As a veteran ad woman, I understand that building a brand entails delivering the brand promise, holistically. This is realized through design, copy, as well as brand “behavior” such as pricing, service, offers, and innovation, so a brand fully conveys what it means to its present and future customers.
Developing specific marketing materials that sell is about messaging: telling a customer what to do in the moment, and why.
I realize there’s some tension here.
As marketers, we err when we try to tell the whole brand story when we’re trying to engage prospective customers to take a specific action “now.”
Yes, the full brand story plays a key role in tone, voice, pricing approach, offers, and lead nurturing.
We need to give marketing tactics a specific job to do in real time.
But messaging for specific marketing tactics needs to be focused on how the product or service provides a customer-centric solution in the moment, whether that's on a home page, on a landing page, in an email, or in a piece of sales collateral. We need to give marketing tactics a specific job to do in real time, in order to get the lift we need.
I used to think the process of brand building was sequential: You build the big brand story, put it out there, then try to sell the stuff that the brand delivers. Perhaps we turn that on its head: Describe how a brand’s products help customers survive and thrive then and there. If we do this, they’ll stick around for the longer story.
