Branding & Lead Generation Marketing
This week we’re continuing our series on lead generation marketing. Lead generation marketing is dedicated to drawing members of your target audience into your business’s ecosystem by building a relationship with them and then encouraging them to become buyers.
The three steps of lead generation marketing are:
1) Go where your people are;
2) Cultivate a relationship; and,
3) Share your value proposition.
The best thing about this marketing focus is getting back the money you spend in the new business you develop. What surprises many small business owners is what steps they need to take before their lead generation marketing program can be a success. Here’s an example of one a lot of people skip:
Preparation is Key
I view lead generation as the most critical goal of marketing. Of course, I do; it’s Create That’s specialty. We specialize in turning strangers into hot leads. Our clients turn these leads into new business.
Therefore, I often talk about how the only metric that matters when determining whether your marketing program is working is whether the number of leads you’re getting is on the rise. It can be very easy to get distracted by other indicators, like social media followers and engagement. However, before you start obsessing about how you’re going to bring in these leads, there is a step many businesses skip.
You must ensure you’ve done the work to ensure your audience is ready to cultivate a relationship with your brand. It’s easy to forget this step if you’re too focused on the tactical.
There’s a good reason it’s easy to get distracted by how our social media is performing. As I’ve written, social media can be a leading indicator of marketing success. Social media is a convenient tool for stimulating and capturing interest in your business. However, eventually, these online relationships need to make their way to your sales pipeline for all your work on social media to be worthwhile. If that isn’t happening, you need to examine why, and the answer might have nothing to do with algorithms and engagement.
Brand Definition Matters
Most prospective clients who set up a call with me want to discuss tactics. They want to spruce up their website. They want to know what social media they should be using. They want to make a video about their business. Sometimes they feel impatient and frustrated when I suggest they first pause and look more closely at their goals and strategy.
Before a lead marketing program can gain traction, it needs to be based on a clearly defined brand. Your brand needs to be so seamless and tailored to your audience that they find it almost inevitable to connect with you.
It sounds a bit harsh, but tactics to cultivate a relationship with your audience are meaningless if you aren’t someone they want to develop a relationship with. Ensuring they want to connect is a function of your brand design and development.
Why is Brand Important?
Brand means “the level of credibility you have in your market, and what your reputation says about you.”
You might think your brand is about your logo, company colours and fonts, and your communication style with your followers. These are all critical components of your brand, but the brand itself is that credibility and reputation factor.
Time for a reVAMP
At Create That, brand definition is the first part of our process, which we call Whole Team Marketing. Brand definition has four components you can remember using the acronym reVAMP. “reVAMP” reminds you to really explain your:
•VISUALS
•AUDIENCE
•MESSAGING
•PROPOSITION
Visuals
This includes all visual brand elements like your logo, what fonts you use, your colours and the visual “vibe” you are going for. (Such as modern, polished, formal, casual etc.) Once defined, your visuals become a symbol of trust and consistency, so it’s essential to be strict about using them across your business.
Audience
These are your clients, the people you want as clients, your network and anyone interested in your work. To ensure you tailor your marketing to the right crowd, you must do the hard work defining that crowd.
Messaging
Your brand message is how you communicate who you are to your audience and how you demonstrate you understand their needs. Like visuals, it is about cultivating a mood or a vibe. Messaging does that with words instead of images. Part of defining your brand messaging is compiling the exact language you will repeatedly use to connect with your audience.
Proposition
Your proposition is your purpose + your promise + your goal. You can’t reach your goal unless you know what your goal is. Defining your purpose includes describing why you do what you do, what sets you apart from the crowd and what you want your marketing program to accomplish.
An essential part of lead generation marketing is a well-defined brand. The effort you put into defining your brand offers tangible benefits when it comes to cultivating a fruitful relationship with your future clients.
