Brand action plans are designed to build awareness, and more critically, drive the consumer to act—whether it’s making a purchase or switching brands. This is no small task when you consider:
- Consumers are comfortable with their habits, and “happy enough” with what they have.
- Change can be perceived as having too many barriers and can prevent someone from taking that first step to trying something new.
- Decisions to switch can be perceived as having too high of a risk.
In the face of these factors, here are some guidelines to help you craft a brand action plan that works:
- Be clear on what your goals are for the plan. Are you looking to gain penetration, encourage switching from competitors, or deepen the relationship you have with current customers to encourage loyalty or trading-up?
- Know how much budget you can allocate for brand activities. This is key to ensuring that the expectation for your goals are realistic.
- Determine what need, occasion, or consumer moment you want to focus on. This is where a deep understanding of your target and their needs comes in. How do they articulate what they are looking for, and what is the brand’s potential to deliver? Customer journey profiles will help you optimize the way you position yourself to your potential customer.
Determine what need, occasion, or consumer moment you want to focus on. This is where a deep understanding of your target and their needs comes in.
- Understand who your target is and their motivations. This can go a long way towards determining what will appeal most when creating campaigns. Uncover as much as possible around your target’s habits and behaviors, what’s important to their lives, and most importantly, what significance your product has to them. How can you realistically connect to them in a way that would resonate?
- Be honest about what is really going to make customers take notice and do something different. Getting a read on how well your brand’s offering resonates with customers is essential.
Ultimately, you’ll need to measure the ROI of your plan. You can measure the activation impact across different event types, markets, and even in-store POS. It’s also important to consider not just the immediate effect of the brand’s action plan, but also customers’ brand perceptions and behavior down the road to determine if they are committed to your brand in the long run.
Looking to create an action plan for your brand?
