Brand innovation is something only a few businesses can achieve. It involves the willingness to change and adapt to trends and technologies while adding something special to the company. Branding is essential because it provides an accurate image of the company’s products and services and allows customers to label these businesses as trustworthy easily. A great example of such an organization includes Chipotle, the restaurant that’s now introducing autonomous cooking assistants, AI, and real-time updates.
Defining brand innovation can be challenging because companies have different goals and views. Finding the perfect blend requires the business to configure its structures and processes, analyze the offer of its products and services, and channel its experience through brand representation .
Some of the most prominent companies show how different branding is. For example, Microsoft’s innovations align with the company’s value, Amazon’s innovations leveraged new products and offerings, and Costco’s private label sourced many of its products from other manufacturers.
Regardless, you must know the steps toward brand innovation for your business, and here are some tips on how to achieve them.
Learn to anticipate
Companies fight the most against their competition when it comes to expecting the next trend. Although few are successful in keeping up while others are turning up late with something relevant, the never-ending race of being the first in the industry is quite tiring.
But learning to anticipate and adapt is a must, and you can do it with a little effort. The most basic project you can do is to analyze the historic view of your data and predict a particular occurrence. From this point on, you might be able to guess what should be coming up next. But that’s not enough. You also need to have a team that specializes in following trends and disruptions that might become opportunities in the industry so that you can be one of the first to approach them.
Anticipating customer needs depending on your stats and the trends is doable as long as you keep a straightforward but risky attitude. Luckily for you, Gen Z has made marketing easy. As a corporation, you only have to create memes , and your social media will become the gold mine that will provide you with the most valuable information.
Focus on values
Focusing on values rather than profit is your best choice as a manager. Core values lay the foundation for what the company treasures the most. These aspects will make customers get closer to you as a business and view you more humanly, which is beneficial for your company.
For example, you could follow the sustainability trend and become a greener company. However, you need to be careful and avoid greenwashing, which is a fake approach for some businesses to act as environmentally friendly. If you truly want to target another audience and become a better organization, you must care about the environment and add sustainability as one of the essential core values.
There are many ways in which you can do this. First, audit your business and learn what should be improved. Then, you can create a sustainability policy (that everyone around the company needs to abide by) and then get to work. To comply with these policies, most businesses have started to recycle collectively or use sustainable materials in their manufacturing processes. You can also rent or hire a baler to reduce waste collection and manage your waste more efficiently.
Optimize more
Optimization is one of the best strategies you can approach for long-term brand innovation. Starting from SEO optimization to product manufacturing, this process helps you identify what represents the greatest opportunity for your business to evolve.
The optimization process for innovation usually includes a few steps, such as the following:
- Idea screening happens when you find and pursue an idea in its early state by compelling human needs and looking for a quick and actionable direction for your vision to become real;
- Concept testing and development is the stage where your new products are created to grow portfolio sales and build brand image;
- Market testing is essential for driving reliable insight into the product you created through the development cycle;
SEO optimization is also crucial for your brand. When people enter your website, they should leave as loyal customers, and this can be achieved by optimizing your website. This means you need to make it faster, better-looking, with easy-to-u nderstand UX, and provide customer support that clients can rely on.
Scale your innovation strategy
It’s not enough to create a good strategy for your brand; you also need to scale it and ensure it’s reliable in the long run or if it needs some adjustments on the way. Here are some scaling tips you may want to follow:
- Build an innovation network for both internal and external tasks. Nurturing an innovation culture will help your brand to be always prepared to face specific challenges;
- Develop solid processes and systems that help track success and productivity. This step allows you to address the creation, development, execution, and measurement of future ideas;
- Evaluate the outcome. Whether you’re successful or not in your innovative strategy, you must evaluate it. This way, you’ll get valuable information for benchmarking the company’s outcome;
Your innovative brand strategy must always be different, but it would be best if it could follow similar steps. For this to happen, you need to create a company culture that’s fit for frequent changes and can handle any sudden adaptations of your products and services. Know that even if you make mistakes in the process, these have the power to help your company grow.
Bottom line
Brand innovation is something many businesses wish for. Unfortunately, building it takes time, patience, and many resources, but it’s ultimately worth it. Building a trustworthy brand can ensure you streamlined revenue, an advantage over the competition, and a good loyal customer base. Regardless, don’t forget to add a little bit of personality to your brand to make it unique and exclusive.
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