I recently had a conversation with a sales director of a New Jersey-based emerging tech firm. He asked me whether or not the company should be paying attention to branding. Here’s what I told him:
Branding is a distillation – and often a visualization (think: logos) – of what your clients value about working with you. A good brand sets you apart from the crowd in your prospects’ minds (this is also known as your brand’s strategic positioning).
There are several components to having a successful brand. The first is knowing who your ideal customer is, and what THEY want – not what you want to sell them. Check out my ideal customer blog post for a quick overview and 6 questions you can ask to uncover who your ideal customer really is. When you’re going through this discovery process, it helps to have input from your current customers. Read Letting Your Customers Have Their Say for more on this. Your sales team should also have input – but recognize their feedback might have some bias to it.
You then need to distill all this information and create a compelling core message – one that will resonate with your ideal clients because it addresses their pain points and motivations. You can learn more about core messages in the post: Powerful Marketing Tactics: Creating a Compelling Core Message.
Once you have gone through this thinking process and you know who your ideal clients are, and what your core messages are, then you can do the fun, creative things like tag line and logo development. At that point, you may also want to run some image-building ads. And you certainly want to build the messaging into your current marketing and sales efforts.
How are you building your company’s brand? Share your ideas in our Comments section.
