Fashion, or the mode of the times, applies to anything and everything. Just like haircuts and clothing, which tend to go out of style seasonally, the landscape and language of marketing changes fast. The messages and images that dazzle and catch eyes one day, wind up in the trash the following week. In order to keep pace with the ever-changing marketing climate and conversation and to continue fulfilling the desires of your target market, your brand must evolve. Without a constantly evolving content strategy, your brand and business risk failing.
How to Recognize a Dying Brand
Brands die when they lose touch with the current market demand and try to communicate with obsolete marketing strategies. Dying brands (and businesses) often have the following characteristics:
- Their sales are steadily diminishing and they are losing customers.
- They are unaware of the market shifting.
- Diversification fails to increase sales.
- They sometimes feel like customers don’t understand what they’re about.
- They have survival plans, rather than growth plans.
- Their brand architecture is unclear (multiple product names, categories, logos, and taglines).
- Their brand identity is not unique in the market.
- They do not really understand who their customers are.
- They have no established story or their message changes with each marketing campaign.
If these sound like challenges your own brand is facing—or like problems you never want to encounter—it’s important to develop a content strategy aimed to continuously evolve your brand.
7 Ways to Revive an Aging Brand
1. Find Out Why You’re Losing Customers
Before you can fix something, you have to figure out why it isn’t working in the first place. If you’re losing customers, take steps to find out why. Go straight to the source. Ask customers why they’re leaving and read reviews of your business. You can also use your company’s data to analyze the problem. You should be able to see trends in products or services that no longer sell or marketing campaigns that are no longer effective. Once you have diagnosed the problem, you can create an action plan to address it.
2. Publish Consistent Content Across Multiple Platforms
When done well, content has the power to uplift and spotlight your brand. At the other end of the spectrum, poor quality, spotty content with inconsistent messages will undermine your brand. Determine your brand’s key values and make sure every piece of published content on every channel speaks to those values.
3. Innovate
If your image, business model, product, or service has aged, then it might be time to innovate. Brands that fail to pivot and respond to market demand will eventually fail.
4. Rely on What You Know Works
Yes, innovation is good, but don’t innovate something your market still desires. While it’s okay to adjust your products, logo, tagline, or other messaging here and there over time, you shouldn’t stray too far away from your original image that won you success in the first place. Changing your brand significantly can make you unrecognizable and alienate your existing market. Refresh your brand, but be careful you don’t lose your identity in the process.
5. Know Your Audience
Gain an intimate understanding of your audience through market research and Google Analytics. This will help you target your advertising not only to certain audiences, but to specific customers within those groups.
6. Wax Nostalgic
Research has shown that nostalgia makes people feel socially connected, and it counteracts anxiety, loneliness, and boredom. If your brand has been around for a while, then you have the ability to appeal to your market’s warm and fuzzy sense of nostalgia. Roll out throw-back packaging or a limited edition of a discontinued product. Don’t miss out on the opportunity to use social media to highlight fond memories of a bygone era along with your customer base.
7. Gear Up for a Reboot
If looking to the past isn’t right for your company or if you’ve had a recent problem tarnish your brand’s image, go in for a complete overhaul of your brand. Focus on high quality messaging that captures your brand values, will help you meet long-term goals, and will also stand up to the test of time.
Refresh Your Brand with a Brilliant Content Strategy
Whether you’re in a branding emergency or want to prevent your company’s image from ever growing old, content strategy is key to keeping your brand fresh, holding onto existing customers, and winning new pieces of the market share. Luckily, WriterAccess has everything you need to revive your brand, while staying on-message and keeping up with the latest marketing trends. Our expert content strategists can help you execute a refreshed marketing plan or brand overhaul with a flawless content strategy targeted to your desired audience. Learn more about what WriterAccess’s team of freelance content strategists can do for your image.
Jennifer G is a full-time freelance writer and editor with a B.A. in creative writing from the University of Montana. She enjoys researching and writing creative content to engage readers and developing professional voices for clients across all industries. She specializes in medical, health, veterinary, and financial writing. Having worked nearly thirteen years in finance, Jennifer applies her experience in the banking industry (marketing, social media management, consumer and commercial lending, customer service, accounts, and bookkeeping) to her writing work within the industry.
