How many times have you seen a company undergo a makeover, only to find out later that they were simply getting themselves ready to be put up for sale? It makes perfect sense: a brand needs to look its absolute best for potential buyers. But wouldn’t it make more sense for the company to look that way for its customers all the time? Perhaps if more businesses we concerned about the health of their brand image, less of them would be up for sale in the first place.


Think about what we do when we sell a house. We clean it up. We really clean it up. We painstakingly go over every square inch, finding and fixing flaws of every size and level of importance. Some problems are only revealed when we look closely for them. But many had been there all along, and we knew about them. We just chose to ignore them, until was time to sell, and then they had to be addressed. It’s easy to put off walls that need painting or a leaky faucet. These are problems we can just “deal” with, and we eventually become blind to them until they simply have to be remedied. Heck, it’s our house, so it really doesn’t hurt anything if we postpone fixing these little nuisances. Right? Not really. How much better would your living experience be if all the minor issues were fixed? Don’t we all love coming home to neat, orderly, well-maintained house?


The same is true for your brand. Seemingly minor issues that you have chosen to ignore could be doing serious damage to your brand perception. Your customers can sense these flaws, even if they can’t always articulate exactly what they are. Learn to spot weaknesses in your brand image—before your customers do.


Stay current.
Let’s say your company implemented a new brand identity a year ago, complete with a revised logo and a fresh color palette. Digital assets like your website are relatively easy and inexpensive to change, so they have been updated. But many of your printed collateral pieces still have the old, outdated look. Sure, when your customers receive these printed pieces with last year’s identity, they will still of course know it’s from you. But they also (if only subconsciously) will start to sense your brand is not strong. Why are there two different logos, and different colors? The brand message on your print and digital pieces are not in synch. The “big” brands would never engage in this behavior, so therefore, your brand feels small by comparison. Not physically small, but small in importance. Like it or not, this is just how brands are judged.


And when was the last time you made a change? Your customers can sense stagnation in your brand. If you’re not moving forward, they will assume there’s a reason. Keep content and imagery fresh and updated. Create a content calendar and stick to it. This is especially important if your brand has a social media presence. If you go weeks or months without adding new and relevant content, it looks like you have nothing to say, and you’re doing more harm than good.


Brand mishmash.
For many companies, the reality is that marketing materials sometimes just “happen.” Sales may need something in a hurry, and an outside resource creates the piece without strictly adhering to brand guidelines. Or perhaps a new product is released, and a quick description—that was only meant to be temporary—is put on the website…and never changed. Many brands are plagued by these inconsistencies, and they don’t even realize it because, like that leaky faucet, it’s something they have just gotten used to, and they remain and become part of the brand image.


A good hard look.
​Even if your brand experience is flawless, you risk losing customers if your brand image doesn’t align. And just like a good home inspector is skilled at finding every last little flaw in your house, a professional brand strategist can help identify—and more importantly resolve—issues with your brand image and perception. Sometimes, taking a truthful, scrutinizing and critical look at ourselves can be uncomfortable. It’s not always easy to admit things aren’t perfect. But when the problems are fixed, and the brand looks and feels its best…well there’s no feeling more comfortable than that.

For about the past five years at my house, I've had some issues with soil erosion after heavy rains. It seems miniature mudslides would develop, taking mulch and dirt from my front yard down along the side of the house, finally depositing a thick layer of sludge on the backyard walkout patio. I tried several methods over the years to get things under control. I constructed a wall out of landscaping stones. I installed drain pipes. Yet no matter what I did, the sludge returned.

​Recently, after a particularly heavy rain that lasted several days, the walkout was completely covered in filth. I decided this needed to stop, and stop now. During the next downpour, I went outside and observed what was going on in realtime. I could see the flow of the water down the side of the house. With shovel in hand, I began to dig a small trench to divert the water. Then I saw the areas where the sludge was really making its way to the walkout, and mapped out a plan for building a retaining wall in the proper area. A few days of backache-inducing work later, the problem was solved.

So often, we as marketers and strategists fail to get out in the rain. We might be good at measuring the results of our communications when the campaign has ended, but can we ever really understand why what we do works or doesn't work if we can't be right there in the middle of the action?

It's not always easy to observe marketing working in the wild. But there are some simple things you can do to gather intel while the message is still active:

• Invite feedback from key customers during a campaign. First, find out if they have even seen the communications. So often, we don't really know if our message has been processed. In other words, did our audience receive it, read it, and understand it? Click rates, open rates and other digital metrics tell only part of the story. Sometimes it pays to just have a real, old-fashioned conversation.
• Talk to the people in the field. Not just your clients and customers, but employees, vendors, reps and anyone else who is likely to see your campaign, or the effect it is having. Ask them what they think. Sometimes, you don't need an elaborate quant/qual analysis. Sometimes, anecdotal information can lead to the best insights.
• If possible, create multiple campaigns. Craft distinct content and messaging for each one, and carefully monitor the results during the campaign. If Option C is clearly beating out Options A and B, it's time to adjust.
  
  

No matter how you measure results, whether in realtime or post-campaign, it's critical to understand how your communication is received, and what affect it is having. Knowing this will allow you to dig a trench, build a wall, and more accurately direct where you want your message to go.