How Does Branding Factor Into My Lead Generation Campaign?

Branding is all of the ways you establish an image of your company in your customers’ eyes. Unless, you plan on buying all your inbound leads from 3rd parties and marketplaces, you'll need to work on creating a brand for your business. It’s about the story, the people, the product and the offers. The way you tell your origin story on your website or when your sales and customer service staff interact with customers can make a big difference. The purpose of branding is to help your customers understand what you offer and how you’re different. It’s more than the USP or UVP (unique selling proposition or unique value proposition), it is the combination of all the ways you choose to communicate what you stand for. Think Patagonia, Starbucks, Disney, Apple, Tesla, Ben & Jerry’s, etc. These brands stand for something! It’s more than what they sell. In addition to your logo, corporate colors, a brand guide you can communicate your brand message through:

?●?????Your store environment and atmosphere

●?????How your staff treat customers

●?????How your staff dresses

●?????The products you carry

●?????The price you charge

●?????Product packaging

●?????Public relations

●?????Public speaking

●?????Direct mail

●?????Sponsorships

●?????Advertising

●?????Nonprofit and community partnerships

What your customers and prospects take away from all this shapes your brand. Storytelling is an opportunity to emotionally connect with your prospects. I must say, for many years I did not leverage my story or my business story. For me, it was all about generating lots of volume of leads for brands like Ford, Allstate, Home Advisor and many others. You see, Online Lead Generation campaigns managed by 3rd party agencies do not require you to tell a story. As a matter of fact, at one point we had over 1,200 live domains to run campaigns for multiple products and services. These were generic domain names without any branding. Our only job was to drive massive amounts of traffic to those Landing Pages, aka Offers. That’s it! That’s how I generated most of the leads for clients. But then our business began to evolve. We decided to take on more small businesses, nonprofits, and startups.

I quickly found out that simply driving traffic would not be enough to convert those clicks into leads. So I began to explore other ways of increasing conversions. I studied Storytelling, Neuromarketing, Design Thinking, Agile Marketing, Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), Influencer Marketing and Artificial Intelligence (AI). After years of applying all these methodologies to campaigns for SMB’s I came to the conclusion that the most effective and least costly way to move the needle is to elevate your business story. Director of the Center for Neuroeconomics Studies at Claremont Graduate University, Paul J. Zak, Ph.D., is the author of a study at Berkeley, where it was found that the brain produces a neurochemical called oxytocin—sometimes referred to as “the love hormone”—when people watch or hear a moving story. Oxytocin creates feelings of empathy and compassion, and higher levels of the hormone are shown to produce generosity and trust. Stories connect us with strangers.

The story you tell becomes the structure upon which your prospects and customers write their own. If people can see themselves in your hardships and triumphs, you’ve effectively cast them a role in the center of your brand’s story. I’ve always been fascinated by silent films. In particular, Mr. Bean and the 3 Stooges are my favorites. But when it comes to modern day stories, I think no one does it better than Marvel. The great Stan Lee started working in the family business, Timely Comics, in 1939. To think that some of the same characters and stories Stan created in that era are still popular with people today is amazing.

What are the elements of a good story? Generally, a narrative consists of:

●?????Exposition: characters, setting, and details that help the reader visualize the story

●?????Conflict: a crisis or tension point that may change the course of the character’s path

●?????Rising action: the lead-up to the climax

●?????Climax: the defeat, rebirth, or aha moment; the inception of something new

●?????Falling action: also called dénoument or resolution

EXERCISE: Creating Your Story

Answering your “why” needs to be a part of the exercise. You’re aiming to uncover the real reason that you do what you do. Understanding your why will make your story stronger and more compelling when you’re trying to sell your product or service. In Simon Sinek’s book, Start With Why, Sinek tells the origin story of Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs. When you look back at your life and all the things you’ve done, people you’ve met, places you’ve visited and lived in, you’ll likely find stories that make a connection to why you’re doing what you’re doing.

Write one using this formula:

We offer [PRODUCT/SERVICE] for [TARGET MARKET] to [VALUE PROPOSITION]. Unlike [THE ALTERNATIVE], we [KEY DIFFERENTIATOR].