Why Your Sales Team Needs to Be Your Most Authentic Brand Advocate
Are your sales and marketing functions copacetic? Or are they more like two ships that, if you’re lucky, pass in the night? Aligning your company’s marketing and business development functions:
Topics: Branding, Industrial Branding, Brand Loyalty, Brand strategist, Brand Strategy, B2B Branding, rebrand
Preserving the Brand Perception and Preparing for the Transition
We’ve been talking a lot about branding lately, especially as it relates to family-owned industrial manufacturing businesses. Multi-generational companies, built over decades, possess brands that are the result of thoughtful planning—or by default, simply a reflection of their founders’ personalities.
Topics: brand development strategy, Brand Consultant, Brand strategist, Brand Strategy, B2B Branding, rebrand, family business, employee-owned
Branding the Past for the Future—A Family Affair
Does your company have a distinct brand, based upon a thoughtful brand development process? Or is your company’s brand more of an extension of the founder’s personality?
Topics: Industrial Branding, brand development strategy, Brand Strategy, B2B Branding, rebrand, family business
But … Do Your Employees “Get” Your Brand?
Are your employees killing your company brand?
“Great company—possibly one of the best to work for.”
“You learn to appreciate good companies because almost all companies are better to work for than this one.”
Which one of these sounds most like what your employees might say? Or perhaps somewhere in-between? These quotes, from online employee reviews, illustrate how important employee perceptions are in shaping external perceptions of a company’s brand.
Topics: brand development strategy, Brand Loyalty, Brand Ambassador, Brand Strategy
The B2B Brand Experience: Make it Personal and Practice Reciprocity
In today’s business environment, there is little to no distinction between a company and its brand. The two are so intertwined that a Weber Shandwick report found that “corporate reputation and brand reputation are now nearly indivisible.”
Topics: Brand Loyalty, Brand strategist, Brand Strategy, B2B Branding
Branding is about much more than defining your company and developing products or services. In fact, a recent survey from BuzzStream found out that nearly half of consumers stated they will quickly unfollow a brand that engages in too much self-promotion. It translates to all business relationships—even in B2B, people are interested in what they get from the relationship, not what you are offering. Companies often get caught up in their own B2B branding strategies and goals, which leads to shameless self-promotion and a real disconnect with the target audience.
Topics: Branding, Brand Loyalty, Brand Strategy, B2B Branding
5 Simple Steps to Take Your Brand Development Process to the Next Level
Branding is native to a company's marketing department, but the brand development process doesn't and shouldn't end there. It isn't the product or the pricing that truly sets your company apart from your competitor's, it's the branding. And, who speaks for what the company stands for better than its own employees? Branding is the reason one chooses Trader Joe's over any other grocery store or a Starbucks' latte instead of another brand's coffee, even though that same beverage is most likely available elsewhere (anywhere!) at a cheaper price.
Topics: Branding, brand development process, Brand Ambassador, Brand Strategy
