Three "Blind" Reasons Cause Brands Hard To Breakthrough

Every brand has its own way of success, but in the long run, not every brand can breakthrough itself to success over and over time in every new competition.  Probably, "want to be success" is the trap to limit brand growth and innovation. 

Most brands only stay at the product branding stage, instead of add additional great value on the brand.  In order to breakthrough, brands should not only adjust their tactical strategies but also upgrade brand value and thinking.

What reasons cause brands hard to breakthrough?

Reason One: Blind Confident About Themselves

The biggest obstruct of brand breakthrough is that brands always feel too confident about themselves.  

Brands like to blindly confident about their products and service. When they achieve a big marketing goal such as win the NO.1 sales in certain channel or a certain category, they feel super good about themselves. However, brands are painful to breakthrough to a larger market or to market in other channels. 

The main reason behind the blind confidence is brands didn't find the right reason cause the success sales achievement. Many brands didn't really think about and understand the real buying motivation from customers. Therefore, they always heavily focus on one channel or one category.

For example, some fashion brands have very good sale volume. These brands are more likely to think customers love their fashion style. However, many customers buy their clothes are not because they really like those dresses but because their clothes are cheap. Customers won't regret if they throw their clothes one day.

Therefore, ignore customer buying motivation is a common mistake that many brands have. If brands want to have a breakthrough, they need to figure out the customer pain points and customer motivation.

Reason Two: Blind Follow New Marketing Trends

Many brands like to follow up "new marketing trends", then they hope those new trends to help the brand to achieve a greater result. For example, in the past two years,  co-branding, cross promotion, search marketing, digital marketing, social marketing are very popular marketing trends. 

However, do those new marketing strategies can really benefit your brand? Can those strategies really help brand to breakthrough successfully? 

Following up a certain trend often reflects the anxiety of a brand. Brands hope to use those new trending strategies to solve brand marketing problems. 

Brands should seriously think about their own marketing motivation or promotion goals before applying new trending strategies. Blindly follow up new trends usually cost a lot money, but receive low return.

If brands want to increase sales, they need to focus on how to increase conversion rate. If brands want to increase awareness,  they need to concentrate on how to increase customer perception. No matter what, different brands face different situations and require different breakthrough strategies.

Reason Three: Blind Expand Product Lines

Establishing sub-brands and expanding new product lines are common ways to break through a brand. On the brand side, new product line can help brand to reach more potential customers by meeting different customer needs. 

However, many brands don't consider the applicability of their own conditions when expanding their product lines. Can this new product line survive in the competition? Will customer accept your new products? 

Many brands only follow up the hot trends and copy other's product layout. This is equivalent to losing their own brand equity accumulation.

For example, Banana Republic owns Gap and Old Navy.  Both Gap and Old Navy are new fashion product lines, and they target on different customer groups. However, if Banana Republic wants to start to sell skin care product, will customer accept it and buy it?

Therefore, if brand want to expand a new product line, they need to make those product lines are relevant to the brand core product style. And before deciding to expand new product line, brands can do some customer research or market survey to figure out whether people accept your new product. 

Overall

If brands want to break through, they need:

• Understand customer buying motivation
• Think of brand marketing goals, and use appropriate strategies to promote the brand
• Make sure new product line relevant to the core brand product style

At the end, not limiting your brand is the best way to breakthrough.