Six Key Ingredients for Brand Health & Performance

Harnessing mid-year improvements to your business outcomes

It’s half-way through the year. We’re calling a timeout for examination, reflection and refinement.

Why a timeout? To reset, recalibrate, revise and set new strategy aimed at making improvements when they’re most needed. It’s time for that now. Start with this self-assessment:

• How is it going so far?
• Is your marketing firing on all cylinders?
• Have you run into any barriers impacting your growth?
• Unexpected moves by competitors?
• Disruption in your category?
• Encountering a shift in consumer behavior?
• Cultural trends creating headwinds?
• Could things be better than they are?

If you wonder if business progress can be improved or you would benefit from some fresh insight to bump up your 2025 planning, then this article is for you. Here we look at six tools to fine-tune and adjust your business momentum, offering a boost and renewed energy through a generous application of strategic insight – this can also be beneficial as you map your approach on 2025 marketing programs.

Here are six areas of influence that can put wind in your sales progress:

1.???? Better strategy

More often than not we find that businesses are guided under tactical thinking and goals. This is a recipe for base hits rather than home runs. Brands that believe being better is a stronger proposition than being different, don’t realize that better isn’t sustainable or going to bend the market your direction. What’s missing is true differentiation and uniqueness – you provide the solution consumers can only get from you and no one else. How this comes to life is best served when your starting point, your goals, are strategic and not tactical.

Recognizing a strategic goal when you see it –

• Transforming your category and changing consumer behavior
• It isn’t obvious how to get there or what comes next
• You can’t solve this by doing the same things again, only more of them ?
• A change is required in direction, behaviors, tools?

You should be working from a foundation of unequivocal whitespace in brand positioning and story. Your product isn’t the only tool in this race to success.

2.???? Enhanced relevance

Far, far too many brands declare that the customer is priority number one when - in reality - it isn’t. Business and balance sheet considerations are most often in first position, while consumers reside somewhere back in the pack. Consumer centricity is much harder to achieve than it looks and declarations of same without substance is a crippling false prophet.

People can sense when their welfare and wellbeing are the top priority to a brand. They also know when the brand’s main concern is ultimately self-serving. When brands put themselves ahead of the customer, people see it, sense it.

Ironically, consumers are attracted to brands that make them the priority and hero of their story. Makes sense doesn’t it that this would be attractive? In real life, aren’t we drawn to people who make us feel important??

• Equally confounding is why brands and businesses think it’s ok to ignore this axiom in favor of self-promotion. When you’re standing in a circle of people at a cocktail party and a dominant voice in the circle talks incessantly about themselves and their accomplishments, we are repulsed and look to move on. Yet this is precisely what many businesses do without realizing this noise is self-defeating.

We have observed the humanization of brands in our culture, and that the best relationships between consumers and businesses hold many of the same characteristics of the best relationships we have with people we care about. True friends, we believe, have our best interests at heart and can be trusted.

• How “customer first” strategy manifests in behaviors, policies, operations, messaging and marketing requires careful assessment and periodic evaluation by an objective third party.

3.???? Brand purpose, meaning and values

The concept of brand purpose that operates beyond the presumptive priorities of commerce, has gained popularity in recent years as businesses recognize consumers’ desire to align with brands that share their values and beliefs. Your strategic goal is to build relationships that have more going for them than transactions and price.?

Refinement in this area can have a profound impact on how consumers perceive the brand and their willingness to join said brand’s community as an ambassador and advocate. Because, simply put, people want to be part of something greater than themselves. Do you want to have a deeper relationship with consumers? Then imbue your brand with deeper meaning.

The instrument for this is refinement of “why” (you do what you do) messaging. It is a gateway to positioning your mission and purpose beyond selling stuff. This is also a fundamental part of how a brand earns the trust and confidence of its stakeholders.

• More often than not, refinements and improvements here can yield lasting benefits that draw consumers closer – those who are more likely to purchase repeatedly.

4.???? Advocacy is essential

Consumers have been burned too many times by less genuine businesses. It has fed a growing skepticism and wariness across the population. Risk – or perceptions of it – has become the most significant barrier to brand and business growth today. Consumers now demand validation and verification of brand claim from trusted sources.

• The instrument of truth is advocacy – when brands intentionally engage the voices of experts, academics or credentialed industry watchdogs who can attest to the veracity of what brands say. It is their imprimatur and validation of what brands convey that constitutes reliable evidence of faithfulness on the part of truthful brands.

To guarantee your story will be accepted by the very audience you hope to receive it, look for places in the brand go-to-market eco-system where advocacy can be strengthened or added.

5.???? Storytelling with the right cast of characters

Some of the most successful movies of all time have worked because the narrative follows rules that respect how people want to show up in the world, the importance of overcoming challenges and weaknesses, conquering villains and emerging triumphant on the other end of a progressive, if tumultuous evolutionary and learning journey.

• So too, successful brand storytelling always makes the consumer the hero of the story, with the brand occupying the important role of coach, guide and enabler on the consumer’s path to growth and triumph. Yoda to Luke Skywalker.

Yet more often, brand messaging and the arc of stories created, push the brand and product as the hero of the story. This bypasses the consumer for the hero role. Each and every day, consumers wake up believing they are the hero of their personal journey. Brands must avoid competing with them for the hero role. When you do, it automatically embeds the brand story with a disconnect.

• Story refinement and improvement can deliver massive benefits in improved engagement and connection with brands who want to attract new customers and community members.

6.???? Social channels that are social?

An audit we perform periodically on brand social channels always reinforces that businesses, way too frequently view their social channels as mini broadcast channels. You can tell because of the predominant content focused on brand self-promotion – and not the one thing that social channels deliver to truly advance business results.

• A successful social community shows its vibrance when consumers bring content they generate to the party. It is their experiences, their evaluations, their stories of transformation and change, that constitute the credible proof people are seeking.

People believe their peers before they believe the brand. Want to prove the veracity of your claims? Then encourage consumers to share their perspectives. Become an enabler and champion of user generated content. You should reward consumer participation when they post evidence of positive outcomes.

If you’re building a purpose-driven brand, then all the more important that your advocates and ambassadors share their thoughts and experiences about what you stand for and believe. The richness of this community environment is very much like the richness of well-cared for soil that nurtures the growth of crops on a successful farm.

• Great soil equals great yields and quality harvest outcomes. So, improve your social “soil” with an upgrade in strategies aimed at enhancing community participation.

Research confirms in the early stages of brand consideration, consumers will look to social channel reviews for confirmation of what brands claim. Getting it right here can produce an immediate benefit in new customer acquisition.

Seek improvements and refinements for a better back half and 2025 plan

• The six key components of brand health flagged in this post are part of Emergent’s 30-day affordable , turnkey brand tune-up program, designed to help you dial up quick improvements in these key areas that contribute to brand relevance and resonance.

Should this spark questions and interest, use the link below to start an informal dialogue with a team that shares your goals and has experience improving the six brand health drivers.

Looking for more food for thought? Subscribe to the Emerging Trends Report. Bob Wheatley is the CEO of Chicago-based Emergent. Traditional brand marketing often sidesteps more human qualities that can help consumers form an emotional bond. Yet brands yearn for authentic engagement, trust and a lasting relationship with their customers. Emergent helps brands erase ineffective self-promotion and replace it with clarity, honesty and deeper meaning in their customer relationships and communication. For more information, contact [email protected] and follow on Twitter @BobWheatley.