Worrying Reasons Why Your Brand Might Be Holding Back Your Business Success

You have a great product, a great customer service team and you’re turning a profit – yet you’re struggling to maintain customer numbers and repeat business is scarce. Sound familiar? If your business is persistently pursuing new clients rather than successfully preserving the ones you’ve already converted, then there could be an issue with your brand.

SMEs that struggle with brand image and awareness are less likely to build strong customer bases and many find that their economic growth is stunted due to a lack of customer loyalty and trust. Good branding means increasing the value of your company, it gives your employees motivation and direction when handling clients, it’s also synonymous with your reputation and helps you build on client loyalty, which in turn means repeat custom and higher profit margins.

A good branding strategy could be the key to unlocking your full potential, and if your brand is currently holding your business back, now is the time to act so you can claw back some of your market shares. Let’s explore some of the worrying reasons why your brand might be holding back your business success.

A Lack of Brand Guidelines

When was the last time you checked your branded materials? From your website to your social media pages, your newsletters to your printed materials, can you say that your brand is consistent? Discrepancies across your branding and a lack of brand guidelines can lead to multiple issues. If your logo looks slightly different across multiple materials or your colour palette isn’t consistent then it can arouse suspicion amongst your clients and even make your brand look questionable. Additionally, a lack of brand consistency also alludes to a lack of attention to detail, which reflects poorly on your business.

Everything that you say or put on digital platforms regarding your brand has to be consistent with your brand guidelines. In some instances, this might not be possible or come under harm. For example, while you have been toiling in terms of presenting your brand in a positive light, there can be some sections that might not have good things to say about your brand. A disgruntled employee, or a customer that is looking to exploit you into giving them something extra, or, even a rival competitor that plans on seeding negative content on behalf of your content. In this happens you need to find help to remove content from Google as soon as possible.

Creating strict brand guidelines and adhering to them will make your business much more professional looking and genuine.  

Your Employees Are Unfamiliar With Your Brand

You may have a set of brand guidelines and a great set of company values, but if these aren’t being communicated to your employees, then they’ll find it difficult to represent your company effectively. Keeping your employees up to date with your company’s values, voice and branding are essential to enhancing business success. A DAM (digital asset management) software solution could help you maintain and effectively communicate your branding by keeping employees in the know of any changes and training updates.

You’re Copying Your Competitors

In the search for success, it’s only natural that we turn to the experts for inspiration and guidance. However, mimicking your competitors and copying their style of branding, their colours and other guidelines can make it difficult for your clients and prospective customers to take you seriously as a brand. Focusing on a unique approach and taking inspiration rather than lifting ideas from your competitors is much more helpful. Look at how they communicate their brand, handle customers, the imagery they use and see how you can apply these things to your own enterprise.

Final Thoughts…

Branding is an important cog within your business machine, consider the step above to ensure your branding no longer holds your business back.