Building strong brands

You know what they say about ‘eating your own breakfast’, well the IT sector needs to listen up.

We’re out there pushing ‘digital transformation’ and how this isn’t about repurposing existing processes, but about re-engineering businesses to exploit the incredible potential of a new digital era. But a closer inward look highlights how poorly we’re embracing this in what we do.

How we go to market is no exception.

Our ‘customer’ has changed, we need to change

One of the most crucial values to any brand is that it resonates with your target audience and digital transformation is changing our audience massively. We’re no longer selling to a bunch of ‘techies’ with responsibility for supporting business activity, but find ourselves at the beating heart of a customer’s business operations and services. Our audience is broad and multidisciplined, so how we communicate needs to reflect this.

Get it right

Brand and brand values are the first point of contact between you and your target audience. There’s no second chance. Get it wrong and that audience will always think of you differently than what you’d intended. It’s tough out there, so taking time to get this right shouldn’t even be a question. Clearly defined brands and strategies should be uncompromising principles that will help drive more profits and secure more customers.

What’s in it for me

Probably the most important change we, as an industry, need to make is to focus on what’s important to our audience rather than ourselves. It’s so much easier to talk about ourselves – we know our subject – but how does this address the issues that matter to our target audience? If your brand doesn’t resonate with them, then don’t expect too many takers.

Understand your value

Value remains a central pillar of any brand or strategy, but defining value is a complex beast. It’s not about what you believe your value is, but what your target audience does, and how your values differentiate you in an extremely crowded market.

In a recent workshop, we asked a senior management team to tell us the values they believed reflected their business proposition. With massive enthusiasm, the team shouted out their answers and we wrote them up on the whiteboard.

On another board, we’d earlier prepared a list of the most quoted values we’d gathered through many similar workshops and revealed this at the end of the exercise. With very few exceptions, the lists were the same.

A bit of marketing theatre? Not a bit of it. If you’re unable to tell yourselves how you are special, why should a prospect choose you over any of your competitors?

Brand and Marketing strategies are often slated for not delivering in the short term and we continuously experience this friction between marketing and sales disciplines, with quarterly results impacting on plans and budgets.

A brand is for everyone

If you are to deliver sustainable market growth, the right brand and marketing strategy will embrace both short and long-term goals and cross the marketing and sales divide. Your brand is the embodiment of everything you stand for, so don’t abuse it or undervalue it. A robust Go-to-Market strategy will keep your pipeline healthy, feeding the sales team rather than resorting to firefighting at the quarter's end.

Two final pieces of advice, firstly, if you don’t have a plan, you’ll never know if you’re on track to achieve your growth objectives and, if you’re off track, you won’t know how to get back. Your brand and GTM strategy should be there to help you.

Secondly, know and show that brand and strategy are not confined to the marketing department. Their perceptions are crucial for sales success. Sales and marketing must work in unison, and the right brand and GTM strategy and processes will facilitate this integration, driving sustainable growth.

Sales and marketing should be joined at the hip and the right brand and GTM will achieve this.