Barriers to Branding Success

Everything that touches your brand affects it. How you market it, is the voice of your brand. Positioning is the stand you take. Community involvement is the heart of your brand. Brand perception is reality to your audience. How stake holders describe and talk about you has some impact on your brand standing and the perception factor. With all these influencers (and more that I haven’t mentioned) there are any number of barriers that affect your brand’s success.

Your job ( and a mighty big one) is to minimize any negative impact these influencers may have. Some of these are external and internal barriers. External barriers are situations like compliance issues and not keeping current with technology – this impacts productivity, dragging you down. Uninspired marketing addresses nothing and flies under the radar of your audience. Lousy service and union problems are massive barriers to your brand’s success.

Every day in business something pops up that challenges your brand. How you react to them or not, impacts the brand. Couple the stress of this with personal barriers. One would be your alertness. Depending on how you tackle everything, fatigue has a huge impact on your efforts. Family responsibilities are another influencer. Whether you have a positive or negative point of view is a barrier. Have you noticed that when you dwell on the negative, it seems to attract more negative things to you? Lack of education – upgrading is another barrier.

Barriers are a fact of life. How you plan for them and how you overcome them are the bench marks of a truly great brand. Don’t allow barriers to overwhelm you, and view their challenges as just another way to improve your overall performance. As I hurdle each one, I take pride in knowing I am in control. Surrendering to barriers is just the top of the spiral down.

A good exercise is to list your own external and internal barriers and develop a strategy to overcome and build on them.

Ed Roach

That last line sounds like advertising Michael. :)

I don't know if we can say an amateur logo will hurt business but it will certainly restrict a brand from being all it can be. We have all seen good companies with sad logos. My contention is how much better could they be doing if they address all the weak point with their brand. Brand image is certainly the place to start.

Thanks for commenting Michael.

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Michael

People don't realize how important Branding is. It definitely determines the success of the company. Buying a cheap logo off one of those outsourcing sites, or (even worse) making their own with Word and Clipart will really hurt their business in the end.

Thank goodness their are designers like me who do Branding and Web Design.

Aren't we all Christina. Thanks for commenting.

Christina

Great info from the article and conversation you have here. I'm learning.

Thank you for your comment James. I think their choice is not just based on the fact that they're branded, but that the brand stands for something positive in their desire for it.

Brand Power - that's called flying under the radar. If a business choses to ignore its brand the competition will define them.

You're right Vic, you have to stay on top of it. It should be part of your business strategy. Thanks for commenting.

Vik Tantry

The customer's perception is most important.. If they don't perceive the product as worh buying, you're doomed to failure. There are many factors that go into perception, such as advertising campaigns, quality of the product, service, availability of the product and third pary comments. Addressing these and other aspects will help make the customer perceive your product and brand in a favorable light. Your brand will become recognized eventually. Be careful. You have to maintain and improved all the qualities and traits that made your brand famous. Otherwise, people will remember your brand negatively.

brand power

Ya branding is very important and honestly in today's world everyone is too conscious about it, the strange thing is that we hardly discuss about it.

James Eduard

I really got a lot of knowledge from your blog post, mostly people are very cognizant about the brand. They really want to choose branded stuffs and I think branded stuffs have good quality. And one think more don't let the barriers to overwhelm you. Thanks for the great advise.

You've got it Steve. It is under the radar of many companies, mostly because their only understanding brand is that they think it is just the logo. But of course brand goes WAY beyond that. Ignorance can benefit those who compete against it.

I can see the glow form here :)

I can't say that I agree Automotive SEO. Marketing needs a story to tell. Branding reveals the differentiator in the positioning strategy. Taking a leadership role and exploiting it, gives marketing some thing very powerful to say beyond compelling graphics and slogans. Everyone has a brand whether they want one or not, so it is better to address your strengths and weaknesses up front prior to throwing marketing dollars at it. Without a brand strategy first, marketing is more or less playing follow the leader.

Maneesh, perception is reality in branding. Sometimes it may not be entirely true, but if that is the general perception, then something is wrong with the brand experience. Perception can be a serious barrier to success. Thank for commenting.

Steve Dresel

Great Advice! Branding is largely overlooked and seems to be rarely discussed online. Every successful Corporation has a successful brand, so moving over that "barrier" of how to expand and and evolve a successful small business should start with THE BRAND.

Penny Holowitz

They provided fresh angles on issues that I was already concerned about. The little light bulb over my head was working overtime.It was brilliant.

Automotive SEO

I think small businesses have to be careful about making branding the main focus of their marketing efforts. In the beginning, small businesses have to get a strong ROI from their marketing dollars. Sales and profits should be at the forefront. Branding in my opinion should only be a focus later as a supplement to a marketing plan.

Maneesh Rai

Well, as far as i know about branding, then what i experienced as the biggest barrier in branding is the human perception about your product, and the most important is the nature of your product,i mean is it adjustable with the changing competition in the market, how much big area it covers, i mean is it an open product,that is for every segment in the market.If yes then it would be very easy for you to make your product a brand with less but calculative efforts.