Branding is the story.

A brand goes beyond colors and a logo. It is how you, your product or service, and the company make people feel when they engage with you. Think of the brand as the roof of a house. If the roof is leaking or faulty, it damages everything beneath it.

Brand elements

Several blocks must be considered when building a brand. Each one requires attention in its own time. People typically go straight to colors and logos, but that’s a mistake. Focus first on what makes you unique and why that’s important to your customers.

Brand architecture

Returning to the house. You must decide how to structure it if you have multiple products or services. For example, my house is Harris Ventures Group LLC, and I have a house of brands → Warrior Unleashed, HVG Executive Solutions, and (of course) The Gap Dēmĭstəfīed.

Branded house: All products and services share the same look and feel and may be distinguished by color or iconography.

Hybrid or Sub-brand: Some items share the same brand, while others are meant to have a unique identity. This can happen when a branded house acquires a company whose brand equity they want to preserve.

Endorsed brands: Products or services associated with a parent company but positioned separately.

House of brands: The products and services have a unique identity, target markets, and messaging separate from one another.

Marketing sells the story.

The word marketing covers a lot of territory. It’s a method to amplify the brand, build awareness, and create value in the customer's mind.

Traditional marketing frameworks

Traditional marketing frameworks were designed to help companies evaluate how to appeal to the marketplace. No framework is magical. The magic comes from carefully contemplating what falls into each category and why.

The 4 P’s +1 (5P’s) → Product, Price, Promotion, Place, People

7 Pillars → 5P’s + Packing, Positioning

3 C’s → Customer, Competition, Company

Marketing funnels attract and convert your ideal customers

The ultimate goal of marketing is to 1) make your ideal customer aware of you, your brand, and your products or services; 2) create value in the consumer's mind.

Before you start, complete these foundational tasks:

• Identify your target audience

• Define your unique value proposition

• Determine the best channels to reach your target (omnichannel versus multi-channel)

💡 Check the archive and select branding and marketing for relevant editions.

At the top of the funnel, you create awareness and get the prospect to engage. Your message should go through channels your ideal customer will most likely engage with. For example, my ideal customers are typically on LinkedIn or in private online communities.

Where are yours?

The following are some ways to build awareness. Remember that it can take 7-10 touches before a prospect interacts with your content.

• Advertising

• Social media posts

• User Generated Content (UGC)

• Speaking

• Podcasts

• Professional organizations

• Online communities

• Lead magnets

• Direct mail (i.e., snail mail)

The middle of the funnel is your time to shine. You’ve captured their attention and must build on their interest. While building awareness, you may have shared an insightful carousel on LinkedIn that urged them to visit your website. They want to learn more, so offer them a case study or a free course to engage deeper.

Demonstrate your unique value proposition and why their life will be better after working with you. The prospect is looking for a reason to say ‘no.’ Don’t give them one. Your job is to further convince them you are the premier choice.

Depending on the industry, you may spend days to months at this stage. Physical products may take two days to two weeks to consider the purchase. A coaching client may spend one to five weeks weighing an investment. A consulting client might take six months to make a decision.

Have enough content in your arsenal for the average conversion time for your industry.

You’ve won their business at the bottom of the funnel, so now it’s time to win their trust. When you do this well, they will become repeat clients and advocates for you. They will also become another channel to bring others to the top of your funnel.

Turn them into a raving fan.

Collect testimonials to use as social proof to support your top-of-funnel efforts. Even though there is a bottom of the funnel, a pipeline runs back to the top. Always keep the lines of communication open with your loyalists and ask them for referrals.

Communication tells the story.

In large organizations, these are typically not the same people. Sometimes, they are headed by the same person, VP of Marketing and Communications, but they will have two separate teams. This is because marketing and communications have different mandates with different desired outcomes. I see this often in K-12 schools, where the two disciplines are combined, and as a result, many objectives aren’t met.

Seven C’s of Communications

• Clear

• Concise

• Concrete

• Connect

• Coherent

• Complete

• Continuous

Communication Channels

There are multiple ways to reach your audience. There are communication strategies for crisis, change management, sharing information, moving people to action, required by law, and so on. These have different processes and outcomes than marketing. Generally, people who do communications won’t feel comfortable marketing and asking for money. And people who do marketing won’t feel comfortable oversharing information.

When communication goes wrong

The appropriate communication strategy depends on the situation and the audience. Getting the message right but to the wrong group is as bad as the wrong message to the right group.

Wink Smart Hub is one of my favorite case studies on poor communication strategy. In May 2020, it started a monthly subscription for all its devices. The flaw in this strategy is that it impacted existing owners who had never paid a subscription. Not only did Wink mandate existing users start paying for the new subscription, but none of their devices would work if they didn’t.

And how did they choose to communicate this to their loyal customers?

Twitter.

And then winter came.

I was a customer who owned a device for five years when this happened. And sure enough, on that day, they bricked all of my devices. They lost thousands of customers, including myself, who switched to other (and better) options. Wink is still in business but at the cost of its brand equity.

Marketing Communications (MarCom) is the plot twist you didn’t see coming.

Marketing communication involves combining multiple marketing channels. There are MarCom departments and professionals. Although communication is in the title, classic communication, as described above, doesn’t fall into their bucket. They drop the marketing assets or communications into the appropriate channels in the correct formats.

Working across all brands, products, and services, they will create an integrated strategy and help coordinate:

• Development of marketing assets and collateral

• Ad buying

• Print and shipping of materials

• Press releases (not the content, but the distribution)

• Website management

• Digital media management

For example, as a product manager, I worked with a MarCom coordinator to source vendors or internally design marketing collateral. That coordinator then moved the project through the process and into the proper channels. They directed the traffic so my content didn’t overlap or contradict other assets going into the same channels. They ensured the brand standard was adhered to and that all copy made sense.