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When All Else Fails, Trust Your Brand!

We all have good days and bad days. What do you do when that stretches to weeks and months? It’s the kind of situation that has your mind playing all kinds of tricks on you. Has your run come to its end? Have you lost your mojo? Maybe the world simply doesn’t need your product or service anymore. You start to point fingers at all kinds of reasons to explain this increasingly desperate situation. This post comes from a conversation I had recently with an associate of mine.

They felt the problem was that on their website the tone of the message was coming from “we” and they felt it should be “I.” This, they felt, was one of the reasons why business dropped off the face of the earth. I thought not, on the other hand. My thoughts were that once the (we’s) were changing to (I’s) we’d also be having this gloomy discussion again about poor business.

Then I asked a key question: “I understand that you’re slow, but are you taking this opportunity to market yourself?” “No,” they said, “we don’t have the money.” I proceeded to ask if they had a database of potential customers and they said yes. Then why aren’t you doing email marketing? Why aren’t you cold calling? Why aren’t you attending networking events? Why are you doing nothing at all to attract business to yourself and have settled with pointing fingers outward instead of inward? There is no good reason to do a better job looking for blame than looking for a solution. We have to eat and pay bills—that’s not going away.

I too had a slow summer last year—so I spent all my time marketing myself, networking, looking and developing opportunities, trying to do whatever i could to keep my spirits up and allowing a positive attitude to drive business my way. My friend’s conversation touched me but frustrated me more when I discovered their reluctance to help themselves. Even though I was slow, I at no time felt the need to change my brand, change my message. It worked for me in the past and is still working moving forward. Suppress the urge to change up your brand. Spend your energy pushing it even harder.

Change or stay the same—the choice is yours, of course. The hard choice seems to be trusting in yourself. I think change is the sucker punch. Try determining the true reason for the slow-down before you take knee-jerk reactions. Trust your brand—it got you this far!

Published: January 31, 2014
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Ed Roach

For more than 25 years, Ed Roach has worked with hundreds of successful small businesses by helping them develop unique brand positioning strategies that differentiate them from their competition. Ed appreciates working with companies who see the value of going beyond mere slogans and have a desire to sell from compelling positions, and consults predominantly with businesses facilitating his proprietary process, "Brand Navigator." This branding process effectively focuses a company's brand, delivering a positioning strategy that can be taken to their marketplace. He is the author of "101 Branding Tips," a book of practical advice for your brand that you can use today.