How short term thinking could be ruining your brand.

When it comes to your brand, play the long game.

People often say “it’s a marathon, not a sprint” when talking about business, however, a marathon still implies a finish line or an endpoint. The reality is that in business, there is no real finish line, it's always continuous. As Simon Sinek says, it’s an infinite game where players come and go, and the rules are always changing.

“There are no winners or losers in an infinite game; there is only ahead and behind.” – Simon Sinek

If you want your brand to achieve long term sustainable growth, you have to play the long game.

Focusing on gaining instant results at any cost will damage your long term brand

All too often, business owners, marketers, and salespeople get caught up in the short game or the ‘finite’ game of business – they focus on getting instant results without the foresight of what might happen in the future.

You might win today but you will definitely end up losing tomorrow and become irrelevant. In today’s world, everything changes so rapidly. Kodak, Blockbuster, taxis, they all played the short game and spectacularly failed.

In the small business landscape, it often leads to selling ourselves short, sacrificing profit to win deals, or doing dodgy deals to make an extra dollar or two. These tactics don’t build up reputation or brand in the marketplace very well. In fact, it hurts your long term strategy of building a community, which in small business is everything because you don't have that global brand domination or money to throw at your brand like the bigger players.

The importance of a sustainable brand in the marketplace

Your brand essentially helps you distinguish yourself from everyone else. When everyone else is competing on prices, the story or the brand that you hold in the marketplace will hold you through. While brand alone does not produce any actions from your customers, it can make people know, like, and trust you when you speak.

Take Coca-Cola for example. They are one of the original companies that went all-in on brand. They have a global brand presence because of the story they portray and their market power reach. You can't walk down the street in the modern world without seeing Coca Cola branding or advertising.

Coca Cola is one of thousands of products on a shelf and consumers are more informed about the health effects of soft drinks, yet they still hold a dominant market position. Their brand is so strong that its story carries it through.

If Coca Cola can achieve this, what could your brand do? If you have a product that is actually good for consumers, what could you do if you spent a lot of money and effort on building your brand?

Plant the seeds today for your brand to harvest in the future

Playing the long game is about continually succeeding over time. For every action you take in business, you must be mindful that there will be ramifications in the future, whether positive or negative. Adopt the mindset of pursuing incremental, ongoing successes rather than one large success that potentially has a negative outcome later.

For example, each day you make decisions and then act as to how you deal with people – whether they are leads, customers, referral partners, suppliers etc. When you are playing the long game, your decisions and actions are made for the relationships to continue and generate future goodwill, as opposed to treating them like one-off transactions.

How to build your brand for the long game

1.??????Plan for the worst-case scenario but know you can do better

If you plan for the worst - you know exactly what the worst-case scenario is going to be – then you are always prepared. It's a real stoic approach to business. Planning for the worst-case scenario but knowing you can do better allows you to chase the long term things because you have clarity on what happens if it doesn't work out. Whenever you are spending money or making deals, it allows you to be realistic and practical with your decisions.

2.??????Have an attitude of giving, before you receive

Give as much value as possible first, without taking the small quick wins. Go out into your marketplace and find out what you can do for others before you start asking them for deals or referrals to their customer base. Can you connect them with others in your network or bring them in on jobs? The long game approach of giving first has a multiplier effect for what you get in return, whereas the short game approach just requires more effort and quickly burns bridges in your community.

Final thoughts

Don’t make decisions based on today, instead, make decisions based on tomorrow. Playing the long game is the harder way of doing business, but it's always the better way to do it if you want long term sustainable growth.

Can you think of some recent examples where you have seen brands playing the short game or the long game??