It has been a roller coaster ride for many businesses especially with the frequent changes to pandemic restrictions. Change is the constant here, and B2C businesses are best served keeping their eye on the customer.
As countries and cities continue their journey towards declaring the COVID-19 virus endemic, businesses everywhere have had to react to frequent changes with policy, regulation and restrictions. These businesses are often forced to be reactive, as these changes are themselves reactions to real-time shifts in the fight against the pandemic.
Reactive decisions mean businesses are unable to plan long-term or to strategise without their back-up plans being more extensive than their revenue-focused plans. Many brands spend their time fighting fires created by the restrictions then they do on how to grow revenue or brand awareness.
Unfortunately, over a sustained period of time, owners and management start to believe that short-term, reactive actions are the new normal. Their collective decisions focus on survival and no longer on foundation, amplifiers or multipliers to their efforts. This reactive thinking costs the business more in the trade from not doing then by thinking about how to grow beyond mere survival.
A perspective to take in these situations is to return to the foundation. For B2C businesses, the foundation is the customer.
Are we creating and selling products and services that our customers want to buy?
We can help you fix and problem solve for many growth and revenue scenarios such as market entry, market expansion, product/service launches through a strategic communications approach.
Send an email to connect@wearebrandutility.com OR book an exploratory consultation through this link OR complete this form and we will connect with you shortly.
We are Brand Utility is a business consultancy. Our principal consultant is a registered management consultant, certified and recognised by the Institute of Management Consultants Singapore.
We work with brands in the corporate, professional services, retail, travel and technology spaces.
Sensing what the future brings … today. Customers have evolved throughout the pandemic. According to many studies, they have adopted digital methods quicker than predicted.
These customers use tools for access and payment, and digital platforms for convenience and safety; as well as digital channels for news and information.
Adoption patterns that would have taken until 2030 have accelerated – due to the pandemic – into 2021. This presents an opportunity for many businesses to dive deep into observations by futurists and researchers to see what the future brings today.
Focus on the customer as a guiding star.
If we recognise that our customer has changed, the key concept is to gather data and information to build insights into both the customer base, and the customer themself.
Using a strategic communications lens, it becomes important to re-establish the consumption habits, patterns and channels that our customers have changed to. This can be seen in the time of day or frequency of accessing the channel. It can be the keywords or options that they are specifically asking for when browsing your website or app. Behaviour such as an increase in small purchase baskets, or an aggregation beyond the usual ticket spend can indicate changes in customer circumstances.
With these observations, it would be useful to create customer personas and map their new journey with both your brand and competitors. While paying attention to competitors, it is not important (yet) to win them. The idea is to find whether the overall industry has to change and accommodate the new customer behaviour. There is little sense in winning a competitor if the customer base has left for other adjacent providers.
With the new customer personas and insights, it is time to refresh your brand’s narrative, positioning and messaging. This takes time, and requires understanding the customer and your operations. Does a change in customer behaviour require a change in access, delivery or fulfilment? If it does, that process has to be worked through together with the new positioning and key messages.
Once the new narrative is done, think through whether existing marketing channels are sufficient, or do new channels need to be evaluated? Regardless of new or existing, the measurements and triggers for operations have to be checked and updated. This will make the brand more responsive to customers.
Finally, after a period of time spent experimenting and executing, pick the actions and behaviours that worked best, and scale them.
We are Brand Utility is a business consultancy. We work with brands in the corporate, professional services, retail, travel and technology spaces.
We offer strategy and tactics to support growth outcomes - revenue, scale, regional expansion and market entry – for our clients.
Areas of support include:
Strategic communications: Approach to market, brand concept and map, positioning, messaging, story and narrative, thought leadership
Marketing: Campaign/programme planning, story-based marketing execution, digital marketing, community amplification, content planning and production, go-to-market execution
Lead generation and growth marketing: Digital advertising, social media advertising, social commerce, e-commerce
Integration of marketing with business operations: We plan and execute as a marketing and/or PR lead for your brand
Discover more about our services at our website.
Photo by Afif Kusuma on Unsplash
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