One of the most critical roles that marketing executives and service executives are tasked with is sustaining the health of their firm's brand. A well-managed brand is arguably a firm's most important asset.
Nonetheless, a lack of diligence may lead to the deterioration of your firm's brand. Your firm's positioning and differentiators may lose potency. Thereby confusing both potential and existing buyers and making it more challenging to retain and recruit top talent.
One way business leaders can gauge the health of their brand is by assessing its alignment. You probably think that brand alignment is one of those colorful academic business terms that hold little value in the real world. Well, that's a grave mistake. Just like a misaligned tire can affect the overall efficiency of a vehicle, a misaligned brand degrades the performance of your firm.
In this post, we'll shed light on how a branding agency can help solve your firm's marketing messaging misalignment. But first, a quick definition of what brand alignment is.
Brand alignment refers to the practice of ensuring all your firm's communication, interactions, and visuals fit your brand identity. While brand alignment isn't a new concept, it has gotten more challenging recently.
According to Forbes, before the age of the internet, marketers needed to ensure that TV commercials aligned with billboards. Today, consumers expect cohesive brand experiences across channels. This includes your social media profiles, website, in-app messaging, online ads, and marketing emails. This is in addition to any billboards, commercials, and other advertising mediums.
Here are some stats that show how important brand alignment is:
Unclear marketing messaging can result in poor performance, reduced visibility, low sales, and inefficient resource allocation. Unfortunately, most companies do not realize that misaligned marketing messaging is the source of these challenges.
If you're questioning the alignment of your marketing messaging, then it may be time to seek the services of a branding agency. Here is how they'll help:
Studies have shown that buyers spend more time on pre-purchase research. As such, marketing and sales teams need to think more strategically about the content they relay to buyers about their products and services. Given that buyers currently rely on written content in their decision-making.
A branding agency will audit your sales enablement content and how you are using it. They'll assess your content stock to determine the content you lack and which content of yours is outdated. The objective is to map your content goals so that you identify what areas are underused. Further, determine what content you use well and what content isn't meeting your marketing expectations. The content audit will align your marketing messaging and improve your revenue generation.
One excellent way of determining your brand alignment is to carefully assess how your sales team engages with customers and prospects. Suppose they have created their own tools or are not using current material, a branding agency can review and adjust these items.
Another area that is often overlooked while reviewing brand alignment is employment and employer branding sites like Indeed, Glassdoor, Monster, and others. Suppose your business isn't big enough to have a human resource department; a branding agency will schedule periodic reminders so that you can visit these sites and keep an eye out on what current employees are saying about your business. You can then develop and implement strategies to enhance the image of your business on these sites.
A branding agency will undertake extensive research to capture the perspective of three vital audiences, namely:
Whereas you can research on your own, the chances are that you won't have an accurate and impartial view of each audience unless you hire a branding agency.
Having a non-existent or outdated social media presence is usually deemed to be worse than not having a presence at all. A branding agency can carefully evaluate and allocate the necessary resources to maintain an engaging and compelling presence. They'll ensure that you devote maximum time and effort to consistently update your social media content.
Besides creating relevant and appealing content, it's important to grow your audience on your preferred social media channel so that they will engage meaningfully with your content, share it, and serve as advocates for your brand.
The confidence with which you tell your brand story will determine how successful the conversations on the front line will be. Your salespeople should be willing to have in-depth conversations with clients consistently to clearly pass across your brand message.
Your brand messaging is the cornerstone to the success of your business. As such, you must give it the attention it deserves so that you can compete effectively in today's dynamic marketplace. If you need help revamping your brand alignment, schedule a free consultation with our brand growth strategist.
