Why You NEED a Business Plan for Your Brand—and Where to Start
It’s pretty much common knowledge these days: having a business plan for your brand will help you not only set goals, but it’ll also help you reach your goals successfully. In fact, the MOST successful brands out there very likely have very detailed business plans. They may have rewritten their business plans several times throughout the course of their business. They may even be creating a new business plan right this very moment!
Point being: to even think about reaching brand and business success—you NEED a business plan.
But before we delve into exactly how to develop your all-encompassing business plan to build up your brand, let’s take a look at why many new business startups tend to miss the mark, and sadly, trip themselves before they can even get out of the gate.
Why Startups Fail
Startups most often fail due to a lack of demand for their product or service. Makes sense, right? If there’s no market for people to buy the product you produce or no reason to purchase the service you provide, then why would any customer spend money at your company? How will your company make a profit?
Happy New Year—Now What? SMART Brand Goals
2014 is YOUR year! This is the year you’re going to ramp up your brand and your business and really show the world your stuff. You’ve probably received a bunch of email offers for New Year business specials—but where do you even start? The next few weeks we’ll be exploring everything you need (SMART goals, a business plan, a marketing plan, and a brand plan) to take your business to the next level this year and GROW in 2014!
After all, 2014 will bring many new opportunities, and if you expect your brand to get better traction than it did in 2013, you’ve got to MAKE that happen. Even if 2013 was an incredibly good year for you (which I hope it was!), you’ll still want to improve your business and your brand in 2014. That’s the real key to success: continual growth and improvement.
So, how can you guarantee continual growth and improvement with your brand in the New Year (and every year to come)? Well, it all comes down to setting goals. (And some goals are just SMARTer than others.)
Can’t Miss Brands: The 4 Most Influential Brands of 2013
Whether completely over-the-top, controversial or just plain marketing genius, we’ve seen a lot of brands creating a lot of buzz over the last year. Brand advertising now comes at us from every possible angle: online, on TV and in print. Because of that fact, if you set out to advertise your brand in this day and age, you’d better have something pretty incredible to offer, lest be left in the marketing dust.
Truth is, properly branded products most often make it to the shelves of our local stores and become household names. But influential branding isn’t always about big names and corporate money. Sometimes, even little brands can make a BIG impact in the marketplace.
Today we’re going to take a look at the brands of 2013 that stood out as most memorable, despite all obstacles.
This Year’s Most Controversial Ads
Advertising your brand can be tricky sometimes. When it comes to big brands with hefty bank accounts whose main goal is to grab people’s attention at any cost, advertising has become downright silly and even offensive. From prankvertising to catvertising (using cats to advertise your brand—trust me, it’s a thing) to print ads you simply can’t believe someone had the guts to think up, brands are certainly getting more and more risqué with advertising.
Today we’re going to take a look at (arguably) some of the most disturbing and controversial ads of 2012-2013.
DISCLAIMER: Linked content may be too disturbing for some viewers. Please proceed to linked content with caution.
Tongue in Cheek: Holiday Commercials We Just Can’t Forget
For decades now, big brands have spent big bucks to deliver some unique (and sometimes cheeky) advertising content to our TV screens in hopes we’ll return the favor by shopping at their stores or buying their products during the busiest shopping season of the year.
But, in today’s day and age, when 86% of the general public skips TV advertisements, brands have become much more hard-pressed to capture the attention of their audiences as their commercials zoom by at triple speed. Read: if you’re not memorable, your holiday advertisement may never be seen at all. On that note, let’s get into the holiday spirit and take a look at some of the most memorable holiday commercials we’ve seen—and let’s see if we can’t learn a thing or two from those brands about smart advertising.
Prankvertising: Worth the Risk for Your Brand? (Part 2)
By now, you should know what prankvertising is and why big brands use it to garner attention. Yes, it’s true that prankvertising really gets people’s attention. After all, if you were (unknowingly) part of a prank that involved a violent scene of two men fighting each other in an elevator and subsequently watched one of those men slip a noose around the other’s neck, pulling it tight, you’d probably remember that pretty well, wouldn’t you?
That’s exactly what the marketing firm Thinkmodo was banking on when they orchestrated this stunt to promote the 2013 movie “Dead Man Down.” But, when we consider the outlandish nature of a prank such as this, the real question becomes, how far is too far when it comes to scaring the daylights out of people in the name of advertising?
Are the costs really worth the potential negative effects of prankvertising? Big brands with big bank accounts might have the flexibility to hire a team of lawyers, should a lawsuit pop up as the result of a misguided prank, but what about a small business?