TV advert day after day, week after week and year after year.

Here’s a piece of advice – it no longer works.

Everyone gets bored with the same old, same old.

We crave new sights, new sounds, new experiences.

You’ll never build a brand by boring your audience to death.

Think Small

Storytelling is what marketing is all about.

The best stories focus on the individual person or the individual family.

Banks may trumpet the fact that they assist thousands of small businesses but it’s the story of how they enabled an unemployed baker to start her own business that brings the story to life.

Charities may report that millions of people in central Africa are starving because of a drought but it’s the picture of a frightened little boy that drives the enormity of the crisis home.

Next time you have a story to tell – think small not big.

Do You Lead or Follow?

Is your brand a leader or a follower?

It doesn’t have to be the biggest seller to lead its sector.

Ambition, innovation and original thinking are what separate leaders from followers.

It’s these qualities that enable ambitious brands to outgun bigger rivals.

Two things happen if a brand consistently outperforms its competitors.

It will become the No1 seller over time or it will be bought by the dominant player.

It pays to focus on leadership.

The Dream Comes First

If your dreams don’t scare you, they’re probably not big enough.

That was a piece of advice I received from a wise old African woman.

She knew a thing or two about dreaming.

As a little girl she lived in a ramshackle hut and slept on a dirt floor.

She had to walk for miles to collect muddy water from a well that sometimes ran dry.

But she dreamed of building a comfortable life for herself and her family.

Today she heads a property empire of shops, hotels and houses in Mayfair.

Her advice – if you can dream it, you can achieve it.

Looks Count

Whether we like it or not – looks matter.

Pictures of good-lookers attract more views than photographs of ordinary-looking people.

Films with glamorous stars attract bigger audiences than films filled with plain Janes.

Brands promoted by beautiful women or handsome men outsell brands featuring unremarkable people.

As a plain John all I can say is – what an unfair world we live in.

Earned Media Trumps Paid Media Every Time

In today’s media universe, earning the attention of consumers is the most effective way of reaching them.

Add blockers have made paid advertising less effective.

Brands that traditionally spent every penny on mass media advertising are being forced to review their thinking.

They may not be pumping their entire marketing budget into what was traditionally called PR but they are certainly investing more in storytelling, social engagement and content creation.

To come up trumps, content marketing is ace, king and queen.

Think Value Not Price

When it comes to people development, too many companies focus on cost, not value.

They look at training as a cost and ignore the value they get out of it.

It’s understandable, as we live in a world where some people change employer as often as they change their underwear.  

At Beattie, the integrated communications agency, we invest heavily in training and personal development and we’re relaxed if one of our talented team goes to another agency.

Why?

Because they will almost certainly return to the Beattie fold, a year or two down the line.

Believe me – it pays to know the price of nothing but the value of everything.

Revel In Change

We live in an exciting world where everything is constantly changing.

But do you think people were less excited when steam trains first took to the tracks or wooden planes, held together by string, took to the skies?

People were as excited then about change as we are today.

The pace of change might be faster today than it’s ever been but it’s slower than it ever will be in the future.

We must embrace change and be prepared to change everything but our basic beliefs.