Brand awareness and recognition play an integral part in establishing credibility with consumers and customers along with assisting sales teams when it comes to closing deals. According to a creative agency in Hampshire, corporate branding and demand gen go together, particularly when it comes to the growth phase of a business.
Below are 3 top reasons stakeholders and founders should be investing in the right type of brand marketing:
1. Brand Marketing Increases Credibility
Today consumers purchase products that they like from the businesses that they trust and know. Think about companies like Amazon, Starbucks, and Apple or the B2B companies like GE or Intel. In the current market, building brand credibility will become your competitive edge.
Regardless of whether you are a growth-phase or start-up business, your marketing heads must be positioning your brand as one of the market leaders, along with leveraging their founder profile to create a brand perception that is positive along with customer behaviour.
CEOs are regarded as the face when it comes to most companies, and they play an important role when it comes to establishing credibility for the company that they work for. In the ideal situation, these professionals should be viewed as “thought leaders”. Your employees are your guardians for your brand and should be accountable when it comes to retaining the reputation of the industry when interacting with prospects and customers.
Your brand’s reputation and credibility are fragile. We have encountered several examples when it comes to this – from gender bias and sexual harassment issues associated with Uber to United Airlines who allegedly yanked one of their passengers out of his seat and another recent incident involving a dead puppy. It is extremely costly to try and recover from scandals or damages to your brand. Yet when you already have positive market credibility in place it is possible to recover from these types of disasters, as long as you remain transparent, you have shown empathy to any victims and that you have fixed the issue fast.
2. Brand Marketing Will Attract Investors
Business leaders and founders are always in search of financers to boost and support their exit and growth strategies. Investors will look at a business in its entirety before investing, which involves more than just its products or product. They also take into consideration the overall corporate reputation, the credibility of the founders and the CEO and how the business financially performs before they will decide to invest in the business.
Barbara Clarke, a principal and co-founder of Impact Seat and one of the angel investors, states that as an investor she often asks herself whether she is looking at the company or a product. She goes on to say that the brand has to be larger than its products. Businesses require depth that extends beyond just focusing on one solution or one product.
When she was asked about the mistakes that many companies make, Clarke said that the largest mistake she has noticed start-ups making is focusing too much of their attention on their products and not on the issues they are attempting to solve. When building your brand according to a product rather than a problem, then you won’t be able to deal with a pivot very well. The one thing that we do know about most start-ups is that they will pivot at a certain stage.
This is an excellent point. By helping a host of start-ups to alter their strategy and to rebrand for different reasons, it is vital to focus on creating a brand that is corporate, which is the type of brand that clients can believe in, along with leadership they can trust.
You should view your brand like it is your home. The more you maintain, renovate and invest in it, the more the property will increase in value, especially when you decide to sell. Similarly, when you start investing in your corporate brand, your equity starts to increase.
3. Brand Marketing Engages with Your Customers
In the digital era of today, B2B buying choices have changed dramatically. The B2B buyers of today are as equally empowered when compared to consumers. The CIOs aren’t the only people to make the final buying decisions. In addition, the way companies are interacting with vendors has also changed.
Analyst firm, Forrester, has said that 90% of companies begin their purchases with a search, while 74% conduct at least 50% of their overall research online well before they make offline purchases.
Research has also indicated that many of the B2B customers will not directly engage with a supplier until they reach around 50 to 60% through the “customer journey”. David Krakauer, a director, customer experience expert and digital marketer from Analog Devices, says this is too late to influence the process of decision making. He goes on to say that digital engagement, on the other hand, happens straight away.
Krakauer adds that if we can detect the digital “body language” of the customer, we can improve how we serve them through delivering content that is relevant and personalised. Ultimately, this will significantly improve customer experiences and allow the sales teams to offer more influence when it comes to their own decision making.
For this reason, marketers should be designing strategies that engage and educate customers rather than trying to “sell” to them. The content needs to be interesting, while the search should be optimised to accommodate digital discovery.