InsideScooper

by scott
on July 26, 2012
in Digital , Direct , Media , Strategic Planning
with no comments

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Don’t Sacrifice Sales for Your Brand

We’re an advertising and marketing agency with a focus on branding, so naturally all of us here are fans of creating a strong brand image. But we just started working with a global client (who shall remain nameless) that recently redesigned its collateral in an effort to drive brand awareness. The result: a consistent architecture and well-defined style guidelines, but marketing materials that don’t quite capture the attention of their audience and often fall short when it comes to promotional and sales initiatives.

Generally you hear marketers preaching not to sacrifice the brand to make the sale, but the reverse also holds true. You can have one of the most recognizable brands in the world, but if you can’t garner customer interest in your product or service, then as a marketer you haven’t done your job.

Awareness vs. sales

Brand awareness doesn’t always translate to high sales. Awareness is the first stage in this general set of customer funnel stages:

1. Awareness
2. Consideration
3. Intention
4. Purchase

Once potential customers become aware of your brand, they enter the consideration process. If they cannot decipher or do not connect with the message you are conveying to them, they will likely never move beyond this stage. So while you’re focusing on creating a strong brand, be sure you convey just what it is that brand stands for. That means clearly defining your company’s value proposition in your messaging, because if your brand doesn’t stand for something, it will be remembered for nothing.

The future of our unnamed client

Is our new client doomed to miss its sales goals? Certainly not. We see this as a great opportunity push the limits of their brand guidelines to create more compelling brochures, sales campaigns, direct mail pieces, etc. We won’t break the rules, but we will bend them in such a way to make their collateral and sales materials more impactful. And ultimately, our goal is to help the client gain the market share it rightfully deserves.

We’ll do this by taking the time to make each and every one of their promotions look like the big one customers won’t want to miss. We want customers to connect with the brand on a psychological and emotional level. So we’ll zero in on the company’s value proposition and make sure it’s injected into everything we create for them.

The moral of the story

Never forget that while you’re in the process of building your brand, what you’re really trying to do is build your business.  Because as much as we’d all love our brands to be household names, we want to make sure they’re accompanied by solid messaging that inspires people to buy into whatever it is we’re selling.