When your brand is thinking of ways to improve its marketing it’s easy to think in large operatic terms. ‘Overhaul’, ‘evolution’, ‘back-to-basics’ – these buzz words might suggest a direction, but they could lack a specificity that might prove constructive. 

After all, your current marketing approach might not be as off-base as you think it is. Perhaps you only need to make a few small adjustments in order to allow it to reach its full potential. If this is true – that’s great, as it means that the work you need to put in will be much less than with the dramatic do-overs.

1. Your Tone of Voice

Maybe the problem as it stands is that what’s unique about your brand isn’t standing out. Consumers have so much choice in the current climate, and there has to be a reason that they opt for you over your competitors. You might offer lower prices, guarantee higher quality, or even something exclusive that they can’t get anywhere else – but how will they remember this? Your brand also needs personality, and developing a tone of voice that fits your brand without coming across as obnoxious can be difficult.

2. Observe It

In order to best understand what your marketing needs, perhaps you just need to have a more thorough understanding of the numbers behind it. API management software, for example, can help you get insight into which APIs are seeing the most traffic and which are falling behind, which can allow you to make differences accordingly. Other types of analytics can allow you a similar degree of knowledge into various types of marketing, and knowing that some marketing is more of a hit with audiences than others can help you to start understanding why.

3. Brand Consistency

This is similar to your tone of voice, but it has to do with brand recognition. An ultimate goal of many businesses is to reach a point where your customers are able to recognize your brand or content without necessarily seeing your logo – the McDonald’s color-scheme or the minimalist approach and 9:41 consistency with Apple. These aren’t factors that you’re going to be able to develop overnight, but having a clear and confident vision of your brand, what it offers, and what kind of aesthetic that it’s going for is something that can translate to your customers through your marketing.

4. Know Your Customers

When your marketing or your sales aren’t performing as well as you would like, it might feel easy to develop a sense of resentment towards your audiences – why choose the competitors over you? However, developing customer loyalty takes time, and part of it is understanding them to the point where you can begin to develop that trusting dynamic between you. If you don’t know what your customers want, you might make decisions that try to appeal to the masses or to the current trends and that could ultimately alienate them – marketing towards them directly might help them to feel heard and therefore appreciated.