1. Forget about your website.

A new website, updated logo, or new sales materials, although important, are some of the last things you want to consider when developing your brand.

This may be surprising to hear from a marketing company, but it’s critical to understand that you are more likely to receive a return from your marketing investment when these tools are simply an extension of a solid marketing strategy.

2. Positioning is king.

There are many components to a solid marketing strategy, but positioning is paramount. Brand positioning is the means by which growing companies hone their communications in order to increase revenue, expand to new markets, retain customers, increase pricing, and more. Why?

1. Humans are hardwired to value what is unique.

Brands that differentiate themselves from competitors by owning a uniquely desirable attribute are inherently more valuable to customers.

For example, there are many car brands to choose from, but Volvo owns safety, the Geek Squad owns computer repair, and P&G owns consumer product innovation. The success of these brands can largely be attributed to how they have differentiated themselves from dozens if not thousands of competitors.

2. Humans generally associate things with one or two key ideas.

BMW offers more than German engineering—they also offer leather seats, safety, prestige, and more, but they lead with one message, namely, that they create the "Ultimate Driving Machine." When they came out with that tagline, there was almost certainly someone who argued, "What about luxury!? What about safety!?" But BMW has been successful because they focused on one attribute: performance driving.

What specific attribute could your organization own in order to start benefiting from being a category leader?

3. can our marketing initiatives be more effective?

The failure of a given marketing initiative could lie in the product or service, but as marketers we generally don’t have control over these factors. What we can control, however, is how the brand is perceived by the customer.

Marketers exist because for most businesses there is a disconnect between a business’s perception of itself and the customer’s desires, beliefs and knowledge about a company or market. The predominant problem for businesses and marketing consultants alike is that we generally convince ourselves that we know exactly what customers are looking for.

Unless you run a strictly referral-based business, it is likely that your company will require qualitative facts about your customers in order to create effective marketing campaigns. Most other methodologies are just guessing which is why many marketing campaigns fail. We’ve all done it, but it is not the mark of excellent marketing.

4. The Alternative.

It’s possible to base your brand positioning and communications upon what customers value most. We believe that this is the starting point for your marketing initiatives.

Why? Our motto is Memorable Brands Win. A brand is memorable, not because of flashy marketing, but because you have crafted the right messages to the right people through the proper channels.

Let’s chat about how we can help your brand win.