Hello!
Here in Scotland, our six-week national trauma is over. It involved intense learning, discipline, patience, tough, deep soul searching, long days, late nights, early mornings, intense negotiations, and lots of questioning about the meaning of life. But today, the kids head back to school. We did it.
With the schools starting, we turn to the next big challenge for many of our clients, something that makes the school holidays feel like a walk in the park: Annual planning time!
The Annual Operating Plan, emmm, planning, like Christmas, is getting earlier every year. But as you kick off this year's annual operating plan, you're likely overlooking your most potent financial lever - your brand.
Of course, that is precisely what you'd expect me to say. I'm a brand consultant, so a brand strategy hammer can batter down every business problem nail. That's not always the case, but here are three examples of where we've seen a robust case for being deeper into your AOP approach.
We're not saying that any of this is easy, but AOP season can be reminiscent of the 18th century Russian court, with intrigue, jostling for power, and horse-trading happening in various side rooms. But if you can make a case for elevating the brand, it can help transform your business.
Rethinking Revenue Projections: The Brand Premium Effect
We all know that building a strong brand takes time, so traditional revenue forecasting often ignores the financial impact of brand strength.
But taking that time to build a strong brand allows you to do one of two things: increase market share or increase margins. No matter what approach you choose, it directly impacts top-line growth.
Customer Acquisition Costs: A Brand-Centric Approach
CAC is typically viewed as a marketing efficiency metric. If your performance marketing hits the right people at the right point in their buying cycle, then the CAC is lower.
This does, though, ignore the brand impact. A strong brand radiates trust and shields customers from the risk of making the wrong choice. If your brand is trusted and helps the customer understand what you offer compared to the competition, that significantly lowers acquisition costs.
Talent Acquisition and Retention: The Employer Brand Dividend
HR budgets rarely account for the financial impact of employer branding, but it's vital for the long-term success of any business. The value of developing a solid employer brand far outweighs the costs. Over our time at Good, we've worked with HR teams to reduce hiring costs, increase retention, and improve productivity by clearly articulating the brand's vision, mission and values to the business's most important asset.
These are the big three for me when bringing the brand to AOP. It is a transformative approach and helps raise a brand's perception in a business beyond the sceptical view that it's the domain of the "colouring-in department" to being a vital lever to your financial success.
What else? We pushed out another podcast. We're doing a series where we take a look at the types of queries that we've been getting over the last year. First up? How should you update your brand? That is a great question. Have a listen to how we'd address this thorny topic.
Chris has been breaking LinkedIn with his posts. He's annoyed about X, previously Twitter. He's got thoughts on the Canadian Women's Football Team. He's doing all the thinking.
We also posted a new case study on our website about the work we've been doing with 365 Retail Markets. We're so proud of this work, and we hope that you can see that when you look at the case study.
Do you know what's more fun than reading about the work we do? Working with us. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find us (email's a good start), maybe you'll hire the Good team.
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