3 Ways to Gather Research for Brand Strategy

URH RESEARCH.

Often, that word can sound intimidating. Digging through endless data until the meaning of life jumps out at you from between the spreadsheet cells.

But it doesn't have to be that way.

Let's just keep it simple, actionable, and stop making it overwhelming.

Sound good?

3 areas to get insights for informing your brand strategy

1. What do your customers need, want, and expect?

The first place to look for feedback is within your customer pool. You need to understand if, or why you’re valuable to them - and how to build on that to create loyalty, referrals and joy.

People buy from brands that they care about. You need to understand IF they care about you - and if they do, why. See if you can then expand on that. Understand their motivations so you can ensure that you include this in your marketing messaging.

Quick easy task: Ask questions on social media. Run polls and surveys on your regular content asking your audience questions about what they want from you.

2. What are your competitors doing?

Always keep an eye on your competitors. Not to try and copy them - but so that you can learn from what they’re doing, and see any gaps or opportunities to be different. If people are going to choose you over your competitors, you need to help guide that decision - and you can only do that if you understand what they’re choosing between.

Identify what makes you unique and make a list of that.

Quick easy task: List out 3 competitors, look at their website and find their about page. Make a note of their story, their mission, their values. How do they differ to yours?

3. Look within your company and culture

Your brand and messaging needs to be genuine - you can’t say that you're sustainable if your processes aren’t; you can’t say you’re diverse if you aren’t; you can’t say that you’re innovative if you’re providing the same services as your competitors.

Check in with your employees, monitor your processes, and evaluate your services to ensure that they are matching what you want your brand to be. Understand your objectives and vision, and how your messaging reflects that.

Quick easy task: In your next team meeting, ask your team what they think your brand values are, and how they try to action them in their day to day role.

Sound time consuming?

I won’t lie to you - it is. It also depends on how deep you want to go as to how long this process takes, but it’s often good to run surveys to larger groups of people, and then select some at random to do one to one interviews with for further insight - that goes for both employees and customers.

If you need any help with auditing your brand, or with delivering your messaging - just book in a free call to find out more about how we could work together.

Or, you can sign up to my newsletter for monthly tips on making brand strategy simple. I sent this out back in September - and have had some great treats out since.