Posts Tagged ‘strategy’

Welcome to Day 1 of VOCO Creative’s “Does It Work?  Assessing Your Brand” series!

Assessing your brand doesn’t have to be a daunting process.  Whether you’re a small firm or a large corporation, you have to look back before you can look ahead.  Should you get bogged down in details or past mistakes?  No.  Should you learn from what was and move forward?  Of course!

Step 1 of your year-end brand assessment essentially consists of one (deceptively) simple question: 

Where am I?

I don’t care about your ZIP code.  I care about hard data…facts and figures.  If you can answer these questions, you’re off to a good start:

• What one word would I use to characterize my brand’s progress this year?
• What specific actions have I taken to market and promote that brand?
• What kind of audience do I have?  Has that market changed in the past 12 months?  If so, how?
• How much money have I spent on branding this year?  What has been my return on investment?
• What metrics do I use to mark my progress?  What do those show me about my business?
• What am I happiest about with my marketing and brand strategy?
• What is my wish list for 2009?
• What is my budget?

Seem like a long list?  Maybe.  Consider it the kernel for your assessment.  These facts and figures are a great starting point.

Continue to join us this week…we’ll teach you how to use the answers you find to assess the strength of your brand and how to adjust if you don’t have all the information you need.

Photo courtesy of emdot

As someone who has been inundated with requests for representation (?) and publicity for different causes, I was overjoyed to read the Open Letter to Fitness and Health Brands Pitching to Bloggers at Stephanie Quilao’s excellent Back in Skinny Jeans blog.  Stephanie lays it out honestly to brands who want her to cover their products…but aren’t prepared to take the time to find out who she is, craft an interesting pitch, or respect her business. She hits the nail on the head when she says:

Your pitch should not be all about you, it should first be about my audience and next me the blogger, and how my readers will benefit from your product or service, and how I the blogger will benefit by posting about your product. [Italics mine]  As a blogger this is what I care about; relevance, quality, traffic, exposure, and revenue.

So many people pitch from a purely self-motivated perspective.  They forget that, whether it’s a blog or a major newspaper, audience matters.  If you have the demographic wrong or are just plain opting for the blanket cover-every-possible-base approach, your chances of success are woefully small compared to if you targeted one or two publications that you researched, read, and analyzed.

Bottom line:  do your homework.  A little respect for the people who could enhance your career goes a long way.