How to know if your branding initiative works
It isn’t a simple task to establish a brand and start it off with some solid groundwork. However, when it is established already, most experienced brand management practitioners would say that that is only the easy part. You have to know if your strategy is effective, as expert William Seegmiller believes.
Talk to your customers. Sales, though it is a huge factor, is not always an indication of where a brand strategy is falling short. People tend to go through a set of emotions before they decide if they are going to purchase or product or not. There’s nothing that beats having good old-fashioned conversations with the customers you are trying to aim for. Listen closely to what they have to say.
Take a look at the data that is available as part of your research. Whenever you post something online, the system has a way of tracking engagements and classifying online behavior of users. This is called online analytics. For instance, Google has a way of seeing how your website performs or how specific pages containing key topics perform. You may even get a sensible insight into what people are searching for online, and make adjustments from there.
Study the competition really well. Your greatest competitor is the one that reigns supreme in the market for a reason. It would be foolhardy not to acknowledge that he is doing something right to maintain his presence in the game. This is not to say that you should become a copycat, because this is a sure way to fail in your objectives, according to William Seegmiller. Rather, take a look at what keeps his customers coming, and you’ll see where you need to focus in order to achieve your goals.