A brilliant strategy is useless if your team and leadership do not rally behind it.
As a brand owner, your priority is to build a powerful brand that helps increase market share, premiums and build customer loyalty as well. But it is easier said than done.
You face multiple challenges – competitive markets, short term business pressures, internal alignment issues, and lack of deep customer understanding. You can see it in lost sales, customer churn or missed opportunities that the competition may now be capitalizing on.
As you witness the breathlessness of one tactical activity after another, you wonder what could be done differently. You need to make many strategic brand decisions. You need accurate insights, a rallying team and the right investment to make your strategies work. How do you do that?
One way to build conviction and alignment behind strategies is to involve all key stakeholders in the development of the strategies. A collaborative process that puts deep, credible customer insights at the center of decision making, usually clarifies many doubts. Everyone wants to be customer-centric!
There are many ways to involve key stakeholders. Some best practices that we have found working well are given below.
Seek contribution
Get everyone to immerse in the customer world. We design processes – such as research and workshops – to help all stakeholders see things from the customer vantage point.
Typically stakeholders benefit from rich, in-depth interviews that are conducted well. Ensure that they accompany senior and seasoned qualitative researchers during the customer immersion.
Similarly the customer immersion workshop needs to be well designed and conducted to meet your brand and business objectives. It requires an expert facilitator who has an understanding of your business, people and customers.
Seeing the customer needs in person or through evocative audio-visual stimulus is more effective than text on a powerpoint presentation. When all team members experience the customer world together, they are able to drop their own preconceived notions and arrive at an objective and aligned view.
Be data strong
Even after involving everyone through the process, you will still be challenged on the validity of your strategy. You will need exhaustive and accurate research that brings together business data, customer insights and larger market trends.
We were working on a brand strategy project from Asian Paints to determine the future of one of their key brands. We combined sales figures, customer insights from qualitative and quantitative research, and market trends to build a strong case for the proposed strategy.
Conclusion
The process that you plan has to best fit your business needs. For some, only immersing in insights on customers, competition, and other stakeholders may suffice. For others, it may mean a longer process with research, workshops, and pilots.
Contact me for a free consultation to discuss your specific brand challenges.
