Effectively Conveying Your Brand—and Your Message

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

What is your brand and message, and why is this important? After 40 years running a business, I’ve learned the true core values of marketing and why it is critically important to any business success story. You must define and share your message, align your team, and stay in it for the long term. The following are several tips and examples to help you get there.

Content Marketing
One of today’s best marketing tools is content marketing, a term most know but few utilize well. It goes beyond sending a press release to announce you will be exhibiting at a show. Content marketing is taking part in and driving the industry conversation as an expert.

What does this mean?

You must focus on educating your prospects by providing solutions to their pain points. These are issues that are extremely challenging or create frustration and waste in their processes. This allows you and your team to become the leading recognized experts committed to solving problems. Problem-solvers are rewarded with business. If you focus on education, you don't have to "sell" to increase sales.

The Power of Branding
Branding means creating awareness about your company and/or product to differentiate your presence in the marketplace. Short-term thinking and expectations should not be applied here; branding is an ongoing, long-term process. Creating a solid company brand increases your product's value; you can charge more for your products and services, which pays for marketing and increases your profits.

How can we establish and measure branding?

Branding is measured not in the short term, but over years of dedication to building that brand. If I ask you to name a fast-food restaurant, for example, you will most likely say McDonald's, even if you don't eat there. McDonald’s has owned that space for many years, likely because the company advertises consistently over the long term. It achieved market saturation and remains at the top.

At one time, there was no such thing as fast food. At one time, there was only one McDonald’s restaurant. But the company discovered a niche and capitalized on it. The quickest way to own a brand in the marketplace is to find an opening where a name brand doesn't exist. What is your niche, and how can you position your message to demonstrate that you either offer something that no one else does, or you offer it better, smarter, faster, or more efficiently? Take the time to think about what your brand really is.

A simple measure of branding is the number of impressions into your target market. Remember that if your target markets are B2B, you will not have ever-growing numbers. A fixed number defines B2B markets. The measure, therefore, is not how many people saw your ad one time but the number of times your ad got in front of the right people in your market. In other words, you want each prospect to see your message as often as possible.

Of course, other measures come into play over time as well. You start to see your sales increase. You notice a higher demand for your products. More people contact you to do business. You are more recognized at trade shows...

Continue reading this article in the February 2024 issue of SMT007 Magazine.