Hello everyone! How do you take your brand upmarket? If you’ve attended one of my seminars or workshops you will know that I define brand as your reputation rather than a logo or strap line. What expectations do your customers or potential customers have for your business? Therefore the question could be reframed, ‘How do you take your reputation upmarket and secure upmarket customers?’ Surely this is the clearest million dollar question of all – literally and figuratively. Listed below are a number of key considerations but it’s not as simple as tick, tick, tick and boom – you have transformed your brand. I am interested to read your thoughts, please use the comments section below to let me know what you think. Here are the 10 considerations.
1. Research – What does upmarket look like in your niche? Is there an upmarket segment? Is there potential for one? Do not skip this step – it is vital. Your repositioning needs to be commercially viable.
2. Value proposition -What is to be your new value proposition? What will you offer to consumers that is different to what you are currently offering and also different to your competitors?
3. Consistency or congruence – Are your brand assets consistent with your new positioning or will they need to be updated. This could include website, stores, communications materials, staff uniforms etc
4. New positioning or sub brand? – Is it feasible to take your brand upmarket? Or should you consider a sub brand and start fresh as Toyota did with Lexus?
5. Customer experience – What changes will need to be made to the overall customer experience to substantiate the new upmarket positioning? You will need to list these out.
6. Stop anti- brand activity – If you are running any price promotion activity – stop it . As I said above brand is reputation and if yours is ‘Closing down sale’ ,’2for 1′ or ‘60% off’ then that becomes your reputation.
7. Social proof – What do customers say of your customer experience? Is there some evidence within the feedback you have received of potential for your brand to be reappraised? Do you already have an upmarket segment of your customer base?
8. Products and services – What changes do you need to make to your products or services to be congruent with an upmarket positioning? It might mean removing some and adding others. You may already have clear customer segmentation which will help the transformation process.
9. Distribution – Your distribution network needs to be consistent with your new positioning. If your product is on sale in dumpbins at a discount retailer you will not be able to take your brand upmarket.
10. Implementation – Great news ! If you are a SME owner or entrepreneur – with a relatively small number of staff (up to 50) and low number of sites – in most cases it is considerably easier to plan and execute a brand repositioning than it is for large multinationals. The advantage is with you and the potential rewards can be too.
Are you considering re-positioning your brand? We would like to help you. Feel free to give us a call on +44 (0) 845 2264 247 or drop us an email via mail@marketingfundamentals.com – We look forward to hearing from you.
I hope you have found this information useful.
Best regards,
Mike Pitt
Founder & CEO
Marketing Fundamentals Ltd
