By Peter L. Getman, Principal Brand Director MicroArts

If your brand is enjoying a lucrative brand strategy, it’s no secret to your competitors. Rest assured they are busily trying to improve upon it, commoditize it or just plain copy it.

Before they do this, or at least as they do this—protect your brand position. There are many strategies to do so. Here is one brand strategy to consider with four common directions to take:

1. Stay put.
   Don’t do anything. Typically this would be the right answer if you believe that your competitor’s move into your lucrative brand strategy is not sustainable. Or if you believe their ability to deliver upon the brand strategy will quickly fail.
2. Move upstream.
   Launch a more premium product/service offering surrounding your brand. Depending on the market, this premium offering may come in the form of a new product/service to the existing one. Alternatively, you may simply reposition the current brand to be more premium. This move would ideally reposition your brand with a unique value proposition that can not (easily) be replicated. A brand can become more premium by boosting performance, ease of use, functional benefits, ROI or emotional value associated with your brand (ex; peace of mind).
3. Move downstream.
   Keep the current product/service as is and launch a scaled down version of the current product/service that reduces the cost to the consumer, thus offering a more economical solution. If you do move downstream it is vital you are able to attract an entirely new market segment. Most innovators I’ve worked with have a passion for pioneering the next big idea, so a move downstream is usually what happens after they’ve sold out.
4. Do both.
   Often times, the right strategy is to do both, move upstream and move down stream and bookend the current product/service. In this case, it’s important that the brand’s repositioned value is targeting three clear markets and therefore tapping three distinct revenue streams with very little overlap.

Often times, where your brand is on the product life cycle curve will dictate the value of what strategy you deploy. Remember, this curve is bell-shaped and moving from an early introduction market, to a growth market, to a mature market at the top of the bell curve and then moving down into a declining market. For example, it may make sense to move upstream with your brand value in both introduction and growth markets. Whereby the right brand strategy is to do both in a mature market when the market size is maximized. Alternatively in a declining market, a move downstream can extend the revenues for your brand over time giving your team room to launch a new innovation and properly brand it.

Wow, this was a thick post. I should probably plot this on a fancy graph.

Still not sure what your next move should be? Confused by all the stream references? Swing by the barn and we’ll determine the best way to protect your brand’s position.