Sounds like cartoon commentary, doesn’t it? Picture a guy at a desk with a marketing sign above him, feet up talking on the phone. But branding and marketing is not fluffy, “designy” stuff. Branding and marketing is what makes the difference between a full pipeline of leads and an empty one.
So how can you get more committed to
branding and marketing?
1. Assess your website and sales materials.
Are they where they should be? If you’re not sure, get an evaluation from someone who knows. Most branding and marketing firms offer low-cost evaluations to help you get a perspective on this. It doesn’t obligate you to hire them to do other branding or marketing work, it just gives you an objective picture of how you stand up and what you could do to improve things.
2. Check out your competitors’ websites.
Have they updated their sites? Have they changed anything about what services they offer or how they offer them? Are they doing anything new that you should consider doing? Do their sites have lots of content that yours does not? What are their unique selling points? Is yours as strong? Is it clearly defined?
3. Now look at other industries.
Are there marketing or branding ideas or approaches you could apply to what you do? How do they demonstrate their expertise? Are there functions in their sites that could enhance yours? Sometimes the most valuable lessons are learned from poorly done sites. Deciding what not to do does often pave the road for what to do.
4. Be honest about what you bring to the market.
If your offering isn’t the best in its category or region, or different enough to stand out and make claims of superiority, it can be hard to market successfully. Some believe that no amount of marketing can fix an inferior business proposition. But often, it isn’t the best product or service that gets the most business, its the one that communicates its message the most clearly and effectively to its audience.
5. Plan out simple steps and don’t over do it.
Marketing pays off as a result of not only the effectiveness of its message, but also from consistency and repetition. If you create a marketing program that’s too complex to keep up with, so that as soon as you get busy you drop it, it’s not an effective marketing program. Doing less consistently is better than doing more erratically.
6. Be open to change.
Your marketing efforts and day-to-day operations should be integral to one another. If you find that something you do or offer is not working well for customers, don’t just market it differently, change it. What your customers tell you is valuable, so listen, encourage dialogue, and don’t dismiss what they tell you. Put stock in it and consider upgrading or changing what you’ve gotten negative feedback about.
7. Take action.
Now that you’ve assessed where you are, looked at other businesses and industries to compare yourself, made adjustments to make sure what your offer is the best it can be, planned out simple and consistent steps to market what you do, and considered making changes to your offering to make it more marketable, there’s only one thing left – take action. Don’t let things drop at the idea phase. The sales leads will only come once your ideas have been brought to fruition. After that, you can, indeed, put your feet up.
— Chris Quinn, principal and brand strategist
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