BRANDING AND MARKETING ARE TWO OF THE MOST OVER-USED AND LEAST UNDERSTOOD words in the world of business. Often, they are used interchangeably, with the user oblivious to the difference between the two. This happens most often when “brand” is used as a verb – a doing word. Once people start talking about branding activities, you can often assume they’re talking about marketing. And vice versa.
So, let’s start at the beginning.
Marketing: finds buyers and sells products to them.
Branding: makes fans out of those who buy.
MARKETING IS DEFINED AS THE MANAGEMENT OF ACTIVITIES that takes goods and services from the concept stage through to the consumer’s hands.
The four Ps are a bit of a cliché in the world of marketing, but I believe they remain valid:
In my experience, product development, price and place (distribution) sit at the heart of most businesses. They are generally managed by the boss, or bosses. Promotion tends to end up as the main task of many marketing departments. I believe it is in the context of promotion (advertising, public relations, corporate affairs and media liaison) that most people understand marketing.
The relevance of the four Ps approach is that it looks at marketing in context. It says that the promotion aspect of marketing will only be effective if it is tightly aligned to what is going on in the other parts of the business. In other words: It’s no good promoting your product in national newspapers, if you’re only distributing the product in Chicago! Equally, it’s no good to talk about your product, or price it in the luxury category, if it falls apart easily and is actually imported on the cheap.
Therefore, in large corporations, while the marketing executives may end up dealing largely with promotional and communication functions, they are nonetheless very much part of the core executive team. Promotional work will only ever be effective, in the long term, when marketing is operating at the heart of the business.
So, what does marketing actually entail?
Marketing is the collection of activities undertaken by your company to make a sale.
Marketing activities include every aspect of communication throughout the sales process – from the stores (or other retail channels) in which you choose to place your product to the way you package that product and communicate with consumers before, during and after the sale itself.
Note: If you run a service-based company, the four Ps are still very relevant. You may not offer your product in a retail store, but you will certainly be distributing your service through certain channels.
So, the easiest way to think about developing a marketing plan is to refer to the four Ps. Turn each heading into a question that needs to be answered, and then set about answering the questions. Your answers define your marketing plan. Once you have broad answers, you need to dig into the finer details of how you will make these answers real.
PRODUCT
PRICE
PLACE
PROMOTION
Tip: If you are unsure how to go about answering the above questions, refer to the Business Model Can- vas exercise you completed in Stage 2. You’ll find the answers there.
As you can clearly see, marketing involves a series of very clear activities. It differs fundamentally from branding, which is more about the quality of the experiences you are delivering to customers. When we talk about branding, we are talking about the idea of a brand promise – a commitment from the company to provide a very specific quality of experience to customers, business partners, members of the media and the society within which it operates.
SIX SIMPLE STEPS TO CREATING A COMPANY IDENTITY
MARKETING AGENCIES CHARGE A FORTUNE TO CREATE corporate and company identities, and for good reason. This identity plays a crucial role in marketing, brand identity and sales.
While the approach taken by marketing agencies is extensive, and expensive, primarily because it involves multiple creative teams, it can in fact be replicated by a business of any size.
Here are the six key requirements of a compelling company identity:
As discussed in the business strategy section of this book and online course, your core purpose should be clear to you and should exist in written form.
We’ve already talked about the value proposition, and hopefully by this stage you will have this written down. If not, what are you waiting for?
Use your core purpose and value proposition to write or revise your company profile into a single page that includes the services/product your business offers, and how customers can access these.
Now create a single sentence that articulates the value proposition and the core purpose. Use this as your strap line – the text that goes underneath your logo.
Does your old logo fit the new version of your business? If not, commission a logo that encapsulates the spirit of the new business and one that your customers will respond to positively.
In the digital age, brochures don’t even have to be printed. You can simply email them if you don’t have the time or budget to print them.
Use the colors of your logo as the palette to create a website, a business card and for the look and feel of a one-page brochure that tells existing and prospective clients what you do.
Remember: The details of a corporate or company identity can (and should) evolve over time. The results of the above process don’t matter nearly as much as the fact that you go through the process and think about every step along the way.
Should you have a budget, I highly recommend you seek the counsel of an experienced brand strategist. However, don’t get trapped by the idea that the process should halt or fail without a big budget. There are many online marketplaces for digital agencies and marketing freelancers, such as fiverr.com, where you can find professional yet affordable freelancers on the internet.
There are also tools that allow someone without design experience to create a logo and a basic corporate identity package. Try canva.com and tailorbrands.com, for instance, to see just how accessible graphic design has become.
TO THINK OF YOUR BUSINESS AS A BRAND, you need to think in terms of the experience that people have when they:
– buy from you;
– use your products;
– sell you supplies or services;
– see your advertising; and
– talk to, or otherwise interact with, your people.
The emotional force of all these experiences results in your brand value. When a lot of people feel genuine passion for your product, you’re a high-value brand. And high-value brands are very clear about the nature of the promise they are making to the market.
Think of Apple, Ferrari, Coca-Cola, Facebook, Google, and Red Bull. These brands have passionate fans across the world. These fans love the products, of course, but they are also emotionally committed to, and enthusiastic about, the entire experience. Apple fans, for example, love their iPhones and iPods, but they also love the iStore and the legend of Steve Jobs.
When you write a brand strategy, you will be referring to a lot of the ideas, personal values and core purpose that we discussed in Stage 1. If this thinking is already done and threaded into the structure of your business, then much of your branding work is already done. All you need to do is write it down.
If, however, your business has never gone through these processes, branding becomes a bit of a dark art. In this paradigm, companies are forced to approach branding as a creative exercise, where they (hopefully) invent cool phrases and ad campaigns to create an artificial image of an organization. This approach can have short- term success, but a lack of a genuine core purpose generally catches up with a business in the end.
The bottom line of branding, as I see it, is this: Brand value can best be improved and nurtured by paying detailed, ongoing attention to every other aspect of the business, from its core purpose, through to the quality of the product and the way it goes about communicating with the world at large. Get all these right, and branding takes care of itself.
THIS SHOULD GO WITHOUT SAYING, BUT I’LL SAY IT ANYWAY: We live in the world of connectivity. Clients want to find a company or service provider that cares about what they care about too. They are looking for a trusted advisor, not just a product-pusher. They want a friend who educates them and nurtures their relationship because they themselves are as worthy as their wallet.
In this context, your website can deliver a lot. It is a wonderful way to attract, nurture and retain client relationships. Research statistics from companies, such as Forrester and CEB (now Gartner), say customers will be 57% ready to buy by the time they contact a service-provider. Research from Serius Decisions, a global Business-to-Business research firm, claims that 67% of the buyer’s journey is now done digitally. Their first step is likely to be an online search to find a solution or service provider. If your company does not provide for this buyer journey process, you should start thinking about how to address the issue by getting online in the right way – or about going home! The content on your website must form part of the client’s decision-making process in this crucial pre-contact phase.
The combination of an informative professional website and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system is particularly powerful, allowing you to increase your lead generation and conversions significantly.
Remember, a well put-together website tells a big story and is critical for marketing in today’s world of business, as well as for creating the brand experience that you want customers to reach out to first.
THREE SIMPLE THINGS YOU CAN DO – RIGHT NOW – TO IMPROVE YOUR WEBSITE
Why do people come to your website for the first time? To check you out! They want to see if your company is trustworthy i.e. whether it is able to deliver and meet their need.
As they land on your website, they are assessing these things, often instinctively. The first points of assessment are the words and images on your pages. Poor writing, spelling mistakes, bad layout, and low-quality images are all big turn-offs. They send a clear message. They say: “this company can’t be bothered with the basics.” Having a company website with shoddy content is like going to a big corporate meeting in your pajamas without showering. Don’t do it!
If you need help getting your website content right, go and find it. If you need to pay for a writer, there are plenty of them available, online and offline, to do the work.
A blog is a category of articles or posts that you can publish on your website. Running a blog is a way for you to communicate your thoughts and ideas, as well as educational information about your product/service, including industry-specific information that can be useful to your audience. A blog can also serve as a discussion board with your customers, facilitating continued engagement.
A blog differs from regular website content in that blog content is intended to talk about wide- ranging things. A blog is intended to reveal the writer’s personality and their personal reflections on big and small matters. Formal website content, on the other hand, is designed to communicate information strictly, and sparingly.
Blogs work because they create space for relationships to grow with customers – at the reader’s pace.
We’ve already discussed how useful it can be to ask your customers to give you a written testimonial after having used your product or service. This can be placed on your website and other marketing material. If they are committed clients, why not also ask them to allow you to record a video testimonial?
You’ll be amazed how much customers who love your company will do for you if you simply ask them. So, pick up the phone and ask three of your best customers to be part of your video testimonial.
Record, and post the video to your website.
