Why a great brand strategy makes you so attractive.

And how to ask your customers out on a date

It should be fairly straightforward. To achieve more enquiries and sales, all you need to do is hit The Big Red Marketing Button. Bob’s your uncle. More marketing is always the answer to more sales — everyone knows that. Ask anyone who’s ever watched The Apprentice.

Except you’re not spending Lord Sugar’s reddies, you’re spending your own and if you’re the type of business that needs to keep an eye on the budgets - so that makes all of us - then growing your sales pipeline through targeted marketing alone is always going to be an arduous experience.

And that’s especially true if you don’t first have an intelligent brand strategy to lead the way.

There’s a great quote: “Marketing is like asking someone out on a date. Branding is the reason they say yes”. I wish I’d come up with that.

If you haven’t learned how to express and articulate your brand, there’s a good chance your message is going to sound muddled, look unfocused and lacking in any emotional resonance. All of which means your hard-fought marketing campaigns will have limited impact. Ergo, fewer sales.

According to Harvard professor Gerald Zaltman, “95% of our purchase decision making takes place in the subconscious mind. Emotions are what really drive purchasing behaviour, and decision making in general”.

Take trust, for example. Emotions don’t come much bigger or more influential than trust and without it, the business of selling becomes a whole lot harder.

Which brands do you trust?

Which begs the question, which brand would you trust? A brand with a scattered notion of who they are, what they sell and why it matters? Or one that has grasped its singularness, which lives and breathes it, in absolute lucidity, through everything they do, say and promise - on or offline? The answer’s kind of obvious when we frame it like that.

Would you do your own dentistry?

So, let’s presume you’re on board with the advantages of a killer brand strategy and your all-in on building a brand platform on which to construct your marketing strategy — what happens next? Is this a process that a business could do for themselves, even?

The tentitive answer is ‘yes’, they could have a go’, for sure. But, much like having a go at doing your own dentistry, it's never going to end well and it's an invariably, eye-wateringly painful process.

The value of brand rediscovery.

On the other hand, a properly-facilitated brand discovery programme is a powerful system for discussing, challenging and understanding your brand with renewed clarity and power. It’s a process that helps everyone unblock and clear away misconceptions and preconceived ideas.

It strips away all the old guff and baggage and allows its heart and soul to shine through. For both established brands, or box-fresh new ones. It just works.

Finding a way back to that visceral connection which ignited the initial, ‘big idea' behind the business is usually where we’ll find the answer: patiently waiting and hiding in plain sight. And it has to sit there and be patient because it’s probably been hanging about there for years on end whilst a stream of sales and marketing individuals daub their own marks on it, each one painting out the previous. Gradually, its spirit dwindles under a crusty shroud of pantone, typefaces and unread corporate literature - until it can be rediscovered.

A brand discovery programme is a proven, step by step process, which aims to build absolute clarity and focus on every aspect of your brand, along with the tools and brand strategy to develop irresistible connections with your customers. From this you can leverage powerful advantages over your competition. And it’s one of the most productive investments a business can make.

Brands - an exercise in collaboration

Great brand agencies don’t build brands for you — they build them with you.

So, If you want to create impact and stay ahead of the competition, make your brand an inseparable part of your business and learn how to simply and effectively express your unique brand to staff (present and future), customers, suppliers and future markets, we’d love to have that conversation. Get in touch.

First of all, check out how we used our Applied Brand Advantage Programme with a West Yorkshire-based estate agency who saw a rebranding strategy as more than just a change in identity - in effect a courageous move to position itself as a disruptive force in a conservative profession where it wanted to create a straightforward service based on honesty and integrity.

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