The very first step to ‘smart brand strategy’ is to make your brand program work harder so your customers and prospective customers don’t have to.

The litmus test is what you choose to emphasize at the beginning of your brand messaging.

Most brand marketing programs include a value positioning statement such as “Here’s who we are” or “Here’s why we’re important” or “Here’s what you can learn from us.” Although those thoughts generally describe your brand and the overall ideas of it, they make it harder for your customers and prospective customers alike to understand the main idea of your brand.

The reason? The descriptions are so general and so generic that they cause an immediate “WHY” question that forces them to figure out what you are really trying to say. With so many options for information on the Internet today this is not the question you want them to ask.

Instead, leverage your audience’s short-term imagination and creativity by asking questions such as, “What results do you need?” or “What can we do to help you with your future?” or “Have you thought about using this to change your experience?”

This makes their decision-making much easier and much more interesting.  With one or two questions you can perk someone’s interest to read another 100 to 300 words if they think they are going to get what they are interested in.

The principle of ‘smart brand strategy’ is to be simple and to the point. No guessing. No runarounds. No confusing references. Just straight on point messaging that asks questions of your audience and provides equally straightforward answers.

Here’s an exercise you can use to give this simple method a try. Open a brand marketing document you have previously composed and look at all of the information that is provided, and ask yourself, “What is my point?” Summarize it in a single sentence and write a new title that captures just that one point.

When you are done, find the few key points that actually support this one main thought and delete the rest. Your customers will thank you, your prospects will thank you, for being concise and to the point.

If your brand strategy is clear, your brand marketing is clear, then your audience will be clear. And this clarity will bring an immediate connection and relevance between your brand and your audience that will allow them to focus on what they searched for, and what you want to communicate.

Wouldn’t you call that smart brand strategy?

It’s true that one of the easiest things to do in brand strategy is to add a promise, and then to keep on adding more and more and more…

It’s also true that one of the hardest things to do in brand strategy is to subtract a promise, and then to keep subtracting more and more and more…

Why is it so easy for us to add, yet so difficult to subtract?

There are many factors that contribute to the situation, but the most important ones include the following:

• We have a lot to say, and we need to keep the ideas coming so we can be sure to get our “brand story” across.
• We need to demonstrate our credibility by showing both our application and technological prowess in many markets and circumstances.
•  If we change one of our promises, or cease making one, we confuse or worse confound our customers, and this is never a good strategy.

Whatever the reasons, the result is a brand strategy that is so bloated with promises, your audience can’t see the forest through the (brand messaging) trees.

What to do if you are in this spot after so many iterations of brand messaging?  And you know who you are!  Consider employing a new brand strategy: “one brand, one thought.”

This is usually not an easy practice for many, particularly for those that have allowed their brand messaging to include everything and the kitchen sink. But it is the only way your brand will ever have a fighting chance to be heard, seen and felt.

A quick exercise is to write a short description of your brand. This should include, “Why does my brand exist?” and “What value does my brand bring like no other?” In other words, what is so unique about your brand that no other brand can claim?  Edit this down to one sentence, and then add one to three supporting points that prove this main point leaving no question in anyone’s estimation.

The result should be a singular brand statement, and much more focused.

It’s absolutely true that the less you say, the more your audience will focus on what you truly have to say.

When you apply “one brand, one thought” to your brand strategy and messaging you will be on the way to creating a new kind of clarity of thought and impact that your audience will truly appreciate.

Repeating important messages used to produce the results a brand marketer was looking for. Today, it’s not nearly as important how many times you repeat a message compared to how well you establish a trusting bond between your brand and your customer. Take Amazon for example. Do customers return there because Amazon markets to them 10 million times a day on every single social media platform or is it because they are able to meet and exceed their customers’ expectations 10 million times a day?

For sure, the brand should look great, the copy should be interesting to read. But today that goes without saying. That’s because it’s far more important to have a rock solid strategy operating in the background – one that provides the hard core strategic logic for every single market communication – than being the brand with a super creative brand marketing program.

Of course, agencies hate what I am saying here because “Being Creative” has been at the center of the definition of a successful agency for decades. There are local, regional, national, and international creative awards competitions to prove it. And all the creative agencies participate and when they win they boast about their prized plaques and statues.

But it’s past time to realize that these competitions are nothing more than vanity plates for brand owners and their agencies and prove nothing. Especially if they post a going out of business sign that reads, “We’d like to thank everyone for their business” on their website!  Unfortunately there have been quite a number of these signs posted recently. Undoubtedly those awards are now on shelves or in boxes at the homes of their owners.

Why? Because creative branding usually does not make a brand successful. Creative brands do. So if you happen to be looking for the next big idea from your creative digital agency to re-launch your company after years of stalled brand growth, you might want to begin your search with some intelligent strategic planning. That should be done in-house, or guided by an outside firm but focused on your in-house management team.

Because at the end of the day it’s not up to a creative agency to make your brand successful. As the brand owner, that’s your job.

Have you noticed the rules of the marketing game have changed recently?  It used to be the broader the appeal of your product meant the greater number of customers you could attract. It also used to be true that the more people you were talking to the better the chances were that you would sell them your product. That was during the television age of mass communications. But today, we’re living in the computer age which means it’s a whole different ballgame.

For those of you not lucky enough to have worked in the TV age, we were able to harness massive televised networks and get our “message” out there quickly. Then, it was more about who could grab the most number of people’s attention and pull them in with our creative brand marketing campaigns while attempting to prove relevance within an entire marketplace. Big budgets, big markets.  Boy I miss those days!

Today, on the other hand, and here’s where the big change is, it’s about marketing a product that is narrowly cast that meets the needs of an exclusive number of business buyers’ or consumers’ needs. So instead of a mass market approach today’s messages are (or should be) targeted to a highly defined purchaser. The narrower the better.

The new marketing game is built on highly focused product design that is congruent with thinly sliced vertical niches. Curiously, there are exceptions. Such as when one product is radically focused but appeals to many different types of people in many different markets – but that’s the exception to the rule.

Which brings us to the point of why 5 is greater than 50,000. To stay in business you need customers, not just interested parties. As a result, it’s far more valuable to have 5 customers who purchase your products with great regularity and are strong advocates for your brand versus marketing to 50,000 different types of potential customers but not actually gaining the attention of any. Not too difficult to figure out which company is going to stay in business.

No, that’s not a typo. It’s my word for the process of content that takes concentration to produce – CONTENTtrating. It’s at this crossroad that many are confused because they are having trouble deciding which is more important, quality-filled versus frequently-posted content? Adding to this is the consideration of: where is the best place to post this content once it is produced?

And that’s the rub in today’s ‘always-on’ world that we live in.

Here’s what we do know:

1. Quality content is more appreciated than low quality content;
2. Consistent quality content is better than erratically posted content;
3. Having an audience that wants to hear what you have to say when you have to say it is best of all.

Here’s what we don’t know:

1. Who decides what is quality?
2. How much content is required to truly resonate with your audience?
3. Are the primary content ideas you have actually resonating with those you are writing for?

At the risk of oversimplification, this is the conundrum of social media today. It turns out that social media is a balancing act that requires a significant amount of concentration and therefore a significant amount of time.  Therefore, for many, your CONTENTtrating decision brings you to what motivated you to begin posting content in the first place.

And perhaps that’s how you can decide how much quality and content to post.

The more important a quick return on your investment is to you, the more content you will need and that might mean a sacrifice of quality. Unless you have a staff of ghostwriters working for you.  Or, if quality is most important to you, then you will take your time until you get it right. And that’s because, as the saying goes, quality has no fear of time! The choice is yours.

A great deal has been written about how to get yourself out of the hectic pace that a business can impose on you. Actually, there are literally millions of pages of advice on the subject, “How to run your business.” But what I would like to do is take a few steps backward and analyze why so many entrepreneurs are stressed out so much of the time, even when their businesses are running well. And actually, this applies to corporate executives as well. There are three main reasons:

1. The business naturally consumes the owner because his bucks are on the line.
2. There are often too few resources to hire a full suite of managers so the many tasks of management and services fall to the owner.
3. After the business builds to the point it can afford to hire managers many owners do not easily grant the needed authority to its managers and therefore drive away their best talent.

Over time, this cycle of growth, hire, fire, growth, hire, fire, perpetuates the perceived notion that he or she must maintain a strong hand on all aspects of the business. Ironically this trap tends to deepen even as the company becomes more successful. Of course, many entrepreneurs figure this out and make the necessary adjustments. So, even if you have been living with this severely negative management pattern you can always remedy your situation. Over 25 years we have worked with hundreds of entrepreneurs and corporations and identified seven keys that helped them build their companies:

Key #1: Determine what you are worst at and delegate it.

Key #2: Establish clear objectives that define what will be considered a success or failure.

Key #3: Reward the behavior that you would like to accomplish and make sure these metrics align with your clearly stated objectives.

Key #4: Don’t play favorites. Make sure everyone is playing from your best playbook and that everyone is evaluated and rewarded according to the same set of rules.

Key #5: Have a strategic market plan that defines your best prospects, your winning sales strategy, the products that will be sold, and the pricing for the products. The less variance to these imperatives the stronger the company will become.

Key #6: Know your competition’s strengths and weaknesses better than you know your own.

Key #7: Take time to enjoy the fruits of your labor by doing something that does not have the word “BUSINESS” in it.

The challenge of business owners and managers today is to understand they can do their best work if they figure out they can’t do everything. This realization can lead to a stronger company and a happier you.

Step #1: Set aside specific time to prepare your strategic plan. Be prepared to spend some energy and enthusiasm as well. If your company is in a negative market position, meaning it is not as well thought of as it was in past years, there may be some significant time and energy required to figure out why and what to do next.

Step #2: Bring your best creativity skills to the planning process. Many innovations result because someone figures out a better or new way of doing things. Following what everyone else in your industry is doing is not a productive way to come up with a new approach. Think about it, you’ll end up where everyone else ends up! So bring your best thinking, wacky thinking, and bring in others who can provide a new perspective. At our firm in Chicago we used to say, “We don’t care where or who has the best ideas, just that we have them!” And that’s whom we rewarded respectively.

Step #3: List all of your existing assumptions about your business strategy and question everything. The benefit of this process is you may have outgrown some of your strategies and they will be surfaced by thinking through ‘what’ you do and ‘why’ you do it. The key here is to be willing to axe what is no longer working and put something new in its place. Consider Google. Once a year now they discontinue several or more significant services when they conclude they are no longer bringing value to the majority of their customers. That’s just good product management. This keeps their products fresh and continues to build momentum for their company.

Step #4: Make the strategic planning process fun. Really can’t stress this point enough. The process should be a collaborative exchange where there are no dumb ideas, just thoughts for consideration, and all conducted in an atmosphere of learning and fun. No grading of ideas or figuring out who contributed the most.

Step #5: Connect your new strategy to a financial goal that can be measured. This practice will allow you to measure the results that you are receiving against past performance and make refinements, adjustments, and decide to continue or discontinue the new strategy. A key to this decision-making is in understanding that in order to achieve long-term results you need to keep in place a long-term plan. So don’t be too quick to kill a new strategy but leave enough time for it to take its full effect.

Step #6: include all of the parts of your company in the strategic planning process. Operations, Product Development, HR, Financial, Marketing, and Sales should all be a part and expected to contribute best thinking to move the company forward in an integrated manner. One of the worst things that can happen in a strategic market planning process is a few people develop a strategic plan for the entire organization without their input. Frankly, this can be counter-productive to the overall planning enterprise.

Step #7: Once you have created your new strategic plan it should include some basics: Goals, strategies, tactics, financials, and an implementation program. If the strategic plan is well structured it can be used as a blueprint by everyone in the company. In fact, it should be understandable from the shop floor to the executive office to produce a highly successful and dynamic plan. Even customers should be able to easily understand your value proposition and tell you what it is.

If you follow these simple seven steps you will be well on your way to creating a strategic plan that will serve your company well. It’s interesting to note that the average company spends less than one hour a month on its strategic planning. Don’t fall prey to this very dangerous practice.

When companies approach our firm and ask us to help them grow their businesses, we ask them what is your strategic planning process? As we have analyzed their organizations we found that learning and embracing strategic market planning was a key to strong growth that starts with asking a totally different set of questions.

The following are three primary questions that need to be asked and answered to drive business growth.

“What is your key differentiator that sets you apart from your competition?” This question typically causes great anxiety among the leaders of the company because for years they have been living without a true market advantage. They have simply relied on what was popular and followed their industry’s perceived needs and interests. So they wind up sounding and looking like their competition, or they make claims and promises that they are unable to fulfill which further damages their reputation and client-community engagement.

“What is your business model that drives your company into profitable growth?” If you ask this question to the financial people often they will provide overall financial P/L information but rarely is it linked back to a specific strategy. They simply cannot answer this question because they have not thought through their product to sales to profit strategy linking both their sales and financial results.

“Have you established specific metrics to drive your company’s growth?” The positive impact of this question is it forces the full team to determine what the definition of success is and the steps that are required to get there. Most company executives know where they would like to go, but they are not clear about how to get there. The saying, “Can’t see the forest through the trees” is often in play. This is because they enjoy studying two or three of their favorite trees with such intensity they forget about the full context of the forest-market.

As a strategic market advisor, you aren’t necessarily trying to provide all of the answers. Rather, we use a strategic process to end up with a winning strategic market strategy that the company can leverage to drive both short- and long-term growth. It is difficult for some executives to accept that strategic growth requires discovering new ways of seeing and marketing things. You need to be open to totally different ideas than what you are accustomed to using.

These types of questions and others like it such as “What is your top value to your customers?” – “What is the best way to drive shareholder value?” – “What did you learn last month that we could apply to this month?” – are all the best type of searching questions a company can ask of themselves. Knowing the right questions to ask can develop a favorable environment for both management and employees to work together toward developing a new set of objectives and strategies that will drive business growth.

Whether the plan is more important than the actual implementation is a matter of debate. Recently, in a Linkedin strategy group just this subject was carefully debated. The general conclusion was you need both to do well. This is fine and good and music to my strategic planning ears.

But why do so few companies actually engage in strategic planning? A recent management survey reported that middle-market organizations spend less than one hour a month on their strategic planning. Another recent Harvard Business Review report put the ROI of traditional planning at 34% or less. And many executives report that only 19% of their strategic plans achieve their objectives.

From my consulting perspective, as a provider of strategic planning and development services, I can personally attest that most strategic plans that I am asked to review have never left their owner’s bookshelves; and fewer than 25% have shared any of their planning with their employees. Is it any wonder why so many of these plans never succeed since they are never given the fighting chance they need, or the required funding? And often CEOs don’t execute their own plans!

Companies today have a variety of ways to produce their strategic plan and piles of time to make the concerted effort that is required. But despite a slow-mo economy – that allows companies to carefully rethink their strategies – many companies remain reluctant to actually take the dive into true strategic growth planning. Here are a three simple steps to get you started if you are one of those CEOs that has been putting off preparing your strategic plan or you work for a CEO that needs a gentle nudge.

Step #1: Write a one-sentence description of what your company does that no other company can. This seems rather obvious but test it out for yourself. Ask 10 heads of companies to tell you what their company does in one sentence. Averages are three will be able to and the others will need many more than one sentence. This is because many companies operate without a true point of distinction from their competition in the marketplace. It is truly impressive and refreshing when you meet a CEO who truly understands his company’s distinction who can sum up what they do in one quick sentence. And if they ask you to help them build a particular piece of their stream it is truly a pleasure to contribute. They have thought through their strategic advantage allowing you to focus on the most logical next steps since they have established their primary foundational strategy.

Step #2:  Know your competitors as well as you know your company. This is often ignored during strategic planning, usually because the critical information cannot be found within the company’s walls. It’s easy enough to write down who your competition is and that’s a great first step. But somehow you must find a way of securing their market strategies. Attend tradeshows, conferences, webinars, and online forums that your competition attends. And read their website and blogs along with any white papers they’ve written. Then summarize their key strategies that you pick out. You can tell them by what they repeat. And of course, talk with them in person to gain a feel of their company and personnel. Uncomfortable for some, this is a terrific way of gaining first-hand knowledge of how your competition handles itself in public. This practice can provide tremendous insights when talking to your prospective clients about your company.

Step #3: Prepare why you are uniquely qualified to succeed in one paragraph. The key to defining your success is to not mirror what everyone else is providing. If your company is highly scientific and works in a scientific niche, figure out the one primary benefit that clients will receive from your company that they will not receive with your competition. If this qualification is truly a benefit to your clients you are well on your way to entering a strong strategy zone that you can build on in front of your clients and prospective clients.

The marketplace has been making companies jump through hoops partly because there are so many service providers to choose from and partly because the economy has made them extremely cautious. Companies want to make sure the firms they are hiring and contracting with are expert in their field, their skills are up to date, and they have a strong track record of delivering what they promise. All good practices to keep in mind when developing your company’s strategic market plan.

The goal of every business is to add customers and delight them with your company’s products and services. We call this the total brand experience. Much has been written on this subject but what’s absolutely clear is, No customers, no business!  A number of consultants have talked about this, including Peter Drucker, the management guru (Photo of Peter Drucker).

Essentially, Drucker believed that the customer should be the focus of, and purpose for, the organization. He explained, “A company’s primary responsibility is to serve its customers, to provide the goods or services which the company exists to produce. Profit is not the primary goal but rather an essential condition for the company’s continued existence.”

When the marketplace around the world started to experience strong negative impacts in 2007, many companies were unprepared for what would transpire. The natural reaction to this slowdown and downturn was to hunker down and wait until things returned to normal. Did that happen at your company? Most CEOs that I talk with say there is a ‘new new’ that we have to get used to.

Sure, there are still meteoric rising success stories like Instagram being purchased for 1 billion dollars by Facebook. Talk about being in the right place at the right time with just the right product mix and personal relations with the acquirer! But for most of us that isn’t the norm, so here are a few suggestions for making the best of today’s reality and building your company for tomorrow.

Take a tough situation and do the opposite. This is really counter-intuitive in a period where you are trying to preserve your hard-earned cash. Dad used to say that any dummy could spend dollars, but it took a smart person to earn them. This was good advice but when you see an opportunity to gain a burst of growth be willing to step out and invest in your idea. You might find your new positioning in a good place because so many of your competitors are sitting on the sidelines. Take a few risks and test your instincts. Sometimes fuzzy logic is a lot more accurate than months of analysis, and I get to say that because I’m a strategic market advisor!

Consider launching a new product or service, or even a new company. I realize this might sound off the wall, but think about it, most people abhor risk, and so this might be a terrific time to try out that idea you’ve been noodling for a very long time.

Look for niches that you can dominate. A multi-niche strategy spreads your risk among many markets and protects you from the Win or Lose scenario a single-market company can experience. Graphic arts and printing companies often make this mistake by “specializing” in one market. Usually, the reality is, these specialties occur because the company doesn’t have a proactive growth plan so they naturally tend to attract the same type of customer in the same market. Great in good times, bad if that market goes away.

The bottom-line is the more exciting your products and services are to your customers the more likely you are to grow and stay in business successfully. And this strategy works in both good and tough times.