This article was originally published on the Business 2 Community Business Blog.
For business owners and entrepreneurs, every day presents a myriad of new business challenges. Chief among them is the constant and relentless pressure to grow your business in an increasingly competitive and noisy marketplace
As most businesses and consumers are risk-averse, avoiding an expensive mistake is the top priority in their purchase decision process. Having a solid brand strategy will allow your company to be perceived as less risky and as a more reliable choice. Here are the top eight reasons to manage your brand as a key business growth strategy
1. Customer acquisition. Building a brand that consistently (and without exception) places customers first and ensures a first-class experience with your company is the most critical reason to manage your brand. Delivering an exceptional customer experience when things are going well is usually easy. The more important customer experience is when there is a real or perceived complaint that requires delicate negotiation to successfully resolve the concern. Here’s where your brand must excel by living up to your customer promise of quality and service.
2. Innovation or reinvention. All businesses—small or large—must continually innovate or reinvent themselves to remain relevant and to consistently meet evolving customers’ needs and marketplace trends. For businesses, this is especially true, and it requires a commitment to forward-thinking and a willingness to adopt strategic and early adjustments to marketplace trends and changes. In this case, a company’s brand must be strong enough to build upon and to evolve with the changing marketplace dynamics without sacrificing brand equity.
3. Reputation. Managing your brand can significantly influence your reputation and enable your company to break through the marketplace noise to attain top-of-mind industry positioning. Additionally, creating a solid and positive reputation can be helpful when addressing a negative or crisis situation and can create opportunities to promote the company.
4. Profitability. A strong, positive and resonant brand will command premium pricing, as the customer value is clearly and consistently articulated through actions and communications. According to McKinsey and Company, business-to-business companies with brands that are perceived as strong generate a higher EBIT margin than others. In 2012, strong brands outperformed weak brands by 20 percent, up from 13 percent in 2011.
5. Talent acquisition. Want to successfully compete for the best talent? With a strong employer brand, business owners can and do recruit high demand talent. This is an area often overlooked, and even ignored, by many business owners. An Employer Brand International study indicated only 41 percent of companies have an employer brand strategy.
6. Disruption. Stagnation is a common challenge for many businesses. While disrupting an industry may be a long shot, becoming a disruptor within an industry niche is often doable for small business owners. Having a brand that enables the company to quickly build credibility in the new marketplace or to launch new offerings is imperative for success.
7. Resilience. Economic downturns happen, and most brands stumble from time to time. During these challenging times, it is important to expand your knowledge, capabilities and opportunities. Another imperative to remain relevant is to continually refresh your products to meet consumer desires and to stay steadfast to your brand values. Consumer responsiveness is a hallmark of great brands and should be a goal for business owners.
8. Engagement. Highly successful companies cultivate innovation and creativity and empower their employees to create a high performing culture. These companies embody their brand promise throughout their touch points and have no fear of failure as they celebrate, embrace and respect calculated risks with both good or bad outcomes.
Whatever your business status, managing your company brand should be strategic, purposeful and consistent to yield endless opportunities and unlimited success. A proactive and well-thought-out brand strategy is the secret to the long-term viability, growth and success of your business.
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For business owners and entrepreneurs, every day presents a myriad of new business challenges. Chief among them is the constant and relentless pressure to grow your business in an increasingly competitive and noisy marketplace.
Delivering effective presentations is a critically important skill for business owners, executives, salespeople and all professionals. The ability to share engaging, compelling and essential information successfully to an array of audiences requires forethought,...
As business owners, we have all encountered extremely challenging clients or customers. You know the customers that are impossible to please and who often make numerous or unreasonable demands. In these situations, it’s important to directly address the situation...
Delivering effective presentations is a critically important skill for business owners, executives, salespeople and all professionals. The ability to share engaging, compelling and essential information successfully to an array of audiences requires forethought, planning and practice.
Whether you are delivering an internal, an external or a sales presentation, don’t give your audience a reason to check out. Instead, follow these five simple steps to deliver an awesome presentation that resonates with your audience and achieves your desired results.
For business owners and entrepreneurs, every day presents a myriad of new business challenges. Chief among them is the constant and relentless pressure to grow your business in an increasingly competitive and noisy marketplace.
Delivering effective presentations is a critically important skill for business owners, executives, salespeople and all professionals. The ability to share engaging, compelling and essential information successfully to an array of audiences requires forethought,...
As business owners, we have all encountered extremely challenging clients or customers. You know the customers that are impossible to please and who often make numerous or unreasonable demands. In these situations, it’s important to directly address the situation...
As business owners, we have all encountered extremely challenging clients or customers. You know the customers that are impossible to please and who often make numerous or unreasonable demands. In these situations, it’s important to directly address the situation as diplomatically and politely as possible.
Here are several strategies to help you regain control when your customer has you on the run.
For business owners and entrepreneurs, every day presents a myriad of new business challenges. Chief among them is the constant and relentless pressure to grow your business in an increasingly competitive and noisy marketplace.
Delivering effective presentations is a critically important skill for business owners, executives, salespeople and all professionals. The ability to share engaging, compelling and essential information successfully to an array of audiences requires forethought,...
As business owners, we have all encountered extremely challenging clients or customers. You know the customers that are impossible to please and who often make numerous or unreasonable demands. In these situations, it’s important to directly address the situation...
For business owners, the dreaded elevator pitch incites great anxiety, and oftentimes, abject fear. Beyond pitch competitions, every day, countless individuals attempt to introduce themselves, share information and engage others for the purpose of building a relationship to sell products and services or themselves.
While it’s highly unlikely you can close a deal at hello with a killer elevator pitch—even a pitch that is flawlessly delivered—it is completely possible that a poorly constructed and delivered elevator pitch can unnecessarily lengthen the sales process, make an extremely poor impression or remove your company from consideration altogether.
When engaging in face-to-face interactions, the majority of the communication occurs through your nonverbal behaviors and your tone of voice. Therefore, authenticity is critically important to making a unique, positive and memorable first impression that supports your brand.
Whether you’ve honed your pitching skills or are still mastering them, there are five important reasons to ditch your elevator pitch and to develop a more strategic approach to introduce yourself, your company and your products and services to prospects, industry peers or influencers.
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Today, our Pro Tip focuses on business etiquette and why it is important for business owners, professionals and executives to achieve greater business and career success.
Joscelyn Davis, the president and chief strategist of JADE Strategies, Inc., is a highly sought-after speaker and trainer who brings more than 25 years of proven experience in organizational change strategy and leadership coaching in the public, private and nonprofit sectors. She shares her business etiquette insights to help you excel in your business or career.
Watch the video interview here.
For business owners and entrepreneurs, every day presents a myriad of new business challenges. Chief among them is the constant and relentless pressure to grow your business in an increasingly competitive and noisy marketplace.
Delivering effective presentations is a critically important skill for business owners, executives, salespeople and all professionals. The ability to share engaging, compelling and essential information successfully to an array of audiences requires forethought,...
As business owners, we have all encountered extremely challenging clients or customers. You know the customers that are impossible to please and who often make numerous or unreasonable demands. In these situations, it’s important to directly address the situation...
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With the fourth quarter of 2017 just a few days away, are you on track to achieve or exceed your business or career goals this year? If so, congratulations and keep your momentum going! However, if you’re among the many small business owners and professionals that began this year with great optimism and a sincere desire to enhance your productivity, to accelerate your results and to increase your revenue, but have fallen behind your milestones, it’s not too late.
Whatever your goals are this year, you can still work toward their achievement. How and where do you begin? First, forget about making excuses or regretting your current status. Focus your energy and efforts on modifying your behavior. This is a critically important step toward your success.
Next, create a 100-day action plan. This proven approach will help you chart your path forward, move you towards your goals and increase your ability to achieve them.
When developing your 100-day action plan, begin with your end game in mind. Based on your established goals for this year, what milestones can still be accomplished by year-end? What tasks must be completed to make the needed progress? What strategies will you employ to achieve these goals?
What are your biggest obstacles that can derail your ability to succeed? You must be completely honest with yourself. If you don’t address your unproductive behaviors, obstacles or issues, you can’t optimize your opportunity for success.
What tactics will you execute? Who will provide support and guidance for your plan? What are the key milestones and metrics that will guide your actions? And, most importantly, what does success look like for you?
It’s the fourth quarter, not the end of the game! You can still make progress on your 2017 goals and, more importantly, jumpstart your 2018 achievements! Defining success throughout your journey empowers you to visualize your road map to success and to set realistic expectations on what is feasible to achieve. This enables you to avoid being bogged down and to plan for potential the pitfalls and opportunities.
Success is achievable if you have the courage to fully and unapologetically pursue your goals.
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For business owners and entrepreneurs, every day presents a myriad of new business challenges. Chief among them is the constant and relentless pressure to grow your business in an increasingly competitive and noisy marketplace.
Delivering effective presentations is a critically important skill for business owners, executives, salespeople and all professionals. The ability to share engaging, compelling and essential information successfully to an array of audiences requires forethought,...
As business owners, we have all encountered extremely challenging clients or customers. You know the customers that are impossible to please and who often make numerous or unreasonable demands. In these situations, it’s important to directly address the situation...
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