With consumers now expecting more from brands in everything from stances on social justice initiatives to customer service, data privacy, and more, it’s no wonder that 85% of business buyers believe that the experience a company provides is as important as its product or service.
It’s clear that the incredible ease of researching solutions online has forever changed the B2B buyer journey. And as buyers follow their own paths and rely on sales team interaction less and less, how your brand resonates with your target audience has become more important than ever to their decision-making process.
If you’re carving out a competitive niche for a new brand or seeking to grow brand affinity with a core customer base, meeting these evolving consumer attitudes head-on can be both a challenge and an impetus for your success. As you navigate the intersection of brand and demand, BrandAction Agency offers our simple framework for evaluating your brand (or any brand) from the inside out.
The ability to leverage a brand effectively requires having a realistic understanding of your customers, your competition, your company’s personality, and the context in which it operates — which we feel are the four areas most essential to determining the essence of your brand.
With a bit of internal reflection and research in each area, you’ll be well on your way to identifying and confidently claiming your unique market position. Only then can you begin to create stronger connections with customers that generate demand every step of the way.
Ready to dive deeper? Follow our guide below and consider how your customers, competition, company and context are all interrelated to your ultimate success.
Look inside
Achieving a meaningful brand begins from within. Ask yourself, your leadership and your employees: Who are we today? Who do we want to be tomorrow? What’s our vision? What are our values? What makes us different? What do we want to stand for in the minds of customers?
Look around
Get to know your customers and prospects. Listen to industry experts and people in adjacent fields. Know exactly what sets you apart from the competition and keep talking and listening until you find it. In addition to confirming what you already know, you might learn something new or find an unexplored path that creates room for brand growth.
Confirm and test
Once you’ve found what seems like your brand’s perfect self, it’s time to confirm it. Is your brand authentic? Does it ring true, both for your people and your customers? This is when you go back and ask more questions and listen more closely than before.
Encourage buy-in
Once you’ve identified a believable and meaningful brand, it’s time to plant enthusiasm and gain support from individuals at every corner of the company, and at every level. With buy-in from your stakeholders, you can leverage this momentum into aligning your brand and demand generation efforts.
Converse and empower
Your resonant, differentiated brand is now a platform for more compelling and personalized storytelling, more engaging customer dialogues, and, with all that, improved marketing performance.
Your ongoing task is to empower employees and customers alike to define, uphold and become advocates for your brand. Communicate and seek feedback, ask why your brand matters and where it’s succeeding and where it could stand to improve. Meet them where they are, on the channels they use every day. Speak with them in their language. And give them the tools they need to trust your voice over all others.
At BrandAction Agency, we live and love branding. If you need an expert hand in building or rebuilding your brand (and you want to pave the way for greater marketing ROI), we’re always a click away.
