Not many actions are as career-enhancing as transforming an under-performing brand. Here’s what you should do to make that happen.

If you’ve spotted some problems with your brand, then you’ll need to develop a plan that shows your board why the brand needs attention, and what actions you plan to take to address this.

If you need to get approval from your director or other senior manager for your brand development plan, then steps 1 to 5 will show you what you need to do.

If you’re sufficiently senior to be able to authorise the budget and to commission a new agency, then skip to step 6.

1. Build the plan. Your plan should have four sections:
   1. Your brand’s areas of weakness. Use the list above to identify them, and to provide evidence to back up your argument.
   2. Why this matters. Show the value of a well-performing brand. Emphasise the importance of a strong brand in creating customer loyalty and preference.
   3. How to fix this, and to transform your brand and your company’s success. (Use the steps that we outline below.)
   4. Costs, and next steps.
2. Talk to your director (or head of department) and tell them that you’ve conducted an audit of the brand and have worked out some areas that need attention.
3. Show them the plan that you’ve written, and tell them that you’ll need a budget to action them
4. Emphasise the value of a well-functioning brand and remind them that the cost of addressing the issues that you have uncovered is tiny compared to the reward.
5. Once you’ve got approval to pursue this, you’ll need to get an agency to help you. Chances are that your procurement policy will require you to get two or three agencies to pitch for the work. We can tell you how to do this.
6. These are the steps that you should outline in your plan.
   1. If you can, commission some research to find out how healthy the brand is. We can conduct this for you, and will take time to design the research to fit with your corporate strategies.
   2. Get a full evaluation of your brand from a specialist agency, to check how it’s performing and to identify its strengths and weaknesses. We can deliver this for you.
   3. Conduct a customer journey audit to find out any areas that are undermining your brand. We can do this for you, but if you’d prefer to do it yourself, there’s a guide to completing a customer journey audit here.
   4. Develop a killer brand proposition statement, that fulfils all the criteria of a successful brand. We can do this for you, but if you’d prefer to do it yourself, there’s a guide to writing a brand proposition statement here.
   5. Make sure that everyone in the company is shown this brand statement, and that they understand their role in bringing it to life for your customers.
   6. Use the customer journey audit to make sure that your new brand statement is brought to life every time your customers encounter the brand. We can help you to do this.
   7. Once you’ve developed your new brand, you should commission regular research, to make sure that your brand is performing well. There’s a guide that explains what research you should get, and how frequently you should get it, here.

We offer expert help with all of this. Contact us today for a chat about how we can turn your brand into a market-leader.