The thing about your brand is that if you don’t figure it out, someone else will do it for you.
That was my main takeaway as I was skimming through this Forbes article the other day. Sure, it takes time, effort, and even a little soul-searching, but you want to be the one setting the tone and story of your brand. You should be the one deciding what your company is all about, and how you’re going to share that with the world.
At our Channel Pitch events, our presenting vendors sit down afterward with me and our team to review the quantitative and qualitative feedback they received from the audience. We go over five key aspects of their brand and product: awareness, customer need, differentiation, enablement, and engagement.
Many vendors – some of whom are new start-ups and others who have been in market for a while have never had such an opportunity – say this is one of the most valuable parts of Pitch. They walk away with a much clearer picture of their brand and product’s strengths and opportunity areas, and therefore a better idea of where to focus their limited resources. It helps them to know that they should stop addressing X, and focus on figuring out Y.
And while all five areas are important, I’d argue that if two come back as “off”, you should tackle these first. (These also happen to be the ones tech companies overlook most often). Customer need and differentiation are what I refer to as the “foundation of the house” questions. Because these speak to your brand and product positioning, or, how you position your brand and product in your customers’ minds.
In my decades of marketing experience, this is the place where companies most often have challenges. It feels much more productive to jump to creating tangible products like a website or sales collateral than it is to have a conceptual marketing strategy discussion. (Right?!) Yet it is one of the most critical steps in building (or re-invigorating) your business because it makes everything else you do faster, easier, and more effective.
“May you have a strong foundation when the winds of change shift…and may you be forever young.” – Bob Dylan
A good foundation is just good business sense.
Look at building your positioning as building the foundation of the house. Just like an actual home, no matter how nice things look from the outside, if the cornerstone is crumbling, nothing else matters.
I often get asked how I joined an MSP as head of Marketing and Sales and re-ignited double-digit growth after years of stagnation. It was a holistic team initiative with many moving parts but I started with an evaluation of the core value proposition – its strengths, challenges, and opportunity areas. And its re-write impacted everythingelse we did.
So, here are my three reasons why you should get your brand story evaluated ASAP…Read more on channelprogram.com or, for the Cliff Notes version, watch the 40-second video on my Channel Explorer profile.
