Twenty ways to spring into action and be like brand new

Spring has finally sprung. And as we chase away that winter dust what better time to dust off your brand.

2015 is disappearing at a rate of knots, so there’s no time like the present to get your brand in tip top shape as we head into the home stretch of the calendar year.

Here’s 20 tips to put some spring in your brand:

1. Do the hallway test – stop random people and ask “what do we care most about.” If you get lots of different answers or worse no one knows, then start talking about it the next day (and keep talking about it)
2. Check your turnover, if you have a revolving door for staff might be time to look at who you are hiring and what your are or aren’t doing once they start
3. Define your key words – if you talk about quality, service, innovation (the list goes on) make sure everyone knows what they mean at your company not in the dictionary
4. Set clear expectations about what you can and can’t do, don’t just dance to whatever tune customers sing and then wonder why you can’t make them happy
5. Take a look around at your competition – it’s good to know what’s going on
6. Revisit your positioning statement. How does it stack up in the marketplace? If it’s feeling a bit dull and give it a polish
7. Then take an honest look at all your marketing materials and make sure they say the same thing and look like the same company
8. Spend an hour checking if any links on your web site bring up the dreaded 404 error page not found. If so, fix it.
9. Then spend another hour just reading the content as if you were someone coming to your site for the first time (this will be a revelation)
10. Google your company name and any key words you think people would search to find you
11. Get a friend to call your company with a query and report back to you how the call was handled
12. Read your terms and conditions – no I mean really read them, if you can’t understand what they mean neither can your customers, if they don’t reflect how you actually do things, change them
13. Hold a series of brand boot camp sessions with people in the company – what is our purpose, what are our values, why keeping our promises matters, are all good topics to cover
14. Throw away your employee manual (no one reads it anyway)
15. Find three new ways to make your brand more aligned – how do you you answer the phone? What’s your delivery process? What do your hiring advertisements say The opportunities are endless
16. Walk into your offices like you are a visitor and take photos or write down what you see
17. Review any company policies and get rid of any that are there because one customer did something once
18. Keep a promises log for a week. Fix the ones you didn’t keep or make different promises
19. Ask five customers what they like and don’t like about your company (don’t do a survey just talk to them) then repeat item 13!
20. Celebrate everything you’ve done so far this year, because you deserve it.

See you next week.

Get your brand questions answered by posting them on twitter @michelhogan or emailing me at michel@brandology.com.au 

Michel is an Independent Brand Analyst dedicated to helping organisations make promises they can keep and keep the promises they make. She also publishes a blog at michelhogan.com. You can follow Michel on Twitter @michelhogan.