By Michael Desroches
When was the last time your team took the time to analyze the adages and mantras that shape your brand and the way you do business?
If it was more than three to five years ago, chances are that you’re operating according to ideas that—while they’ve served you well—don’t currently serve your organization’s full potential. My team currently walked through this very exercise and we pinpointed three areas where we’ll be kicking ideas to the curb as we pick up the pace in 2019.
Apply a close “Does this still fit?” and “Is this us?" eye to the following areas, and you’ll uncover themes to guide your every effort in this new year:
#1 Ideas About Who You Serve (& How)
Any good marketer will tell you it’s essential to define your target market . . . to understand which customers value your services the most, and to be deliberate about the segments you focus on to grow your brand.
What they might not mention is that your target market isn’t a tattoo.
Your target market’s profile will evolve—and not just with your business, but within the larger context your company exists within. Think about it: The socio-economic atmosphere shifts. New technologies rear their heads. Whatever the case, there is no reason to leave money on the table when you could generate untapped revenue by repositioning your thinking about who you serve. Turn to your sales team. Have they stumbled upon a gap in the industry and been filling it in real-time? Review your client list. Does it have the same makeup that it did five years ago, and does everyone on that list have the needs you see your business as being designed to fulfill?
Does the way you think about your relationship with clients or customers match the connection you’d like to have with them in the year to come?
#2: Ideas Regarding Purpose
When your team walks through the ideas that shape your brand, you might begin by simply thinking of yourselves as a hotel chain, coffee retailer, or roofing company, and find that while that definition is true, it doesn’t quite capture the entirety of what you offer, because let’s face it:
If you’ve seen any level of success there is a moment when what you do is about more than making money.
And if shifts in workplace culture and consumer preferences tell us anything, it’s that they’re looking for more than paychecks to be signed and goods or services to be delivered. Their perception of your brand hinges on why you do what you do as much as what you do itself.
It’s not essential that your overarching purpose be to turn an industry on its head, or save the world but in today’s climate, your ideals matter.
Dust off your mission and vision statement. Does it still capture the change you’d like to create for the world?
#3 Ideas About Your Capabilities
For the last four years (Brand Inspiration launched in early 2015), my team has thought of itself as a Swiss Army knife, but we’re leaving this idea in 2018. Now don’t get me wrong—Swiss Army knives are great. But as much as they can strip wires and keep even the gnarliest of fingernails trimmed, they’re only as good as the challenge in front of them.
We happen to pride ourselves in delivering the unanticipated and our work brings unexplored concepts into focus, making our old Swiss Army metaphor a rotten fit. That’s why moving forward we’re now thinking of ourselves as a telescope (think NASA, but backed with more jet fuel).
Limiting ideas can be anything from how you view your capabilities and reach, to your employee’s beliefs around what’s possible if they stick with you. It’s worth pointing out that
retiring ideas doesn’t mean forgetting what they’ve done for you or brushing aside the work you delivered based on them. It simply means transforming your thinking and branding so that it aligns with every milestone on your roadmap.
Which ideas is your team leaving in 2018?
Put another way: Where are you leaving business on the table?
Michael Desroches is a corporate marketing consultant, brand strategist, speaker, trainer and mentor. The Founder and Principal of Woodbridge, Connecticut-based Brand Inspiration has spent more than two decades helping corporations, nonprofit organizations, mid-sized companies and small businesses throughout the country.
