The best product or service in the world does not guarantee success alone – that’s where superior marketing comes in, as routeone discovers
If the end goal of a business is to sell a product or service, good branding and marketing is an essential channel to achieving those sales.
Branding establishes the value in a company, and a targeted approach to business promotion ensures that its product reaches the right audience and delivers valuable engagement.
routeone speaks with some professional consultants to discover the secrets to building up a brand image that delivers what you need.
Understand your customers
“Within the context of the coach and bus sector, a successful business understands the importance of connecting with its customers,” says Stuart Brooks, Managing Director of Blackbird Communications and former Head of PR at the Institute of the Motor Industry.
Blackbird works with customers such as Imperial Engineering and TransMach within the sector. Stuart emphasises the importance of placement in order to maximise brand exposure.
“Investing in effective communication channels should be a fundamental part of any brand strategy, which should also align with commercial objectives,” he says. An example is communicating fare rises in an empathetic way, while including improvements as demonstrating added value. This can make customers understand and respect a company’s position. “It takes time to build a powerful brand, which is essentially based on its reputation. It’s not just a question of throwing money at an advertising campaign and hoping for the best.”
As a specialist PR agency within six core areas of UK business, Blackbird offers all potential clients a unique credentials deck and a pre-meeting checklist. It listens to challenges and objectives and asks questions to enable a thorough and bespoke proposal, realistic in its ambition and cost-effective in its execution. “A retainer agreement with Blackbird is the best value option for clients,” Stuart says. “This instils a long-term partnership approach, which gives us the time and scope to plan ongoing activity effectively, monitor progress and identify and leverage media and commercial opportunities. The majority of our clients outsource their whole PR and marketing function to Blackbird.”
Placement is everything
Claire Rawlinson founded media consultancy We Are Buzz in 2011 after serving as Commercial Director at First Manchester. She and her team bring experience from many different businesses over the years, including Blackpool Transport, System One Travelcards, CPT Scotland and Album to name a few. It has provided everything from interim marketing support to designing timetables.
“We start with a base of marketing planning, strategy, design, digital and social, and plug in as we go,” Claire explains. “We get asked to support all kinds from clients – sometimes they simply want an outside opinion on something.”
According to Claire, placement is one of the most valuable ways to ensure a powerful brand presence. “You can create the most beautiful, engaging, majority pleasing brand in the world. But if no one sees it, what is the point?”
“A brand is so much more than just the corporate logo. It is a reflection of a company’s commitment or promise to its customers that embodies its ethos and values”
According to a 2007 estimate by one marketing company, the average person is exposed to 5,000 online ads per day and that figure now ranges anywhere between 6,000 and 10,000 ads. With ad blocking software a popular deterrent, “it’s more important than ever to create a perfect mix of targeted media,” Claire adds.
Before the lockdown, We Are Buzz engaged in business workshops, carried out under its Buzz Alchemy branch. A workshop explores a customer’s marketing or business objectives with tailored activities with each business. Partnership with Pearson Talent Lens, which provides independent team and individual profiling using the Golden Personality Profiler, is used in the consultancy’s Queen Bee workshop to help teams work out how they fit and how they can work better together. “We set real goals and objectives and we follow these up. We hate to think that, though everyone enjoys the workshop, they then don’t go on to use what they learn. We can get quite annoying, but that’s our job – time and money is precious and sometimes we all need reminders to use that investment.”
Buzz Alchemy offers three levels of packages to businesses under growth, design and organisation. It will soon be fully accessible online.
Be personal
When it comes to content strategy, a dedicated copywriting partner is a must-have. This year, Sweet Pea Content was founded to offer a personalised copywriting service to promote businesses, build trust and drive sales through their content.
“We take care of any part of a business where words are involved,” says Founder Jessica Barton. “This includes things like blog posts, newsletters, website text, press releases and social media captions – all things a business needs to promote what they do through content.”
Sweet Pea also offers proofreading and editing solutions, offering added peace of mind for businesses looking for error-free and grammatically correct content. “As an experienced journalist and content marketer I bring a distinct set of skills that allows me to communicate businesses’ messages effectively to their target audience. A research focused attitude means I have a knack for getting to the nitty-gritty of what a business does and why it does it. Combine this with content marketing expertise, and you get informative, engaging content that builds brand awareness.”
Companies working with Sweet Pea Content are guaranteed a partner and communication with the person who is writing their content. “This means nothing gets lost in translation and a genuine commitment to getting to know your business,” adds Jessica.
Value driven
Whatever avenue a business chooses for marketing, brand awareness or promotion, it is important that every decision adds value.
It is vital to take advantage of social media to engage with an audience – now powerful enough to make or break a brand by itself, and so important that it can be considered a separate strategy altogether.
Equally important is to keep a website up-to-date and fit for purpose. Above all, any strategy must serve the needs of customers. Companies need to know who their audience is to make that engagement.
Stuart from Blackbird Communications perhaps sums branding up perfectly: “A brand is so much more than just the corporate logo. It is a reflection of a company’s commitment or promise to its customers that embodies its ethos and values.”
Above all, he adds, is that a brand must be able to stand the test of time.
