Despite what some might think, building a trusted and dependable brand is about far more than individual marketing campaigns or gimmicks. It only takes one regulatory fine, a report of unethical behaviour or a series of bad reviews for this trust to be broken and your reputation damaged – sometimes for good.
Evaluate your foundation
You, your teams and your partners need a unified understanding of what your brand stands for and its core set of messages.
Chances are, most people reading this haven’t asked questions about their brand in a while. It’s safe to say though, that your business and the wider industry will have evolved since the last time you did.
You might have new ambitions and values, or may need a slightly different set of messages that clearly define where your business is headed.
We always ask about the brand we’re representing from the outset – even if our scope of work is focused on ‘bottom of the funnel’ activity, such as Google Ad campaigns. We need to know what it stands for, its purpose, its tone of voice and what it values as this helps to ensure consistency across all channels.
Invest time in understanding your audience
The next commonly overlooked element of a marketing strategy is developing a crystal clear understanding of who the brand wants to communicate with and target.
People and businesses change. As does how they want to interact with their bank, accountant, insurance provider or wealth management firm. Therefore, your marketing has to change too.
Consider building or revisiting your client personas on a regular basis, as these map out customer pain points, challenges, and what they want from a company like yours. During this exercise you can also develop key messaging guides for each of these personas.
With this information you will better connect with your target audiences, on a level that resonates with them, and in a language they understand. The result is a much clearer and more accurate first impression, which hopefully then aligns to the brand you’re trying to create from the first section.
Building credible brand awareness
Armed with all of the above information, you can then deploy tactics with the sole purpose of positioning your business as the outright authority in your sector.
This isn’t a lead or sales generation exercise, this is about building a credible reputation and setting the right impression within your space. It relies on your brand finding opportunities to speak, whether as a business or through its key spokespeople, to help build strength and maintain a clear, undiluted, brand message.
So what does this look like, practically? This might involve thought leadership articles, featuring on podcasts, finding opportunities to join respected industry panels or creating valuable and helpful content to share. It’s about identifying the right opportunities for your experts to demonstrate their knowledge, based on what your target audience would respect. In turn this will set out a clear perception of your brand.
This process can’t be rushed and credibility isn’t built overnight. However, with every market paying more attention to who they are buying from and what these businesses stand for, it’s too important to overlook.
Are you meeting expectations?
No matter how good the marketing has been, the end result has to reflect the messages you’ve been championing. This not only means we need to be even more aware of how our services are being delivered, but how well we can respond to and handle the challenging moments – as well as the good.
The ongoing care is, where I believe, a company makes or breaks itself. It’s the best opportunity to deliver, or overdeliver, against the impressions formed during the marketing and sales phases – and can often be a deciding factor in whether a client chooses to continue their relationship with your brand.
In practice, the way we conduct and represent ourselves after a sale is made, should be a clear reflection of our brand’s commitment to its values. It’s not just about meeting expectations but exceeding them. This leads to people receiving the desired brand experiences which, hopefully, leads to long-lasting loyalty but also more forgiveness when we do drop the odd ball. After all, no one is perfect.
By Phil Kelsey commercial director at Tank and Warbox.