Creating Brand Conversations

Marketing has changed more in the last few years than I’d venture to say it did in a decade or two before.  In the not-too-distant past, traditional B2B brand marketing worked in a world without the internet, where buyers had fewer sources of information and your company could somewhat control the message. Over the last few years buying habits have shifted and much is being written about this new “buyers’ journey”. 

For CMO’s and your sales and marketing teams, the impact is clear. Through social media and the internet, buyers are now typically 70+% of the way through the buying cycle before they initially reach out to your company to talk with a sales representative.  In many scenarios, companies are mired in the 1 in 3 syndrome, where they continually find themselves one of three possible solutions in the mind of the consumer.  Marketing has new and ever widening arsenal of tools at their disposal.  Big data and sophisticated analytics tools augmented with integrated inbound and outbound platforms and marketing automation tools are powering marketing decisions.  Content marketing, viral marketing, segmentation, personas, measurements are all in play.  Yet for all these tools and new methods, one thing seems to be continually missed and undervalued and continues to negatively impact many companies.   

To succeed in this online social paradigm, your marketing must understand the information your buyers value and then deliver that information in a way that is easy for them to access and consume, at the right points in the journey and their relationship with your company. When that message and point of view aligns with their needs, and speaks in the right voice, to the right audience, at the right stage of the buyer’s journey, you create “brand conversations”. And as a result, you establish the right brand promise and thereby drive demand for your products and not just leads.   Yet, studies show that over 50% of marketing content and sales conversations are not relevant to the customer.  And more than 70% of marketing content isn’t relevant to sales teams and channels.  With all these tools, all this technology and all this data, how can there be such a huge communication gap? 

Beyond all the technology, all the process – companies need to create a thoughtful customer communication framework to close this widening gap.  Marketing needs to stop utilizing descriptive communications only talking about their company, products, solutions and platform with wordy, generic and anecdotal conversations – verbal or written. Instead they need to start using more persuasive language with the customer will find useful answering the questions on why to consider your company, why change, why now backed with clear, ,relevant, differentiated and provable content and discussion. 

Welcome to the new branding world. Brand and brand message is more important than ever. But it is not about colors and designs, snappy tag lines and outbound communications. It is about a point of view expressed by engaging in conversations with buyers.  It is information that is valuable, timely, sometimes even entertaining – white papers, videos, case studies, research, pictures and online interaction and comments. Along with your sales and marketing teams, get out and talk with your customers and prospects and have your marketing teams look around your market and adjacent markets. You can learn much on how to structure your branding conversations in today’s social media-dominated world. Do it with a sense of urgency; the new Buyers’ Journey is real and impacting you now, whether you realize it or not.