Whether you’re starting out or a highly seasoned corporate marketer, the sheer breadth of both challenge and choice facing the modern marketer is overwhelming. From working hard to make your brand matter, to tech stack dilemmas, to the host of options available in managing and merging brand and demand, there’s more than ever to consider.
In the journey of any business, game-changing decisions must be made—judgement calls related to a new product launch, an anticipated period of rapid growth, or the implementation of a new process or technology. And in today’s always-on environment, where we constantly meet the customer at their chosen point of engagement, these calls are coming in thick and fast.
Via a combination of business pressure and gut, you know when you’ve reached one of these critical junctions. But how do you react? It’s often difficult to know exactly how to make sure you’re doing what’s best for the business long term.
Above all, we know one thing for sure: a clear and compelling brand and customer experience are essential. At Fwd People, our purpose is to guide clients through these game-changing decisions and towards stated objectives, so that brands and businesses thrive.
The key: respond to challenge consistently
The challenges may differ between start-ups devising a brand strategy and traditional business structures looking to transform digital channels, but the approach to effective resolution is often strikingly similar.
1. Digital marketing as a driver
The first step is to take stock of marketing’s role. Put the marketing function front and center and inform strategy, rather than react to it. As the actor with the insight into buyer behaviors and the tools and technologies to capitalize on them, there’s a reason the CMO role has risen in prominence.
2. Building the Brand
Recent research by marketing agency Red C (reported here by eConsultancy) found that a brand’s familiarity was far more important in getting users to click than how highly it ranked in search results. This suggests that while search tactics and optimization are important, there’s no substitute for good, old fashioned brand building. Decisions are driven by emotion, wherever they’re made: a relevant, consistent brand is essential to success.
3. Creating Demand
Connecting brand to demand is a frequent stumbling block for a lot of marketers. How does brand strategy translate and sharpen into relevant, timely demand gen campaigns? Mapping user journeys according to personas, with relevant content, accurate timing and comprehensive measurement can be daunting. However, you just need to know the formula. At Fwd People, we work with clients to understand their challenges and create a brand to demand journey that meets their needs.
4. Investing in Insights
It seems obvious: know your customer. But it’s amazing how many brands haven’t done their due diligence or are working with outdated messaging. With so many channels available to customers, it’s critical to understand behavior and profile. In depth insights can be expensive, but they reap dividends in informing brand and digital strategy.
If money is tight, there are other ways to gather fresh insights. Simple technology (and your current customer base) can help with that. Use feedback plug-ins within your eCommerce platform or ‘straw poll’ communications managed through intuitive tools such as Survey Monkey. There’s no need to be fazed by collecting insights; you have the ability to gather and analyze data already. You just need a practical plan to do so.
Taking pride in the practicalities
You’re not alone in facing these challenges. These steps form a basis for navigating those game-changing decisions and targeting investments that will position your company above the noise and accelerate growth.
Whether you’re a start-up looking to make the first investment in brand, or an experienced marketer looking to implement a digital transformation, Fwd People is a brand building agency can help you build and implement a strategy that supports your unique goals.
We have a deep background in B2B, consumer, health care, and animal health marketing. Whether it’s helping our clients position a groundbreaking new product or completely revamping the digital strategy and execution of their website, this is the business we love. But we’re well aware of the fluff that infects the advertising world. We won’t sell you the vision without the brush strokes. We will help you make key decisions with a clear head and a plan for implementation. We take pride in the practicalities to build out hands-on, workable solutions for the next step of your business.
Carefully investing in brand and constantly optimizing operations are key to staying relevant. But faced with overwhelming choice and constant change, it can be difficult to know where to start. Get in touch to discuss how Fwd People can help you keep things simple.
