When do you know you need to kill your brands?

Don’t be blinded by the sales numbers. Instead, look at the profit and future. Which ones are your profit contributor? This is the start of your analysis. Then look at potential for growth. Is it building on market share? That signals potential for growth. Then look at the direction and acceleration of the brand growth. Once you know all these factors, which one to cull and which one to milk becomes clear.

Which ones would you invest in?

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Where is the best place to start?

Diagnosis before strategy, strategy before tactics. 4Ps is a tactic. If you are starting with any of the Ps, you can be sure that you are being tactical about it. Go back one step to your strategy. Who is your target? What is your position or message to them? What is your objective? These make up your strategy questions. Once you answer these, the 4Ps become easy.

Are you starting at the right place?

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Can you fight for survival?

If you are a small brand or a small business, there are a few crucial things you must do.

One, define your ultimate customer. You have heard of the term – your target market. Do not be afraid to make this a well-defined small market. You can worry about the mass later. For now, you need the right footing, and a well-defined market means you can focus on delivering value to them wholeheartedly.

Two, create a differentiation. That differentiation should not be on low pricing of your service or product because it’s a differentiation that is easily copied and it eats into your profitability.

Three, look to price higher so you can make a decent profit. Think about the value you are delivering and price it from there. Don’t just look at direct competitors but look at similar products that delivers the same benefits. How do they price?

Does it scare you?

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Are you paying a heavy price?

If you set your advertising budget based on a percentage of sales, then the next question to ask is – will this budget generate optimum sales and maximum profit?

Set your budget according to your objective. If you want to generate optimum sales, then ask yourself how much you should spend to get there.

What is it costing you now?

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Why would they come back more often?

Increasingly the data is revealing that most of your buyers are non-loyalists. For example Byron Sharp’s 60:40 rule i.e., 60% of your sales are coming from the top 40% of your consumers which means nearly half your sales (40%) is coming from the 60% switchers and non-loyalists. McKinsey’s data reveals similar findings i.e., 42% will stick with you and 58% are tempted away.

Perhaps it’s time to convince the switchers.

Where are the additional sales coming from?

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What should you change?

Whenever things do not work, some business owners tend to change things very quickly. They change so often that each implementation does not have the time to work. In order not to change too often, one way is to ensure that you get your strategy right.

Once your strategy is right, stand firm. Hold the line. If things do not work, chances are it is the tactics that are wrong. Let the tactics play out for awhile before you decide that it is not working. If it is not working, change the tactics and not the strategy.

Are you changing too often?

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Have you bred enough?

Growing brands are always exciting. Giving you the expected profit and growth. When you grow too many, that’s when some will grow and some will not. That’s when too few resources are being shared by too many brands. You can’t focus. Eventually you will have to cut. Pruning a tree allows the tree to grow better and healthier. It is painful. But necessary.

When should you cull them?

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Can you program loyalty?

People who buy you aren't necessarily your loyalists. That you probably already know. But you hold on to the idea that there are loyalists and probably quite a few of them. Hence you developed your loyalty program.

But people who buy from you often may not be your loyalists. They could be shaky customers. They shopped around, compared and came back to you. If you were told 69% of your customers are always looking around instead of being die-hard fans. And if you were told that your true loyalists are only 13% of your consumers, would you still think there is a great ROI behind your loyalty program?

Would you change the way you market?

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Who did you miss?

Explore all your consumer segmentation again. Are there people you can add as your target this year? Start considering people who may not have engaged with your brand or have any experience with your brand. They may be category users who are switchers. Get them to consider your brand. The idea is to widen and diversify your consumer segment for brand growth.

Who can you add?

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Do they know you?

A sizeable number of business owners we meet focus on the bottom of the sales funnel. We don’t blame them. Sales and immediate returns are an important part of keeping the business running. We liken an overwhelming focus on this to picking the fruits off a tree. Eventually the fruits will be depleted.

Put more focus on the top of the funnel. Awareness and considerations are very important aspects in the consumer purchase decision journey. We liken this to fertiliser for the plant. It provides nutrients for future growth. Research has shown brands that are in the consideration set are twice more likely to be purchased. Which means it makes your bottom of the funnel work a lot easier too.

Are they considering you?

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Are they loyal to you?

The best way is obviously to do market research to find out how loyal your consumers are to you. But many companies without this data just assume that they have a lot of loyal consumers. Hence, they invest heavily in loyalty programs.

Not all categories are “loyalty” driven. If your brand belongs to a category where it is shopping driven, then you may want to rethink your investment in your loyalty program.

Are they switching?

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Do you think they care?

You: spend hours, days, weeks, months discussing and deliberating on each element and word to be used.

Consumer: spend a split of a second whether to buy or not to buy.

Instead, create distinctive brand identifiers that will help consumer identify with your brand.

Use it as much and as often. Don’t get tired of those brand identifiers.

You will spend hours with those brand identifiers but your consumer will spend a split second.

How do you help them remember?

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How did they know it is you?

An element becomes distinctive and an asset to you when it is linked synonymously with you and recognizable. That loud guffaw that could be heard 10 doors away. That gait. That dressing style. Similarly with brands. That logo, that font, that visual element that is uniquely yours. Your brand identifiers. That tone & manner.  A brand owns distinctive brand identifiers through continuous association & awareness. Repeat until it becomes synonymous. Until it signals your brand. And then repeat some more.

Perhaps somethings shouldn’t be changed. Well, at least not too often or until they know it is you.

Are you recognizable?

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What about job satisfaction?

Of course, profit is important. Without profit, the company ceases to exists. But being the most profitable won’t keep you going for long if there is no overarching purpose of why you exist. Why you do what you do. The one thing that takes you through the mundane, the painful, and the dreary of daily work. A purpose needs to guide your pursuit.

This purpose that guides you and wakes you up when you have made all your money. This purpose that guides your company and keep it going for years to come.

Are there other considerations beside money?

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Where do you want to go?

Strategy is a bastardised word. So many people use it so loosely that even when they are discussing tactics, they think it is strategy.

The beginning of strategy is actually vision. Or objective when you think about it on a smaller scale. Strategy is then the plan to get there. This plan when divided into its various elements is the tactics. You can’t have a strategy if you do not have a vision or an objective.

Set a clear end point. Make it SMART. Then use strategy as the oath to get there.

Vision (or goals or objective if you like) should drive strategy and strategy in turn drives the tactics. Not the other way around. It is obvious. However, in real practice we often don’t see it happening.

A few reasons for this. Firstly, deploying tactics is simple. The act of doing something makes one feels that a strategy is in place.

Two, there is a lack of understanding what a strategy is and the difference between tactics and strategy. This loops you back to one.

Three, the focus on the short term. It takes time to run elements in a strategy in an integrated fashion. These take time to see results. Most people don’t have the vision to see further.

How will you get there?

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How will you grow?

Very often we hear prospective clients for our consultancy business or prospective students for our marketing and branding masterclass say that they can’t afford marketing and branding activities. Regardless of the examples we give, the answer is almost always, “Oh, well they are big hence they can afford it.”

Think about a few companies and brands that you like or observe often. These companies grew because they invested in marketing and branding even before they became big. Marketing and branding spurs growth. It’s a growth factor in that it is crucial to growth. They didn’t wait until they could afford marketing and branding. It’s not that companies are big therefore they can afford marketing. It’s that they used marketing and branding to become big.

How did they grow?

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Where is the leak?

The sales funnel or purchase funnel that you use has various names. It has various stages too. Depending on which model you use; some has a longer journey, some lesser. Most of the time you will be tempted to fix the bottom of the funnel. After all, that is where the sales come in. But often times, the most strategic thing to do for your brand is to fix the largest leakage.

Fixing the leakage can only happen when you have a customized funnel that suits your brand and category. Do research on your consumers which you will inevitably cover your competitors too, then calculate where the “leakage” is. Then fix the part with the largest leakage. It may well be it’s the purchase stage that has the biggest leakage. But you will be surprised often times the leakage is somewhere else.

Are you fixing the right spot?

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Do you want the cake?

You can have it all if you learn to prioritize. Know what you truly want, know what you don’t want. Take some risks, manage your time, moderate your energy and believe in the genius of the AND as Jim Collins calls it.

Do you want to eat it too?

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Why the long hours?

Sometimes long hours are a reflection of poor planning and priorities. Sometimes even skills. If you lack the skills to deliver then obviously you will spend more time working on something.

If you spy on yourself, some hours are actually lost at work while you fiddle around the social media and do personal stuff. That’s all fine and no one will hold it against you. It’s your time and your responsibility alone. As long as you do not blame the heavy workload for the long hours.

Who’s telling you the truth?

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How low can you go?

Your business exists to make money. Profits keep you going. You already know that. If you think lowering your price in the hope of making it up in volume, think again.

McKinsey in a 2003 article titled “The Power of Pricing” concluded that cutting prices to drive volume is, “generally doomed to failure in almost every market and industry.”

How much do you want to make?

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