Does Your Brand Have a Strategic Plan?

If you are reading this, you are somewhere in the real estate ecosystem – either part of an MLS, a REALTORS® Association, a large brokerage, or a technology firm that serves one of those personas. We work with some of these personas on strategy, we work with some on story, we all of them on state.

Strategy, Story, and State are business terms that are bantered around a lot. Saying the words has no meaning unless you are able to contextualize them within your own business. That process of contextualization is work that needs to be done by businesses every year. Most companies have some process for strategic planning. If they have a great marketing leader, they are telling their story well, and if their management team is on their game, they are operating in a way that optimizes around the state of the business environment that they face. If you need fresh problem solving ideas in any of these areas, you call WAV Group to help you fix it (I hope ☺).

We have the benefit of working with some great brands in our industry. Great brands lead to great problems. We call brands ‘great’ because they trigger something emotional in our hearts and trigger confidence in our minds. The ability to trigger emotions and confidence are earned. They can be earned organically over time, or they can be crafted intentionally. So we ask our clients two questions:

A) What does your brand mean to the people you serve?
B) What is your brand strategy for 2016?

Before you begin to think creatively about answers to these questions, I want you to try this exercise.

1. Look for the document on your computer that outlines your brand meaning (this is usually brand research), and the plan that shows the key messages for 2016 – (this is usually the brand story that guides your marketing department). If you do not have these documents on your computer, you have failed the exam/

2. Ask the leaders in your company for similar documents. Does anyone in the company have the brand research or the brand story for 2016? If not, then the entire leadership team has failed.

These types of strategic documents are vital to a business. They are vital to leadership. They are vital to growth. Sure, you can live without them. But you will not realize greatness. Your brand will be static rather than agile. That’s okay. Your train will slug down the tracks for another year that will be up or down, and the year after that you will rinse and repeat, again, and again. People will come and go and your brand will be shaped by the incremental outcomes of the natural touch points that exist.

Beware of the threat
Have you watched new brands come out of nowhere? Those are brands with a strategy. They know what their story is and everyone in their company tells it. The brand touches their clearly identified customers with a drumbeat that is structured and intentional. Great brands explode in the competitive landscape and everyone is talking about them. Everyone is watching them. Everyone is listening to them. Everyone starts retelling their story and it’s the same. These unicorn brands only emerge when the existing competitors in a space are asleep. If you are asleep, you are at risk. You have a choice to be the brand, the hunter. Or you can wander around and be the hunted.

High 5 in 2016
If you want to have a break away year, go get it! Just because the market is anticipated to be flat does not mean that you need to accept it. Put some energy into your brand and crush your competitors.

WAV Group is not a branding agency, but we work with them. We support agencies with research and discovery. We work along side them to deliver executional strategy. We implement brand stories with WAV Group Communications, technology system integrations, marketing integration, training integration, hiring, and support.