Duct Tape Marketing

When a company decides it needs to grow its brand, the common reaction is to design a new logo. That’s just not enough to turn the business around or get it on solid footing.

Here are the top 5 things a company’s leadership can do to prepare to stop the decline the business is experiencing.

1.  Know your role.  The executive team should not be making tactical decisions.  That’s what the managers and supervisors are for.  If you’re caught up in deciding where an office will relocate to or what award will be given to the employee of the month winner, you are not leading.  You’re supervising.  

2.    Stop trying to do too much.  You should help to create the company’s vision and move towards accomplishing it.  No matter what your title is, if you’re on your company’s executive team you should be creating global business objectives, addressing the company’s weaknesses, analyzing the competition and how to beat it, and learning about your target market, among other high level activities.  You should be delegating as much as you can to others and coaching them on performance improvement.

3.    Go beyond the Golden Rule. Treating people as you want to be treated is a mistake.  You should be treating people the way they want to be treated.  Maybe you don’t mind being yelled at.  Well other people do, so stop doing it.  To learn more about the best way to interact with your team, observe them.  Talk to them.  Ask what they like and don’t like.  

4.    Say what you mean and mean what you say.  Staff members recognize any inconsistency between what you say and what you do.  If you tell staff members service is king but you don’t give them the level of respect you insist they show customers, they’ll lose respect for you.

5.    Don’t cut the marketing budget when times are tough.   A common response to a dip in business is to cut back on the amount of marketing you’re doing.  It’s common but not logical.  While there are changes that should be made, it’s not the time to stop marketing.  It’s usually the time to increase the amount of marketing.

Turning a brand around is hard work.  The hardest work must be done on the inside while the physical brand image is being changed too.  Just enhancing the logo won’t be enough to prepare the business for the long road ahead.

Stuff our lawyer makes us say:
You are receiving this newsletter because you have a relationship with us, expressed an interest in our services, or subscribed to it through our website:  http//www.abiah.com.  To share it with others, simply forward a copy of this email, but please retain all of this information, especially the copyright information.

If you’ve received this from a friend and would like to subscribe,  sign up for your own copy on our site:  http//www.abiah.com and you won’t have to rely on your friend thinking of you the next time.

To remove yourself from this list, just reply to this message with “Unsubscribe” in the subject line.

Copyright © 2007 by Abiah.  All rights reserved.  If you share this, print it out, or reproduce it in any way, please retain this copyright statement.





About Abiah
Abiah is a brand strategy / full-service marketing firm whose unique, proprietary research process creates and revitalizes brands that resonate with their target markets, leads to increased brand awareness, develops strong customer loyalty and improved market share. Visit our website (www.abiah.com or blog www.brandreturn.com) to view our portfolio, read our case studies, and begin to imagine how we can help you.

To grow your brand call 609 653 2233.

www.abiah.com. Please share this article with others as long as you retain our website links and About Abiah statement in its entirety.