3 Ways to Keep Your Brand Relevant

It’s easy to lose perspective.

When you’re constantly in the midst of getting things done in your company, it’s hard to step back and consider other perspectives.

Like those of your customers.

And when you stop focusing on the customers’ perspectives, it’s easy to slip into irrelevancy.

Here are three ways to stay relevant:

1. Enter Existing Conversations in Your Customers’ Minds

Your marketing should take advantage of the problems potential customers face.

It should make those problems feel more intense. Then, it should position you to be the solution to those problems.

Marketing should enter the conversation that customers already have.

Not create a new one.

But there's something many companies miss when they try to enter the conversation:

Not every customer is at the same point in the conversation.

Some customers don't even know they have a problem. Some have just discovered their problem. Some are actively trying to find a solution. And some have long-standing relationships with you.

What these customers need to hear is very different.

Someone just getting into running needs to hear something different than someone who has been running for years.

And someone who's been running for years but has never heard of you needs to hear something different than a long-time customer.

In short, you need to be relevant to the conversation in two dimensions:

1. Where the customer is in their journey to solving a problem.

2. Where the customer is in their relationship with your company.

If you don't get those two pieces right, you end up trying to have a different conversation than the one in the customer's mind.

And that makes you irrelevant to the customers.

2. Don’t Rest on Loyalty

Distraction is customer loyalty’s kryptonite.

Customer loyalty happens when you become a customer’s default choice. You’ve proven yourself in the past, so they’re more likely to consider purchasing from you first. You become their go-to.

But when customers are constantly bombarded with new information, they’re distracted from thinking about you.

They start thinking about other things. Other companies will be grabbing their attention. And if they hold that attention, they can also be considered for purchase.

Distraction makes customers susceptible to new information. It can erode the loyalty you’ve worked hard to build.

And customers are more distracted than ever. They’re increasingly less likely to be loyal.

So, to remain relevant to loyal customers, don’t think of loyal customers as something you have that won’t go away. Instead, think of loyalty as a foot in the door. It puts you on their radar.

But you still have to compete with all of the other offers they get bombarded with.

You need to stay on their radar.

Loyalty isn’t a battle that’s won.

It’s something you have to constantly fight to maintain to be more relevant than everything else competing for your customers’ attention.

Loyalty gives you the upper hand. But it doesn’t win the battle.

3. Ask, “Who Do We Want Our Customers to Become?”

Who do you want your customers to become?

It’s the best question you can ask to keep yourself relevant to your customers.

The question comes from Michael Schrage, a research fellow at MIT’s Sloan School of Management.

It forces you to think about the future. It makes you think beyond what value you provide your customers. And it makes you ask how the customer who uses your product or service is changed by using it.

Every product or service has the potential to change a customer’s behavior.

Innovations don’t only change the business; they change the customers.

One example Schrage offers is Google: Google created impatient customers. Using Google’s search engine created customers who wanted easy access to information and wanted it fast.

It turned them into a different type of customer.

But it also did something else: it made them better customers of Google. Google was better equipped to serve impatient customers than its cluttered competitors like Yahoo and AltaVista.

This is the real power of the question: answering it can transform your customers into better customers for your business because nobody else can satisfy the customers they became as well as you.

So, ask, “Who do we want our customers to become?”

Then help them get there.

P.S. If you're struggling to stay relevant to your customers and need help implementing any of these strategies, just reply to this email.

As a branding and marketing strategist with 20 years of experience, I can help you transform your business to better serve your customers.