Brand management has many aspects. It starts with developing and managing the various elements of your brand, including, for example, your logo, typography and colors, but also think about slogans and your own tone-of-voice. Next, you need to create brand awareness to get the attention of your potential customers before you can sell anything. Sounds logical, yet many organizations skip a few phases. Sebastiaan de Ruiter knows all about it. In this blog, he talks about what he gained by focusing on the right stage in the customer journey.

See, Think, Do, Care

All marketers are familiar with the inverted pyramid depicting Google's See, Think, Do, Care model. You must first be visible to your potential customers if they are to consider your product or service at all. Then you have to make sure that the latter group develops a certain preference for your solution. Some of them will eventually proceed to a purchase. With any luck, you will also get these customers to make a repeat purchase.

Keep It Stupid Simple

You can't do it all at once. If you are already focusing on the retention phase while your brand awareness is not yet in place, you are missing the mark, I can guarantee you. Think carefully about where you are in the pyramid. I know what I'm talking about, because this plumber's faucet was leaking at home, too, and not by much. For years I focused primarily on selling our solutions over the phone, while a large part of the world had no idea what marketing automation was and what it could do. Not surprising, when you consider that even modern training programs barely pay attention to systems that help marketers work more efficiently. So we actually had to focus primarily on creating brand awareness, and that requires a very different strategy. You can't pull people who don't know you through that whole pipeline at once, no matter how much you want to. That's when we started radar marketing. That way we make sure we get on the radar of potential customers so they think of us the moment they need marketing software.

Start at the beginning

Each layer in the pyramid requires a different way of communicating. First, look at what the need is for each segment. If you are focused on creating brand awareness, start by writing blogs that your potential customer will relate to. Keep track of who reads your blogs and then communicate in a more targeted way. For example, share a white paper in exchange for contact information. If you approach someone then, it's already very different from just calling the purchasing department or the owner of a random company. Who knows, you might get a chance to sit down with such an organization.

Thousand percent more website visitors, double the number of customers

It sounds very simple as I outline it, but it is actually that simple. We are over three years into this approach and it is working. Our website traffic has increased by a thousand percent. We've gone from 12,000 unique visitors a year to 145,000 unique visitors. Those are just visitors, but those are people who are aware of the existence of our brand. The more people who are in that upper segment of the inverted pyramid, the more seep through to the bottom of the pyramid. We can see that this is having an effect in the number of new customers. Instead of the usual five to seven new clients a year, we had as many as thirteen last year. I would never have managed that if I had continued to focus on that telephone selling alone. I could have resolved to call not twenty but forty organizations in early 2022. I firmly believe that I could never have doubled the number of customers that way.

Step back

So you see, sometimes it's helpful to take a step back. Take a look at what stage your organization is in, and adjust your communication and strategy accordingly.

Inspired?

You are the one who determines your brand management strategy, but Digital Asset Management can help you more easily shape that strategy. Curious? Then request a no-obligation demo of our Brand Management solutions. Would you like to talk further about the benefits of marketing automation for your organization? That's always possible too! Give a call to (0)20 820 83 82 or mail to info@comrads.nl. We would love to get to know you.