Six Questions to Ask About Your Brand

A large part of how your products or services are perceived by your target market is based on emotions. Does your product satisfy a need for them? Do they feel lucky to have found your product? Do they regret having tried your product? Are they ambivalent to it or singing its praises?
This emotional response the consumer has is tightly connected to your brand promise. If your brand promises to solve a problem or satisfy a need only it comes up short, the consumer feels regret, disappointment, possibly anger and frustration. If however, your brand does exactly what it says it will and perhaps a little bit more, the consumer is at minimum satisfied, possibly elated and maybe even on their way to becoming a brand advocate. The following six questions provide a solid review your company’s brand promise. The goal is to answer yes to all of them.

Six Questions Your Brand Promise Should Answer 'YES' To

1. Does your brand promise resonate with your target audience? Your ideal customer is going to feel connected, remain loyal and potentially act as brand advocates. Understanding who they are is the foundation for building a strong connection with your customers. Is your target audience all moms or primarily stay at home moms or more specifically stay at home working moms? Be absolutely clear on who you are targeting.
2. Is your brand promise unique to your company? Does your brand promise set you apart from the competition or make you sound like more of the same old thing? You need to be able to describe what you do, who you do it for and why you do it better than anyone else. That is your promise.
3. Is your brand promise consistent? Consistency builds credibility. Companies that don’t deliver consistently on their promise are soon dumped by today’s savvy shopper. Competition is fierce.
4. Is your brand promise part of your company culture? Your brand is communicated by every member of your team. When your company culture is built around the integrity of your brand, your team will be able to clearly and easily communicate why your product and your company stand out from the competition. You need to ‘walk the walk’.
5. Is your brand communicated effectively across different marketing channels? How do you best use the 140 characters on Twitter or the visual storytelling of Instagram to communicate your brand? Your brand needs to be flexible enough to meet consumers on the platform of their choice, address their changing needs and new trends all while not breaking your promise.
6. Is the strategic plan for your brand long term? Brands are not built overnight. Think long term and build a specific and achievable plan that sets goals, measures results and is open to adjustments moving forward.

The evidence is clear. When you build a strong brand you are increasing customer loyalty and buy-in. That builds brand advocates and leads to repeat purchases, the holy grail of consumer sales. The more times you get a customer to return, the greater their potential lifetime value becomes.
Repeat purchases stem from repeatedly delivering on your brand promise. Stop delivering and chances are they will stop purchasing.
How is your brand stacking up to the competition?