I want to begin this post with a simple challenge. Take a look at your website, your print ads, or your brochures and answer this one question, “Are you pitching a product or service, or are you telling people who you are as an organization?”
Let’s explore these subtle differences:
Product Focus
If the images used in your marketing do not show any sort of human interaction, personal engagement, or convey emotion, your marketing is most likely product or service based.
If you do not share statements pertaining to what you believe about the world, how you do business, why your organization exists and the difference you make in people’s lives, your marketing is most likely product or service based.
Brand Focus
At Webolutions®, we’ve defined a successful brand as:
A memory bank, created over time, of positive associations between an entity and what that entity believes about the world and moments of happiness in people’s lives.
If the images used in your marketing show human interaction, personal enjoyable engagement, and convey intentional, on-brand emotion you are most likely being more brand focused.
If your text shares what you believe about the world and the pride of how you conduct business, why your organization exists, and you connect all this to moments of happiness in people’s lives, you are most likely being more brand focused.
Read our article: Current Marketing Trends – Building Your Marketing Team
Why is a Brand Focus so important?
Sure, people will purchase a good quality product sold at a competitive price. However, if everything is equal (I’ll bet you do have competitors who have good quality products that sell at a competitive price) people would always rather do business with people and organizations that have the same set of beliefs as they do. They want to feel a connection. They want to be a part of something and they want to be proud of the choices they have made. So, by being brand focused, you can create a competitive advantage.
In addition, instead of your product or service being a one time transaction, if you can create this sustainable connection with all your customers, you will earn more initial business, more repeat business, and more referrals. To begin this connection, you must begin by being brand focused in your marketing message.
By being brand focused you will attract better customers, you will enjoy more success and you will attract more quality employees to your business. By being brand focused you will not just sell more products and services, you will actually build relationships and in today’s world this is the key to more successful marketing.
Read our article: Current Marketing Trends – Eliminating Negative Reviews
How to use this Information
Review your current marketing (images, messages and communications). Are you being Brand Focused or Product Focused?
If you could use help clearly identifying your brand positioning and how this looks and feels, Webolutions® would be happy to discuss our systematic process for helping you with this. A big part of our business is helping companies work through this discovery process and then helping them create the right marketing messages, across all of their communication channels.
At Webolutions®, a strategic marketing agency in Denver, we continually identify and study current marketing trends. We believe in making a difference in people’s lives and would be happy to provide you with a complimentary one-on-one evaluation to help you put together a more effective marketing program. Contact us online or give us a call at 303-300-2640.
