- Irwin Soh
Why Branding Can Be Your Trump Card During COVID-19 Period
COVID-19 has disrupted the economy and many industries, causing uncertain times for your business. Although almost two-thirds of businesses in Singapore reported being negatively affected, some have actually flourished.
In 2020, Southeast Asian ride-hailing and food delivery firm, Grab grew its net revenue by 70%.
Singapore-based logistics startup, Ninja Van secured additional $279 million in fresh funding as it continues to scale its operations in six Southeast Asian countries.
Internationally, American multinational technology company, Amazon sees a 37% increase in earnings by end of third-quarter 2020.
It is clear that there are opportunities and confidence from investors in the market despite the reported poor outlook in economy.
Your Competitors’ Apprehensive Stance
While adopting a wait and see approach at this juncture may seem wise at the moment. It may actually represent lost opportunities for your business growth. The concept is simple. With you and your competitors adopting the same wait and see approach, both businesses will more likely to stay status quo. However, if you are able elevate your business such as a rebrand, the branding effects of increased mindshare, loyalty, authenticity and distinctiveness will be of a greater degree. The impact will only increased further when synergised with your marketing efforts.
Priming Your Business For Success
Your business inevitably slows down when COVID-19 hits and while it is definitely not good from a business perspective, it opens up some bandwidth for you to do an internal analysis on your business. There may be certain areas which you have flagged before but because of operations demands, you had to shelf the plans on improving those areas. Rather than pondering on the "what ifs”, this situation could represent a valuable opportunity for you to reassess and make the necessary changes to improve your business.
For example, over the course of time, you considered increasing the perceived value of your products and services. You may have thought of doing a rebrand but did not have the time or resources to do so. With the downtime force upon your business due to COVID-19, you are able to focus a portion of time and resources to invest into a rebrand to work towards increasing the perceived value of your products and service.
A rebrand will also help you to analyse your current business foundations and reset them according to your vision, values and target audience. Any missteps made since you started the business can be rectified, helping you refocus with a better purpose. It will primed your business for better success while the economy recovers in a post COVID-19 world.
Strategising Your Next Move
Your resources are scarce and valuable, especially during these tough times. It is especially challenging and important in making the right move to ensure your resources are well invested into future-proofing your business. Whichever moves that you have decided, it is always wise to reach out to an experienced branding consultant to clear up any doubts before investing into the approach you have in mind.
Feel free to contact us and we can identify together if branding is the trump card that you have been looking for, coffee is on us!
Photos by Victor He, Roland Samuel, Mesh on Unsplash.