“Hit the workshop stroke at the right time for your brand, and you will win in abundance.”
The title of this topic reminds me of one Chinese proverb.
“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago; the second best time is now.”
I think this one proverb literally sums up what I want to express through this blog. In a nutshell, you should have already signed up for a brand strategy workshop. But if you have not, now is the best time. When you connect with a strategist or attend a workshop at an initial stage, there is much more room for improvement and learning compared to when you are stuck in a crisis.
From the facilitator or consultant’s point of view, even they get to know and empathize with the brand rather than hastily focus on just the problem you came to solve. A breathing period always helps in better, critical, and creative thinking. You can easily change the direction, amend changes, and deconstruct your prevailing techniques to imply a bold and new brand strategy.
But alas, I know many of you people never really cared about attending a brand strategy workshop until it became a bottleneck situation for you. If you all would have attended the workshop at an early stage, why would I be writing this blog? But, don’t worry, Brand Professor has got you covered. Today we will decode five scenarios that draw the immediate attention of conducting a brand strategy workshop.
Pre-scaling and post-product-market match
This is an innocent stage. The brand is working in the market, you are successfully converting leads, sales are happening, and revenue is coming in. This is one of the pivotal stages to conduct a brand strategy workshop. Now, most people will not understand this and raise the most common and expected question.
If everything is working fine, why do we need a brand strategy workshop?
Don’t lie, I know you were meaning to ask this.
And my answer is this is exactly where you go for a brand workshop. Before you scale your business, you need to take a clear stand on your brand positioning. Your brand promise means nothing without proof. Define the core brand voice, content consistency, and messaging, and elevate the brand recognition and recall value. If you ask me, this could be a golden opportunity to scale the potential of your brand.
The message is not reverberating.
Now, let’s discuss issues and problems. Of course, you didn’t conduct a brand strategy workshop in the initial stage, and now you are facing this problem. Your potential customer is right there. They ask you to explain your product and what you do; you fumble, and you start stammering.
What do you think is missing?
Yes, go on, say it; you’re almost there.
Clarity. Bingo.
You have toppled your brand with so much definition, fancy adjectives, and flashy taglines that, in between all of this, it has lost its true purpose and understanding to the consumers. When you are clear about what you are selling, the customers automatically engage, and the interest leads them to conversions and brands to better messaging that provides effective engagement.
Pivoting or rebranding
This is a major step. We are not talking about the color palettes, logo design, or font size. This is a strategic shift that businesses often seem to make when they want to enter a new market, reposition themselves, or make a pivot to an entirely new business model. When this happened, most of the elements had to be rethought and rebuilt from the ground up. This again strongly calls for a systematic approach and brand strategy workshop.
When you think about it, this is where you get a second chance to do everything right and get a dose of brand strategy workshop in the early stage. This time you can properly assess your branding operations not to repeat the mistakes you made in the first place.
Workshops can provide a relevant brand strategy, which is essential at this stage. You have made a pivot, but your old customers know you for your old product or service. How do you plan to not only remove but also replace your old brand identity with the new one?
Brand strategy is your answer.
Post-M&A
M&A technically stands for mergers and acquisitions. This was bound to come, and even you know this. When you acquire a new company, now their identity is part of your identity too. Plus, there is so much hustle and bustle that goes around different departments, from legal to sales and marketing to accounts, that focus on branding eventually gets shifted.
This is exactly where you need to conduct a brand strategy workshop. You can orchestrate the workshop with your designers, marketers, and founders to rework and rebrand your product post mergers and acquisitions. This will allow you to break down your old identity and carve a new appearance with a workshop.
When does brand confusion harm sales?
Brand confusion is the secret ingredient that trashes the sales recipe. You must have heard me saying that confusion leads to chaos, which can literally make or break your brand. Everything that you do in branding operations technically boils down to whether you are able to convert your leads to final customers or not.
Brand confusion can bore your customers, and they can easily bounce off. Amidst this, your sales figures can really paint the true picture of your business. If you are a founder, you need to comprehend that brand confusion often happens quietly over time. 54% businesses stated that brand consistency substantially contributes to the business growth. So you have to constantly work on clarity and make sure you are making consistent efforts.
Last thoughts
Ideally, as a founder, you need to practice conducting brand strategy workshops every two to three years as a brand health checkup. This is essential because market dynamics change every now and then, and you need to adapt to new market trends and patterns. Else, you’ll have to pay the price of remaining stagnant. It helps you reassess your positioning, customer insight, and overall alignment. With this thought, let’s wrap this class and jam.
