5 Secrets to Building a Brand that Stands the Test of Time

What causes a brand to die? Brands that have been around since I was a kid are slowly fading into oblivion (see you later, AOL). Some go out in an explosion of bad press. Others lose to new competition when their industry is disrupted (Blockbuster, we miss you). Related: Brand building 101—An 8-step brand development strategy Why do some brands endure when others fail? Beyond establishing product/market fit, I believe there are five reasons why these businesses are able to stay in, well, business. Use these as a guideline to evaluate your own brand and to build something that lasts. 1. Keep the Unrelenting Why at the forefront 90% of startups fail. 90%. That is wild. Sometimes, personal growth speakers justify failure by comparing your brand to a baseball player. You may have heard the axiom, "Even the best baseball players fail 70% of the time." But from the 19,021 players who comprise the history of major league baseball, here's an exhaustive list of players with a career failure rate of 90%. Batting averages: Joe Neale — 0.086 Mike Jordan (not that one) — 0.096 That's it. And it's 0.01%. The baseball axiom won't save our bacon here. Not even the worst baseball players fail as often as startups do. Startups don't fail because the people running them aren't intelligent. They don't even fail because their ideas suck. A huge reason they fail is because they lose sight of the Unrelenting Why that drove them to start the business in the first place. What's the Unrelenting Why? It's the singular purpose that drove you to create your brand in the first place. It's the one word or phrase that gets your engine running. For example, at Leverage, our one-word purpose is Amplify. We exist to help innovative brands get their message & products to as many people as possible. Now, when the daily grind and nitty-gritty details of running a business take their toll, you have a guiding light to help you make decisions and stay the course. Always keep the core intention of why you started the business at the forefront of your mind. Some brands do this and still fail... but no brand succeeds without it. 2. Drive company-wide commitment to your purpose It's important to have an Unrelenting Why, but that alone won't guarantee your success. So, how do the successes differentiate themselves from the failures? One way is to make sure each and every team member knows exactly why your company exists. This is an everyday exercise. It cannot be a fleeting commitment for a quarter or two. Businesses can quickly lose focus on their core intention. This is especially true for employees on the front line. And since the front line is continually interacting with the customer, when those employees fail to execute the core intention, so will the company. That's when you lose your unique voice in the marketplace. To keep that from happening, here are three practical ways to remind your team of your Why. Hard-code it into your processes. If you're delegating a mission-critical task, be sure the process for completing that task aligns with your Why. If it's not an obvious connection, make it so. You can't assume your employees or team members already care about it as much as you do. Make it part of the company vernacular. Use it in meetings. Post it in Slack. Hang it above the water fountain. Simply put: Give your team constant reminders of the Why. Use it in your sales pitches. Don't be afraid to share your Why with customers. If you promise to do things consistent with your Why, and your team doesn't deliver accordingly, you haven't done your job in keeping the Why at the forefront. 3. Put the right people in the right places At one of my companies, we had a team member who was sort of good at a variety of tasks. We tried putting him in leadership roles and implementation roles, but regardless of where we tried to place him, he wasn't able to get the job done. Finally, we realized... we were setting him up to fail. So, we analyzed his core abilities and strengths, then created a specialized role in which he could thrive. He's still working for us today. You can imagine what a drain it is when one team member is in the wrong place. But when you have several, it's almost too much to overcome. One of your most important jobs as a leader is to make sure the team is positioned correctly. Don't overlook or neglect the importance of putting the right people in the right places. 4. Have continuous dialogue with your customers At this point, if you: have followed the first three tips have a well-situated team with your Why tattooed on their foreheads (so to speak) are still having issues getting your brand off the ground ...you might have a listening problem. So, hear me out. You have to be willing to listen to what your customers want and pay attention to how they act, so you can create products they'll actually pay for. This can be harder than just sending out a survey. Customers might tell you they want something, then proceed to give you no money for it. I know this because it's happened to us before—and here's how we solved it. In our case, we created test versions of different products to see which ones our customers bought the most. It took more time and money than running with a single version, but at the end of the test, we had a product we knew people would actually buy. In my opinion, that's worth the extra effort. 5. Consider coaching or consulting Get outside eyes on your situation by bringing in a business coach or consultant. You have to find someone who not only has the knowledge you don't... but will push you to accomplish what you don't believe you can. They need to speak to your life and business, and you need to be coachable—that is, willing to accept their advice and try it. This is one reason why we offer our employees a membership to a mastermind group or industry site of their choosing. We believe that, to stick around, we must always be learning. Key takeaway There's no guarantee in business. After all, we now know that 90% of startups fail. So, what must you do to become the brand you want to be? You have to act differently than most companies act. You have to think differently than most companies think. These five secrets will give you a head start as you steer the ship towards the destination you seek. Is it time to transform the brand you have into the brand you need? Check out our webinar with David Brier, author of Brand Intervention.