What is the prognosis of your brand?

With so much focus being placed on innovation and disruption against the backdrop of rapid technological advancements, evolving consumer sentiments, and a growing global economy, it's easy to lose sight of the one thing in your business that needs to remain constant: your brand.

Maintaining a healthy brand is an essential part of running a business-- perhaps more so today than it ever has been before. But, many companies get stuck looking at the wrong metrics, and in doing so, fail to identify the areas where their branding is going off track. The result is that they end up chasing ineffective goals and strategies and in-process actually push away their customers.

Since good branding is so crucial, so is knowing how to properly gauge its health. In this article, we'll take a look at the three dimensions of good branding you need to consider in your business.

Why Brand Management is More Important Than Ever

According to a recent survey, 68 percent of consumers report that trust in a brand has a great deal or a lot of influence on their purchasing decisions. A brand is more than just a name and a logo. It encompasses the overriding identity, messaging and core values of your business.

The health of your brand will also directly impact both the consumer awareness and perception of your business in addition to your profitability. As such it is a key variable in the success and prosperity of your business. In other words, if your brand isn’t healthy, then chances are, neither is your company.

While good branding has always been an essential part of running a business, the way it's measured has changed over the past decade. A brand's health can no longer be measured in terms of months, quarters, or years. Today, it must be actively managed in real-time. This is the unavoidable consequence of operating in the digital age, where every interaction with a consumer can potentially strengthen or weaken your reputation.

The Three Dimensions of Brand Health

When diagnosing the health of your brand, you need to consider your business' performance along three dimensions:

1. Consumer sentiment. A brand is both the public face and the core identity of your business, and you need to make sure that it is resonating with your target market in the way you intend it to. This means getting in touch with how consumers feel about your brand. In particular, you need to find out:

·       Do consumers understand what your business is about, and what it's core values are?

·       Are your core values being expressed in a way that resonates with your target market?

·       What are consumers' perceptions and experience interacting with your company and its products or services across different mediums?

·       How consistent is your brand across different product or service offerings?

Businesses that constantly stay in touch with the pulse of consumer sentiment are giving their brands a real competitive advantage.

So, how do you measure consumer sentiment? You can do this by creating a “listening station.” This means closely monitoring consumer feedback on your products or services as well as their interactions with your company. You could pay particular attention to mentions on social media and review sites and can track the internet search volume and performance of branded keywords.

Another way to measure consumer sentiment is to directly ask your customers for feedback. You could, for example, train customer service representatives to both encourage feedback and know how to appropriately respond to it.

Another way to get direct customer feedback is to crowdsource it. A creative example of this in action is Starbucks' My Starbucks Idea site. Howard Schultz launched My Starbucks Idea just over ten years ago to help increase the company’s focus on customers and what they would like to see changed or improved in the company. On the site, customers have the option to submit a new idea, view ideas that other people asked for, and then see which ideas were put into action. Not only is this a good source of feedback, but it also enhances the customer relationship.

And that brings us to the next dimension of brand health...

2. Customer Engagement. When it comes to customer engagement, you want to determine how and to what extent consumers are interacting with your business. In this area, many businesses make the mistake of looking at so-called vanity metrics, data sets like page views, social shares, and subscriber counts may make you feel like your digital marketing strategies are making a real impact with your target audience. In reality, though, these numbers often mean very little. You can thus mistakenly convince yourself that your brand is healthy and you are making progress even as you drift further away from your revenue goals. 

One of the first rules all successful digital marketers need to learn is that just because you can measure something doesn't mean it's telling you anything of substance. Vanity metrics don’t have any real value because they provide little to no context to guide your marketing decisions going forward, and they don't really help you to achieve your business goals.

You need to be looking at the right numbers, and looking at the right numbers means engagement that brings you closer to marketing goals. An example of a good metric would be measuring how many people are signing up to receive a free piece of valuable content that is related to one of your paid products or services. 

3. Consumer buying behavior.  That said, one of the most concrete ways to measure the health of your brand is to analyze your sales data. Your brand needs to align with and support your business strategy and goals, and since one of your main goals is to generate a profit, you need to be in touch with how consumers buying your products or services. Where are they in the buyer's journey when they do so, and how much are consumers buying? Are they satisfied with their purchases? Do they return for more?

Other important metrics to consider involve where leads are abandoning the sales process. Do they leave when they get to your landing page or do they abandon the sales cart? If consumers are getting to the end of the sales process and then abandoning it, you need to find out why. While it may be an issue with the pricing scheme, or maybe your shopping cart is too complicated, it may also have something to do with the way you are portraying your brand.

In short, maintaining a healthy brand is essential to the health of your business, and to get there you need to make sure you are looking at real signs of wellness.

Robert Moment is a Personal Branding Strategist and Executive Leadership Coach who specializes in teaching CEOs, Executives, Professionals, and Entrepreneurs how to unlock their potential to succeed and be the “Go-to” leader in their industry.

Robert is the author of the following books:

·       What Makes You Stand Out

·       Executive Leadership Coaching Guide

·       Principles of Leadership Development

·       Entrepreneur Success Habits

Visit www.WhatMakesYouStandOut.com to download FREE chapters of Principles of Leadership Development.