How to tell if your brand’s health is slipping

Brands live in a dynamic, ever-changing environment. Many variables affect the well-being of a brand, including trends, economic cycles, new competitors, changing tastes, lack of innovation, just to mention a few. Brand health needs to be monitored and maintained. But how can you tell whether your brand is deteriorating? A 2007 survey of brand marketers by Guideline showed the top three warning signs that your brand health may be slipping are: (1) you experience a comparative decline (i.e., versus competitors) in customer conversion or repeat sale rates; (2) the percent of customers who give the brand an “excellent” rating declines; and (3) your net promoter score falls (percent of brand promoters minus percent of brand detractors). Some secondary, but interesting warning signs include the growing need for price-based promotion/discounting in order to maintain sales or share and a focus on defensive/protective tactics rather than growth tactics. So what can you do, if your brand’s health is deteriorating? One of the first things to do is qualitative insight mining to figure out what’s going on in the market and then engage the broader brand team in a strategic exercise to identify and vet opportunities versus risks. Sometimes called “war-gaming”, this approach allows a safe but reasonably deep exploration of what’s happening and what to do about it to return the brand to good health.

Related posts