What is a Brand Funnel Expert?

Brand Funnel describes the process through which a lasting brand identity is formed that carries a business through a number of years in respect to it's marketing efforts.

In my previous article I touched a little on strategy and more specifically, brand funnel. So what, then is a brand funnel expert and what do they do?

The first thing to note is that people who work in this particular niche are, invariably bloody expensive. There is however, a reason for that. Unfortunately this will proclude many smaller companies from obtaining the services of one or more brand funnel/strategist/consultants.

And that's a good thing. I promise.

This sort of work is high level, a lot goes into the work that they do because it is extensive as well as exhaustive. The reason for that is because anyone who deals with brand funnel is focussed entirely on companies that have established brands, essentially then a brand funnel expert is at a fundamental level, a rebrand specialist.

So you can see how for a small company, having someone handling your brand funnel (sounds naughty), isn't desireable as you will likely want to have full control over your own brand's vision.

So what is it that these people do, exactly. The short answer is, lots. The longer version is something like this - a brand strategist will:

• Provide a full and comprehensive evaluation of both your current brand and it's marketing to date as well as measure how your customers flow through their journey with you.
• Get to the core of who you are as a business, and establish how that can be taken forward in a coherent way, for example a moderate shift in target demographic in line with social movements.
• Make recommendations about any internal culture changes that need to happen to accomodate a shift in brand.
• Show your current marketing pipeline versus what you could or perhaps, should look like.
• Demonstrate how an updated brand image and ethos could potentially look.
• Demonstrate how the new funnel, culture, marketing ethos and brand image can combine to spin into one coherent marketing message and set of much tighter brand guidelines.
• Make suggestions as to where you target your key demographics - tv, radio, youtube, billboards, transport hubs etc etc.
• Put together a full package of your new brand, it's guidelines, stationary templates, and various marketing materials in line with the vision of the strategist and the brand guidelines. You will also be furnished with a marketing strategy to keep your marketing on-message and coherent through the course of the lifetime of the new brand.

So all that sounds very grand, but what does it all mean? A brand funnel expert measures the journey of your customers, where the snags are and looks at how they can improve the process by adding value to the brand and it's marketing efforts. This will then be compared against your competitors.

Why would you want any of that? Any improvement in your funnel will result improved sales. It will also result in a much improved brand value, which adds value to the company's sale value. It will also likely scare the crap out of your competitors, which is always fun to watch.

Brand Funnel consultation works like anything in the marketing solar system, you spend money with people who have the right expertise to help make you more money, and whilst the in-cost for this process is high, you have to remember that the cost will be a one-off and a rebrand can be expected to last for anywhere between 5 and 10 years, so you have to look at how that cost works out in terms of sales revenue increases over that period.

So there you have it, in a nutshell these people are high level rebrand specialists that work in the bigger company sector to help smooth out the marketing and customer funnel creases in order to make more money, more efficiently and look better doing it.