Test Your Brand’s Strength

2. Is your brand well known throughout your industry? If it is well known, hopefully it has a positive brand image. This means you have spent time presenting the positive attributes and benefits of your brand and have created a positive dialog among industry leaders, vendors, customers and related constituents.

On the other hand, if your company is relatively unknown, then you need to create a strategic plan to raise the level of awareness and impact in your key markets. The worst situation is when a company is well known but in a negative light. Generally speaking, it takes three times as long to rebuild a negative image than to create a positive one.

3. Does your brand campaign have a developed framework of generating and responding to messages? This is a newer piece of the marketing mix and many business-to-business marketers have not figured out what the correct selection and process of brand messaging is for their specific organizations. Unfortunately, many choose the type of communications they will engage in based upon their preferences! This is an enormous mistake. The best way to make these choices are to apply the results of questions number one and two above and determine what types of media channels your customers and prospective customers are currently using. Here’s a hint: Simply having a Facebook page does not mean you have an effective social media program!

4. Has your brand evolved into a system of visual identity and expression? You can determine the answer to this question by simply determining if all the major types of situations your brand is presented in have clarity, a striking resemblance, a consistent theme and harmonized graphics? Or does each of your communications—such as email, website, direct mailings, calendars, etc.—have a different look with the logo bearing the only resemblance throughout the various communications? Simply, do you have a brand campaign or a series of one-off designs that really don’t create an integrated marketing communication? This seems so simple and yet the majority of business-to-business marketers do not pass this simple communications test.