Branding is a crucial part of business these days. Back when brands only existed in advertisements it was good to have a proper brand strategy. Nowadays when brands have to interact with people on social media, it is necessary to have a proper brand strategy. There are many signs which can signal a need for serious thought about changing the direction or creating direction for your brand strategy. If you are experiencing any of the following, you know what to do.

1) Your response rate is low

Whenever a company runs a marketing campaign they always focus on what type of a response they will get. When your brand strategy is too old or boring people will stop responding to it. This is the easiest to measure when doing online or social media marketing, since these marketing medium have tools which can measure the exact audience participation for marketing campaigns.

2) Your sales are stagnating

Sales should naturally keep growing. If the sales aren’t going down but aren’t going up either it means you are becoming a boring brand. A good brand can take a company to new heights, a stagnating brand can cost the company a lot.

3) New customers are heading elsewhere

This is a very important sign. There is a vast difference between old customers and new customers. Old customers might be people who have already become loyal to the brand. Coca Cola, for example, has a lot of loyal customers. Even if their brand strategy stagnates many people are likely to keep drinking coke. What is a true measure of current brand strategy is what the new customers are consuming. If all the kids are drinking other brands then they will keep drinking those other brands when they grow up.

4) You don’t get social media interactions

When it comes to social media you shouldn’t be counting social media followers as a metric for success, you should be counting social media interactions. When a brand is fun and interesting it will have a lot of people tweeting at it and talking about it. When this doesn’t happen you need to rethink your brand strategy.

5) New entrants are popping up

This isn’t a sign that your brand strategy is bad, this is just a sign that you need to invest more in brand strategy. Branding is the ultimate shield from new entrants and the ultimate weapon against senior competitors because it is purely emotional. Brand loyalty isn’t based on rational thinking; it is based on associating with a brand. So if you invest in your brand strategy no new entrants will be a threat.

6) It has been a long time

At the minimum a business should do a serious study of their brand’s direction at least two times a year. The business and marketing environment changes every few months; it is important to check one’s own direction after every few months, otherwise you risk being left behind or even getting blindsided by competition.