Mind the (Brand) Gap: How to Keep Your Business Connected

By Lori Jones, president and CEO of Avocet Communications

Ferris Bueller famously said, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” We agree. In today’s tech-driven world, innovation moves at lightspeed, and if marketing doesn’t keep up, customers could miss it. Despite being the bedrock of customer perception, companies often lose hold of their brand, impacting their reputation, character, and profitability. Maintaining brand connection takes work, and gaps must be identified by aligning the business's identity, image, and promise.

Common Causes of Brand Gaps

Inconsistent Messaging: When a brand communicates conflicting messages across different channels or to different audiences, it creates confusion and distrust among customers. For example, if a tech company has a website that looks outdated, customers may feel a lack of trust in its products. Brands must ensure their messaging is consistent, clear, and aligned with their core values and positioning.

Poor Brand Experience: Customer touchpoints with a brand are crucial. The feelings, reactions, and ideas that arise from direct or indirect exposure to brand interactions can significantly influence future purchase decisions. If a brand promises fast service but delivers slow customer support, it creates a gap between its promise and performance. Providing a positive customer experience at every touchpoint is essential to maintaining trust and loyalty.

Lack of Differentiation: A brand should be memorable and easily differentiated from competitors. Having a unique value proposition (UVP) serves as a north star for businesses, letting customers know exactly why they should choose you. Brands need a clear point of difference that showcases their strengths and appeals to their target market. Slogans like Nike’s “Just Do It” or, even more applicable here, Apple’s “Think Different” are great examples.

Conducting a Brand Gap Analysis

To measure the difference between desired and actual brand perception, brands can use several methods:

• Surveys: Collect quantitative data to understand awareness, recognition, satisfaction, and loyalty. Tools like SurveyMonkey or Typeform can help.
• Interviews: Gain deeper insights into customer opinions and experiences through qualitative interviews.
• Social Media Analysis: Monitor online conversations and sentiments about the brand using tools like Hootsuite or Brandwatch. This helps track the reach, engagement, and sentiment of brand mentions and identify areas for improvement.

Aligning Brand Strategy, Communication, and Delivery

To close the brand gap, businesses need to align their brand strategy, communication, and delivery:

• Conduct a Brand Audit: Analyze the brand’s current performance, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats using surveys, interviews, social media listening, and web analytics.
• Define Your Brand Identity: Clearly outline your brand’s vision, mission, values, personality, voice, tone, and style. This identity should guide your strategy, communication, and delivery.
• Develop Your Brand Strategy: Plan your brand’s goals, target market, positioning, differentiation, and messaging. Ensure this strategy aligns with your brand identity and addresses customer needs.
• Implement Brand Communication: Consistently convey your brand identity across all channels and touchpoints, including your website, social media, and advertising. Ensure your communication is relevant, engaging, and coherent.
• Deliver Brand Experience: Ensure that all customer interactions, from product quality to customer service, fulfill your brand promise and exceed expectations.

Closing the Brand Gap: Roccor Case Study

Roccor, a vibrant supplier to the aerospace and terrestrial military markets, works with NASA, the U.S. military, and commercial space companies globally. Despite numerous successful missions, Roccor faced low awareness in a competitive landscape, necessitating a brand audit, differentiation, and repositioning.

Roccor needed to transform its brand perception, emphasizing its journey from startup to renowned space supplier. The goal was to engage prospects across the aerospace industry and secondary markets.

Avocet deployed awareness campaigns positioning Roccor as a thought leader and industry trailblazer, celebrating the “Roccorian culture.” An integrated marketing program included branding implementation, website UX design, tradeshows, digital advertising, PR, media relations, content strategies, and social media.

In 2020, the strategy adapted to the COVID-19 pandemic with virtual panels featuring space industry leaders under the campaign "Old Space. New Tricks."

PR efforts garnered a reach of nearly 3 million, delivering an Earned Media Value of over 3x investment. These efforts, coupled with targeted digital media and direct selling approaches, led to a 4x growth over the previous year.

The "Old Space. New Tricks." campaign drove significant awareness and business opportunities, with nearly 600 panel views, 4,000 site visits (300% increase), 400,000 ad impressions, and 182,000 programmatic display ad impressions. Avocet successfully closed the brand gap for Roccor, enhancing its market presence and increasing its value.

Tips for Avoiding and Minimizing Brand Gaps

• Conduct Regular Brand Audits: Regularly evaluate your brand’s performance and alignment with its vision and goals.
• Define Brand Positioning: Clearly articulate your unique value proposition and differentiate yourself from competitors.
• Create a Brand Style Guide: Maintain consistency in your visual and verbal identity across all platforms.
• Engage with Customers: Build relationships through various channels to understand their needs and expectations, and act on feedback to improve their experience.

To maintain a strong and consistent brand identity, conducting regular brand audits and aligning your strategy, communication, and delivery is essential. By identifying and closing brand gaps through consistent messaging, delivering positive brand experiences, and differentiating your brand, you can build trust and loyalty among your customers.

The Roccor case study exemplifies how addressing brand gaps through targeted marketing strategies and adaptive measures can significantly enhance brand awareness and market presence. By embracing innovative approaches and ensuring consistency across all touchpoints, businesses can create a brand that resonates with their audience and stands out in the competitive landscape.

Innovation moves pretty fast—don’t let your marketing fall behind.?