It’s a brand new decade - and what better way to start than to share learnings from the last Brand, Bitch & Brekkie roundtable to add to your list of OKR’s and personal goals for the year ;)
In this edition, we delve into how to get your customer more involved in your brand journey, why being vulnerable with your colleague will build trust, how to approach bigger competitors in your comms and the holy trio of truths to abide when defining your purpose.
Take the time to sit down with your customer
A couple of our attendees confessed to getting carried away with what they assumed their customers wanted from their brand, without actually having the data and proof to back it. They also confessed to relying on their analysis of social and digital engagement with their content, which can be easily subjective and interpreted differently from person to person.
Ultimately, meeting your customers face-to-face and eliminating screens is the answer. One marketer found that by bringing together people in small focus groups, they discovered unique audience quirks, commonality in things they worried about all of which the brand hadn’t considered based on digital data.
And if time is lacking, one top tip was to create a quarterly brand health checker to distribute to your community online. Ideally, the survey lists up to 10 questions to understand what your customers love at the moment, but also where they think your brand needs to be in the future. It’s this data that will help you get your comms to be working as efficiently as you need it to be.
Be more transparent to better your company culture
At Mattr, we’re always encouraging our clients to showcase their brand authentically in their external comms. But one of our guests raised a great point that it is just as important to be vulnerable and authentic when communicating internally too.
We’ve seen that the start-up world is particularly prone to being an emotional rollercoaster, especially as many start up brands today may not be around tomorrow. The conversation around the future of your company is difficult to face, so being honest and transparent with your employees is vital to making sure everyone is fully on board and know how important their roles and responsibilities are to make the mission succeed. Our guest recommended “Radical candor” ( a book by Kim Scott) as a great tool to read when approaching difficult conversations.
Another great approach was to initiate monthly OKR’s to help track the progress of your specific role and responsibilities in terms of the bigger picture business goals. This is really rewarding for all involved and certainly something we’re embracing as a team in 2020.
Taking on bigger companies negatively in your comms isn’t always the way forward
For those who read our content regularly you’ll know we’re all about supporting the challenger brands who are changing the status quo. But doing this successfully in your comms doesn’t need to come from by attacking what’s come before.
Your product might be disruptive, but displaying an ambushing attitude in your external comms makes your customers think you’re focused on beating the competition and not about addressing the bigger picture about what the future could look like.
Instead, by empowering your audience to make a change in their habits and spinning a positive light on the future and respecting competitors who’ve come before you, you will earn more respect in the long term.
Know your human truth, organisation truth and sector truth
This sentiment came from one of our guests who revealed that identifying these truths had helped them navigate a tricky organisation wide re-brand.
To dissect this into three parts:
Interrogating their human truth (essentially what their audience thought about them) helped them face their realities of how their products/services weren’t performing, and what they could do better, for their community directly.
Their organisation truth (focusing on what the needs of the internal departments are) opened up conversations with stakeholders at every level of the brand, to establish what needs to change to enable the business to do what it says on the tin.
And using these two truths finally looking at their sector truth (the position of the brand within their industry vs the competition).
While their re-brand isn’t finished yet, revealing all of these hard-hitting facts and truths has helped break down the brand’s values and purpose into digestible goals for all internal stakeholders, not just the brand + marketing team.
Feel like these conversations relate to your challenges you’re facing at the moment, and want to get involved?
Join us at our next Brand, Bitch & Brekkie roundtable in February. Email sunnii@mattr.media or call her on 07772343952 to book a place!
