Digital Horizons

What's Holding You Back from a PERFECT Brand Strategy?

• James Walker & Brian Hastings

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Is your brand still hitting the mark, or is it time for a reevaluation? Find out as hosts James Walker and Brian Hastings, with their combined 20+ years of marketing mastery, guide you through a self-audit of your brand's effectiveness. This episode of Digital Horizons tackles the essential questions every business owner should ask to ensure their brand resonates with current customer needs. You'll learn how to evaluate whether your brand's visual elements are modern and aligned with your business's growth and why a consistent and compelling brand message across all touchpoints is non-negotiable. Plus, discover the importance of maintaining a strong online presence to keep your digital campaigns in sync.

Thinking about rebranding but unsure where to start? This episode dives deep into the strategic foundation required before rebranding. James and Brian emphasize the importance of a solid brand framework, which they call the bedrock of any successful rebrand. By collaborating with specialists for this foundational work, you can significantly improve both internal team alignment and external customer perception. Listen in for actionable insights and inspiration on how to elevate your brand to match your business's evolution and aspirations. Get ready to make more informed decisions about your branding and marketing efforts with expert advice from our seasoned hosts.

The Digital Horizons Podcast is hosted by:

James Walker - Managing Director Walker Hill Digital
Brian Hastings - Managing Director Nous

Speaker 1:

I want you to ask yourself a question Is your brand good enough for the position that your business is currently in Today?

Speaker 2:

we're going to run through questions that you can ask yourself to self-audit whether your brand is up to scratch for the task you're putting it to. Is it going to be able to deliver for your business? So let's get into it.

Speaker 1:

This is Digital Horizons. I'm James Walker. I'm joined with Brian Hastings. We both own our own marketing agencies a branding agency and a marketing agency. We've been working in advertising for the last 20 years. We're here to give you as much information as we can to help you make more informed decisions about your marketing and advertising.

Speaker 2:

So, starting off with the number one question, you can ask yourself to determine whether you need to do some work on your brand or evolve or update your brand. Number one does your brand still resonate with your audience? What do we mean by that? We mean have your customers' needs, preferences, values shifted since you started the business? If you look at your audience today, does your brand match or fit within their values and is it still resonating with them?

Speaker 1:

I think you also need to look at well, at the time when you actually got your branding done, were you working on a shoestring budget where you're like you know, I'm just going to get a 99designs or a Fiverr logo done to put together so that way I can get a website done and start getting all my advertising happening, and maybe that design or maybe that thing was done on a budget. So maybe it's not at the level where your business is now. Maybe you've progressed many years and now you're still working with something that's probably looking like not at the level that you're operating at.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that leads us nicely into number two, and I think it's a common issue where owners and marketers get tied to their brand and how far it's come, but not realizing how far off the market is visually. So number two is is your brand visually consistent and up to date? So what do we mean by that? The clothes, the suit that your brand puts on every day? It's a logo, it's supporting graphics, it's photography, style, the assets that present your brand to market, whether that be your website or videos or whatnot Are they up to date, are they contemporary? Are they in keeping with the brand's values and look and feel and engaging your audience enough? So what you were just saying then is typical with a lot of brands that have gone through two, three, four years of that startup phase and the brand was the last thing on the list when they were building the business and sometimes, unfortunately, it's almost the first thing on the list where they just get a logo because they're really excited and they just want to get the logo.

Speaker 2:

Then they build up this brand. They get everyone on board, they get new clients. It's starting to grow. They've had their first hires, but then the business is starting to mature. I'd ask yourself what are the chances that that logo that you created with that excitement about what the business could be is still perfect and still up to date and up to speed for what the business is now? Yeah, so we're talking about the visuals in number two. Number three is about the tone.

Speaker 2:

Ask yourself is your brand's message clear and compelling? What we mean by that is every communication that is going out on behalf of your brand. Every touch point your clients or prospects have with your brand is the unique message that your brand has to put out there in market. The reason for your customers to connect with you is that clearly being portrayed? Is that clearly being put out to market in the right way? Is it consistent across different platforms? Are you saying one thing on your website? Are they getting a different experience when they come into your office or meet with you? Is your packaging completely different in what it's saying? Is a benefit to the customer compared to what your ads are saying, and now in this section, it's important to ask yourself not what it looks like, but how it sounds. What are the messages you're putting across to your clients and your customers, and are we really maintaining that level of consistency, and is it matching what the brand's unique differentiators?

Speaker 1:

are. I mean, the brand is so much more than just your logo, right?

Speaker 1:

There's so much more to it and that's a small piece of it and, whilst it's probably the most visual and the most everyone thinks as a business owner is, this is what my brand is. There's so much more work that needs to be done and I mean we're currently going through that brand workshop with yourself in terms of all right well, how can we get a good understanding of who we are and make sure that our messaging and communication is all in line? And I think that that's such a strong process to go through to really ensure that you have that consistency happening.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, we have A lot of clients come to us wanting brand work when really they think they're coming in for a logo. Yeah, thinking the logo is our brand. It is just the brand's mark. Your brand is far more than just how it looks and its logo. It is the perception of the market out there right now, what they think about your brand, it's every interaction your brand has with them. It's the product, it's how you service them, it's the reputation it has in market and it's how it aligns to the values and needs of your customers. So I think considering that tone is really important. Number four are you maintaining a strong brand presence online? And sometimes that's an area that can be left behind for businesses, especially when the key rainmaker is, say, the business owner and they've built all the relevant relationships in the business.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and when we're running the digital campaigns for our clients that's one of the biggest things that we see is a potential area for opportunity is just to make sure that there is alignment with all of the campaigns. You might see they might have some messaging happening on their Google ads within the copy there and then looking at their meta ads or something on TikTok and it's saying completely different things, even the logo and the branding. They're not even using the same brand kit for it. So I guess making sure that when you are running a campaign or you're doing some sort of lead generational brand awareness campaign, whatever it is make sure that you are using your messaging consistently across all platforms to make sure you're not confusing the message to your customer base or your potential customers.

Speaker 2:

You're trying to talk to A good example of this that I see a lot in my agency is businesses who say to me oh, don't worry about the website, we've got to do a lot of work on that, but the way that we're presenting the clients is really good and we've got a really high conversion rate. That is an indication that your brand isn't up to scratch if you're leaving your online presence to stagnate.

Speaker 1:

So number five is the last one we're going to go over is how is your brand comparing against your competitors and are they outpacing you in terms of your brand identity? So what does this mean, Brian?

Speaker 2:

We've been looking at your own brand a lot a bit of a self audit. Look at the rest of the market. Look at your key competitors. The people that you're sick of hearing have won the job or taking market share from you. What are they doing differently? Put the lens on of the customer. Put yourself in their shoes and look at your website side by side with theirs. Look at your product packaging if you have that side by side with theirs.

Speaker 2:

Consider the path to becoming a customer with your key competitors versus yours. Are they outpacing you? Does their brand look more compelling? Are there elements of their brand that you think God, I wish ours felt like that? Or that describes my business better than my business does? If you can't stand up against your competitors, why are your customers going to choose you? So that's a really good place to start. You're not just leveling up against yourself. You have to level up and exceed your competitors. So start with them. Look at how their brand stacks up, and are you in desperate need of some brand evolution to help meet that mark and beat the competition?

Speaker 1:

Well, that's another short form Digital Horizons episode today. We hope that the information here has got you thinking about well, how is your brand looking and how are you feeling about it, and is it time to potentially start thinking about maybe a rebrand or start looking at doing some brand work, doing a brand workshop, to really start to elevate your brand to the next level or even just to get it up to pace to where you currently are in your business?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, absolutely. I'm glad you said that it doesn't start at just doing a new logo. It starts with a brand strategy. At Nowse we'd call that a brand framework, but there are many different approaches out there in the market. But work with specialists on this one. It is really important, and make sure you get the foundations right before you move into the visuals or tone or designing a new website. But it can be a really powerful process, both internally for your team and your staff to get consistent, and then externally for your customers and prospects. So that's Digital Horizons for this week. Thanks, james, thanks for watching, thank you.