How to Use Your Brand Strategy to Revive Your Business After a Major Life Change

When things are smooth sail­ing, it’s easy to stay in focus, meet your KPI’s, keep the momen­tum going, and show up to your busi­ness with con­ta­gious ener­gy and commitment. 

But what hap­pens when life throws you a curve­ball and you lose momentum?

While we all try to keep busi­ness and per­son­al lives sep­a­rate, we know that major changes in our lives will impact how we run our business. 

As a com­pa­ny made up of mil­i­tary spous­es, we are inti­mate­ly acquaint­ed with these types of changes—ones that often hit us hard, forc­ing us to start all over in new states or coun­tries every few years. And yet, despite these chal­lenges, we persevere.

One of our team mem­bers recent­ly endured a chal­leng­ing pro­longed move, nat­u­ral­ly los­ing momen­tum as they wait­ed months to set­tle in their new home. Mov­ing is anoth­er job in itself—between nav­i­gat­ing inven­to­ry for house­hold goods (yes, that’s a thing—you have to inven­to­ry your home items and take tons of pic­tures), man­ag­ing pack-out and unload­ing, secur­ing new hous­ing, and tem­po­rary home­school­ing as your child is tran­si­tion­ing schools, you get a hot mess of con­fu­sion. But we keep going, adapt­ing, and learning. 

You may not be in the mil­i­tary or have fam­i­ly mem­bers who serve, but we know that at some point, life will throw you tough chal­lenges that affect your busi­ness. It might mean a com­plete piv­ot in your offer­ings, paus­ing oper­a­tions, or some­thing in between. 

When life hap­pens and we lose focus, we need a com­pass to guide us. And no, this is not your busi­ness plan. It’s your brand strat­e­gy. A brand strat­e­gy is not just a set of guide­lines; it’s a roadmap that defines how you com­mu­ni­cate and man­age the mean­ing behind your brand. It keeps us on track and you can even use your brand strat­e­gy to revive your brand after a major life change. 

How to use your brand strategy to revive your Business after a major life change

We believe in lead­ing by exam­ple, so as we hit some road­blocks post-move, we referred to our brand strat­e­gy to lead the way. But before we share some behind-the-scenes for our­selves, let’s dis­cuss the core ele­ments you need in your brand strat­e­gy document. 

5 Things Your Brand Strategy Document Needs 

Peo­ple often think of brand strat­e­gy as the visu­al direc­tion of your brand and mar­ket­ing as the pro­mo­tion of your brand. In real­i­ty, brand strat­e­gy serves as the com­pass that ulti­mate­ly directs your mar­ket­ing efforts. A brand strat­e­gy is a long-term plan you cre­ate to out­ma­neu­ver your competition. 

The terms brand, brand­ing, and brand strat­e­gy are often con­fused. We total­ly under­stand! They are thrown around a lot and some­times used like they are inter­change­able (they aren’t). 

Start with brand self-awareness:

One of the most impor­tant fac­tors in your brand strat­e­gy process is clar­i­ty and self-aware­ness. As you start or refine your brand strat­e­gy, begin with these core ele­ments to get you start­ed on the right path. 

• Who you are: Why do you exist beyond mak­ing mon­ey? How does your brand, prod­uct, or ser­vice seek to make an impact and why does it matter? 

• What makes you dif­fer­ent: What dif­fer­en­ti­ates you from oth­ers? What sets you apart in a sea of sameness? 

• Belong­ing: Think about how you will cre­ate a brand that aligns with your ide­al cus­tomer’s sense of belong­ing. How are you pro­vid­ing a prod­uct or ser­vice that aligns with their desires? 

Foun­da­tion ele­ments you need in your brand strategy:

Defin­ing your brand strat­e­gy will take time and can get com­plex depend­ing on your needs. We rec­om­mend start­ing small and build­ing your plan in phas­es. Here are some areas to con­sid­er includ­ing in your brand strat­e­gy document: 

1. Your pur­pose (why you exist beyond mak­ing money)

2. Brand val­ues

3. Mis­sion & vision 

4. Per­sua­sive & dis­sua­sive language 

5. Analy­sis of your competitors 

6. Insight on your con­sumers, clients, and customers 

7. Brand posi­tion­ing (how you will out­ma­neu­ver your competition) 

Don’t for­get, we have a FREE Brand Build­ing Starter Guide that you can down­load to guide you through the steps to build this document. 

And if the sound of cre­at­ing your brand strat­e­gy doc­u­ment sounds over­whelm­ing or scary—that’s nor­mal. Doing this whole process for your­self can be daunt­ing, and we’ve always found that our clients see a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive when work­ing with us rather than when they did it on their own. If you rather part­ner with us to co-col­lab­o­rate and devel­op your brand strat­e­gy, we’ve got you!

When we reviewed our brand strat­e­gy, we were very inten­tion­al. We did the same thing we do when host­ing a brand strat­e­gy ses­sion for our clients. The key was to remem­ber that we were doing this for the busi­ness, not just a per­son­al approach.

How We Ran Our Own Brand Strategy Session

Since we weren’t cre­at­ing a strat­e­gy from the start, we were able to nar­row our focus by refer­ring to our exist­ing strat­e­gy doc­u­ment we cre­at­ed inside Miro. We’ve done this enough to know the gaps we need­ed to revise (this is anoth­er rea­son it can be help­ful to work with some­one who has done this before!).

1. Dis­cuss Our Gaps and Chal­lenges: 
   We dis­cussed the gaps and chal­lenges that occurred in the busi­ness while we were in a mov­ing tran­si­tion. Since our goal was to increase pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and opti­mize our time, we nar­rowed our focus to 3 chal­lenges we need­ed to solve and wrote the oth­ers on a side­bar in our Miro board. 
   
   
2. Review Our Cur­rent Brand Strat­e­gy:
   Next, we focused on review­ing and recon­nect­ing. We spent 10 min­utes review­ing our exist­ing brand strat­e­gy. Each of us took notes on how our cur­rent brand strat­e­gy either helped or harmed our select­ed challenges. 
   
   
3. Eval­u­ate and Pri­or­i­tize The Changes Need­ed:
   Then, we came togeth­er to eval­u­ate what changes need­ed to be made. For any changes that affect­ed our ser­vices or offer­ings, we made sure to eval­u­ate how this would align with our audi­ence and poten­tial clients. We also con­sid­ered explor­ing new approach­es to solve exist­ing prob­lems.
    
4. Divide and Con­quer:
   To pre­vent com­mu­ni­ca­tion gaps, we divid­ed our tasks among our team while mit­i­gat­ing poten­tial pit­falls that could cause delays. Our strat­e­gy also allowed us to trust each oth­er in the process with­out need­ing fre­quent approvals.
   
   
5. Define Our Time­line:
   Our last step was to break down our due dates into small­er, more attain­able tasks so that we could move for­ward. Then, we man­age these tasks in our project man­age­ment software.

A brand strat­e­gy is an essen­tial doc­u­ment for any busi­ness. It is not some­thing you write out once when you start your busi­ness and nev­er revis­it. Brand strate­gies can shift and evolve the longer you are in busi­ness, and you will need to adjust to sup­port your new direction. 

When we dri­ve in a new city and we don’t know the area, we rely on GPS to guide us. Imag­ine launch­ing a new prod­uct or ser­vice for your brand, but you don’t adapt your brand strat­e­gy to sup­port that. How will you know where to go? How much time are you will­ing to lose try­ing to fig­ure things out with­out a brand compass?

We saved a lot of grief and mon­ey by hav­ing a brand strat­e­gy that helped us recon­nect and evolve past this sea­son. And while we wish you don’t endure tough busi­ness sea­sons, we hope that imple­ment­ing these prac­tices will help you in the future.