Do you know if you deliver a great customer experience?
You have a customer attrition rate. You have customers who buy your products/services and are never heard from again. Do you know why? Do you systematically ask your customers for their feedback? Their needs? Do you know if they had a great customer experience?

How to deliver a great customer experience
What you don’t know can hurt you. One of my customers was losing existing and potential business to their competitor at an astonishing rate. Provoked by this loss to solicit customer feedback, current customers they spoke with said they were pleased with the customer service, quality of service performed and pricing, but they had no feedback from previous customers. When previous customers were asked for feedback, it became clear the competitor was providing an identical service offer and price, but at times more convenient for the customer. Had my customer asked their customers what would have improved their customer experience, they would have been better positioned to respond to the competitor’s challenge.

Don’t wait for a formal customer feedback survey to tell you what your customers want. Systemize customer feedback at every customer touchpoint.  Develop and implement a customer follow-up strategy and make it a key part of your business strategy. And then communicate back to your customers that you have listened to them.

Ask customers what they think of your products and services. Ask them if you help solve their problems. Ask them to identify new needs and desires, and ways you can help them improve their business? What other problems do they have? What is their wish list? What you could offer you’re currently not providing? And most importantly, if they are satisfied with the service they’re receiving. Act on their feedback and then communicate that you have listened to them.

9 Steps to a Great Customer Experience

1. Make contact with your customers on a regular basis. Systemize customer follow up to ensure their needs are being met and opportunities to enhance the relationship are acted upon immediately.
2. Enhance the relationship. Provide them with useful information; useful information about their business and about your business and solicit feedback on how you can help simplify your interactions to meet their needs.
3. Empower them with self-service.  If their business needs require access to reporting, 24/7 support, round the clock service, or industry-related information that doesn’t require personal customized attention, and enables them to answer their  questions, make it available  online,  through a customer support line, and communicate its availability.
4. Empower frontline staff. Devise a great customer experience strategy that is supported by front line staff. Educate, train and empower front line staff to support the strategy and deliver an experience that exceeds customer expectations. Ensure frontline employees have all the information, resources, support and records they need to personalize the conversation and accommodate customers’ needs.
5. Listen to your customers. Delivering a consistently excellent customer experience is impossible if you don’t have a systematic way to listen to whether you are achieving that goal. You must understand customers’ opinions on everything from the quality of your products and the timeliness of your service to suggestions as to how you can effectively help them. Ask them what they want and they will tell you.
6. Walk the Walk across the Company. In many organizations, multiple teams interact with customers, yet they don’t work or communicate with one another. When developing your customer experience strategy take into account cross-departmental interactions and objectives. Develop expectation guidelines and feedback mechanisms for relevant customer experience across the departments. Create communications channels that regularly share experiences from the customers’ perspective. Evaluate the experiences and modify your strategy.
7. Engage proactively with customers. Take the time to initiate customer touchpoints visa vis information, feedback, improvement opportunities and customer news and find ways to address and pre-empt factors that erode customer satisfaction.
8. Measure, improve and measure again. Strive for a culture that drives customer    experience continual improvement. Develop KPI metrics for customer experience, customer expectations and customer satisfaction. Measure up-sell, cross-sell and conversion rates and tie them back to the KPIs.
9. Ask again. Continually ask your customers what they desire, what they need. What you don’t know can hurt you.

The post The Customer Experience – What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You appeared first on The Mezzanine Group – B2B Strategy & Marketing Blog.

1. Register on Google: Places for Business. This will ensure that your business shows up in Google search. It also allows you to profile your business with pictures and useful information like store hours and expertise. Additionally, it’s a great vehicle for getting feedback from your customers and to see what people are talking about.
2. Get customers to do reviews on local sites. You can incent them by a coupon or even a piece of candy while they are visiting your place of business. Yelp is one of the most popular review sites and ranks well with search engines. It’s generally seen as reputable and trustworthy.
3. Use free classified ad services. CraigsList and Kijiji are full of eager buyers and people seeking services and products. It’s a great way to reach a lot of potential buyers and takes about 10 minutes to post something.
4. Participate in a Q&A site and become a trusted advisor. People will seek you out if they believe you are an expert. They will even recommend you to their friends. Here is a popular one to get you started: Yahoo Answers.
5. Join Quora. Quora is a vehicle for posting and answering questions as well as following topics of interest. You can demonstrate your thought leadership to a large audience while learning from others in your field. Users include a short bio highlighting their expertise, thereby validating their authority. And, by sharing your posts on Twitter and Facebook, you expand your audience beyond the Quora platform

We hope this helps you navigate the digital world. Look for our next post about free ways to market your local services businesses off-line.

The post Free Digital Marketing Tips For Your Local Services Business appeared first on The Mezzanine Group – B2B Strategy & Marketing Blog.

She may also have been a B2B marketing genius.

Believe it or not, B2B can learn a lot from Coco Chanel. Her philosophies about fashion are easily transferable ideologies in this modern era of social media and internet marketing.

“Don’t spend time beating on a wall, hoping to transform it into a door.”
- Coco Chanel 

Ask yourself these questions: Why am I using Social Media? What value or benefit does it offer my business? A common answer to the first question is, “because I feel like I should.” or even, “because everyone else is doing it”. It is becoming increasingly difficult for many businesses to come up with an answer for the second question. That’s not to say that social media isn’t an effective marketing tool, it just may not be an effective marketing tool for every company. Coco Chanel would say, don’t spend time forcing a wall to become a door. In other words, be careful not to do social media for the sake of ‘doing social media’, there has to be a reason; a form and a function. If we continue to think of social media in terms of design principles, it is better to be more Bauhaus and less Baroque.

Show some restraint! Establish solutions that address the basic needs of your marketing efforts. Use social media as a practical asset of functionality, not a useless flourish for the sake of aesthetic. If Twitter isn’t generating any meaningful conversations or conversions, don’t waste the time it takes to type 140 characters. If your market isn’t using Pinterest to influence their decision-making, don’t bother pinning. Your social media strategy needs to take on a form that matches the function.

“Before you leave the house, take one thing off.”

– Coco Chanel

Coco would say that it’s better to be slightly under-dressed, than slightly overdressed. Every Tom, Dick and Harry is telling you to overdress your business with Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Pinterest, Google+, and blogs. Stop. Take one thing off your plate. Discover where your target buying demographic is hanging out and narrow your focus. Consider treating social media like a well-tailored suit.

If you think that you need to expand or broaden your reach using social media, determine which efforts will generate the best return. Your SEO partner may advise you to start a blog because frequent content generation will enhance your online authority, thus ranking you higher on search engines. Your ROI will take the form of more organic search traffic to your site, higher search engine rankings, and ultimately a greater number of online leads. You may find that by using Linkedin, you can start conversations that convert into new business relationships. Google+ might be the best way to distribute content segmented by industry or subject matter. In every case, you should employ a method of tracking conversions, participation and ROI so that you can start to ‘take off’ accessories that aren’t functional.

The Chanel B2B marketing theory is this: If it’s valuable, keep it on. If it’s just for show, take it off.

The post Less is more – Is it possible to overdress B2B marketing with Social Media? appeared first on The Mezzanine Group – B2B Strategy & Marketing Blog.

Though companies can offer both products and services, business services marketing requires a slightly different marketing approach. Different tactics work better for services as opposed to products. Why? When marketing a service, you are marketing an intangible which is measured based on relationships, processes, outcomes and the quality of the service delivered.  If you don’t like the service, unlike a product, you can’t return it.  Precisely because business services deliver an intangible value, a strong and differentiated value proposition that communicates that value to your client base is crucial to your business growth.

What is a UVP?

Your UVP is the single most compelling reason why a prospect should buy from you over all other options, vendors and choices they have.

What makes you unique depends on your abilities, systems/processes, niche and offering(s) and how well you deliver them.

One Size Does Not Fit All

Your services have to be for a specific target audience with situations, pain points, needs and budgets that are relevant to your clients. Targeting companies with 5-500 lawyers or PCs or healthcare providers sends a marketing message that conveys you have more of a broad understanding of their specific market segment(s) and processes required to service their client base and would have a harder time providing meaningful insights into their particular needs.

Know What Your Competitors Are Offering

If competitors are offering the same services as you are then the offer becomes based on price and the level of service provided, making it more difficult for clients to choose a provider. Make providing more value to your clients your UVP. Test value-add offers and incentives to see which ones appeal to your best clients.

Is your UVP a clear choice for your clients and prospects?

There are scenarios where companies have a clear UVP but don’t market it very well, negatively impacting sales. They think their UVP is obvious, so it should be obvious to everyone else. Clearly messaging your UVP will help prospects and current clients understand the value of the services received. A monthly newsletter is a great way to communicate your UVP and remind clients you are there to help them solve their problems, and to tell prospects what you do.

Another scenario is UVPs become irrelevant due to market, business and technology changes or are hijacked by competitors. Often companies are so busy working “in the business” they don’t have an opportunity to see that competitors have adopted similar UVPs, which of course, aren’t unique anymore.  Then you need to refine your service offer. Make sure it is still relevant to your clients and prospects. Rediscover what value it is you bring them that has them choose you over other options. Ask them what are their current challenges, needs and issues. Then figure out how it is you solve those problems better than anyone else.

Most importantly, you must tell them, or in the case of clients, remind them, what it is you do that is unique. Substantiate with facts, helpful information, testimonials, client case studies and if it makes sense, guarantees.

Then they will more confidently know why they choose you over other competitive options, and being top of mind, will be more likely to refer your services.

The post Your Business Services Unique Value Proposition – Colleen Cronin appeared first on The Mezzanine Group – B2B Strategy & Marketing Blog.

Is your site one of the laggards? Here’s a quick way to find out and some easy ways to lift your site out of lameness:

1. Does your site ignore people’s limited attention spans? Fast and simple—that’s what website visitors want. Because you love your business and find it so interesting, it’s tough to resist the temptation to run paragraph after paragraph about your wonderful staff, products and processes. But people don’t have time for that. They want to get a sense of whether you offer what they need and then to take action.

THE FIX: Be ruthless about cutting way back on your text. Subject every sentence to the “Is this really necessary?” test. And if, after that, you still feel you need to run a fair bit of text, break it up into bite-sized bits. Offer a single page of easy to read, quick-hit information, with links to more details for those who want it.

2. Do you use stock photos that make your site look generic? Do any of the insipid images below look familiar? According to Marketing Profs, they’re among the most abused stock photography images. Most B2B companies don’t have the budgets for original photography, but that doesn’t mean you have to use images that are so overdone—and so boring—that your visitors will confuse you with other sites.

THE FIX: If your site uses images like these, remove them now. If you don’t have any original photography, you have two options. Either hire a photographer to come to your business for a day and take original photos (the pricey option, but still an excellent investment for many B2B companies) or take some time to find stock photography that isn’t groan-inducing. Have a look at fotosearch.ca, istockphoto.com and shutterstock.com.

3. Does your site show off your firm’s expertise? No matter which sector you operate in, the customers you are targeting want to know that you have deep expertise and knowledge. They want to work with thought leaders. Are you presenting content that demonstrates your expertise to potential customers? If not, you’re missing opportunities to generate leads.

THE FIX: Add thought leadership content to your website. This doesn’t mean overviews of your services or products, or descriptions of your processes. Instead, it can include white papers, articles, case studies and webinars that will engage your prospects and educate or share expertise with them—but not give them a hard sell. Your company undoubtedly has expertise that you can package into content. Dedicate some resources to extracting it from people’s heads and getting it into digital form.

4. Can you generate potential leads through your site? If you don’t have a way for your target customers to download content from your site, you’re missing opportunities to generate leads. It’s great to provide the thought leadership content outlined above, but you also need a way to find out who’s interested in your expertise.

THE FIX: Make some of your content gated, requiring visitors to provide basic information such as their name and email address in exchange for downloading particularly strong content.  This way you’ll have a way to follow up and nurture a relationship with potential customers. If you don’t have any pages that capture visitor information in exchange for downloading content, build them now.  Your web developer can do this, or you can do it through marketing automation software like infusionsoft.com, hubspot.com, marketo.com, or numerous others. And don’t forget that you need to have the content first!

The post B2B Websites Don’t Have to Stink – Lisa Shepherd appeared first on The Mezzanine Group – B2B Strategy & Marketing Blog.

Through my marketing journey, I have managed up to 40 tradeshows a year and dealt with many show organizers and attendees. I have determined that there are great ways to get value from tradeshows – you just have to approach them with the right strategy.  To get successful results at any tradeshow, you need to consider the following:

1. Choose the right show for your industry. When you find or are offered a new show to go to – do your research first. Is this the right show for your company? In order to answer this question, you need to find out the location of the show, list of exhibitors, profile of attendees, any competitors in presence and the cost of exhibiting and all of necessary show accessories. Also, you need to find the last year’s data for all of the above to see if this show was successful in previous years. After considering and analyzing all of these aspects, you will have more information to help you with your decision making.
2. Have the right exhibit booth stand and arrange booth space properly. Often at the shows you see these booth stands that have many pictures and messages, but when you come closer, you never understand what these companies do or offer. I heard a few times in the past people approaching the booth and saying “what do you guys do?” To design and produce an effective exhibit booth can be very expensive these days. Therefore, it is very important to have a clear concise message and related pictures on the booth panel that give audience an idea of what your company does. Test your current booth – show it to an outside person and ask them if they can tell you what your company does by just looking at it. You will know right away if you have the right booth or you need to change it.  Also, it is essential to arrange booth space as an open or lounge concept, so people can easily walk in and talk to you. Order a nice bar table with stools, brochure rack and a few other accessories that are necessary to make your booth look inviting.
3. Prepare and send relevant collateral. When going to shows, companies usually send the same sales collateral that they use every day. Sometimes it’s relevant but more often than not, you’re going to need something different. When preparing brochures, look at your audience profile, think about their expectations and what points or features of your services or products might catch their attention. You can send a few other brochures that you use every day for sales pitches, but it’s a must to have a relevant brochure or one-pager specifically created for this particular show. Another hint – don’t make your brochures look too cluttered. Concise relevant points and a couple of simple design tricks will do the job.
4. Send people with the right mind set and knowledge. Companies always tend to send only sales people to shows. And very often they don’t find many leads afterwards. Why you ask? Because not all the sales people are the right people for tradeshows. Some sales people are excellent in sales when they are given a qualified lead, but they are just not good at getting those leads at shows. It really depends on personality. Others, on the other hand, go to shows and bring back a bunch of leads because they love to be in that social environment and enjoy interaction with bigger crowds. You cannot just stand at the booth and wait for people to come visit you, you also need to walk around the show and meet people. That’s why you always need to have at least 2 people at the booth, so one can be at the spot and another can walk around. It is also recommended to send a product manager to shows. Product managers can always help with technical questions that people might have and give them reassurance about the company’s knowledge. My suggestion – send one sales person and one product manager to any show.
5. Have a strategy in place and prepare some games/surveys to get attendees involved. When you determine the tradeshow and get it approved, start building a strategy for it. Yes, a strategy for each show can help boost your results at the end. There are a few things you can do. First, think of some interesting game or survey that would make attendees want to be a part of. For example, have a personality test with questions, and when attendees answer them, they get a short description about their work style and who they are. But make sure that your test is designed in a way that you can use the answers to determine later if they are good candidates to be your potential prospects. Offer either a small prize at the end or make it a draw for a chance to win a big prize after the show (iPad or camera). Anything that makes it interesting for attendees to participate will bring a bigger crowd to your booth and obviously more leads. Also, think of giveaway items for your booth. They are not necessary but if you choose something that really stands out and somehow represents your product or industry, you might get good booth traffic.

There are many other approaches that you can take to improve your tradeshow strategy but if you follow these five, you’re putting yourself in a great position to see better results.

The post 5 Ways to Get Value From Tradeshows – Elmira Abushayeva appeared first on The Mezzanine Group – B2B Strategy & Marketing Blog.

Email marketing can be a very effective way of nurturing your existing customers and reaching out to potential prospects to build awareness and create sales opportunities.

Single message emails are a great way to get out timely messages regarding a new product or service, a website launch or a company update. Newsletters, on the other hand, are great for capturing a number of updates which could include company updates, blogs, product launches, case studies, industry information, personnel updates, etc.

If you are looking to launch an effective email marketing program, here are 8 steps to get you started.

1) Do your research – There are several email programs out there that are inexpensive and functional. Most programs will give you limitless template options and metrics so do your research, sign up for a free trial period and see how comfortable you are with each program. I typically use Constant Contact and/or Mail Chimp for my email marketing campaigns. They are both inexpensive and intuitive programs that allow you to customize your templates.

2) Map out your goals – Think about what you are trying to accomplish with your email marketing campaign and develop a set of goals. Do we want people to visit our website? Are we launching a new product? Do we have new staff to introduce?

3) Build your list – Your email program will only be as effective as your list. Review your current companies’ lists of customers and prospects and decide if you need to purchase additional names. If so, you may want to look at Scott’s Directory. You may also want to send different messages to existing customers, prospects and distributors (if applicable) so it’s always a good idea to keep these contact lists separate. Also, make sure you have permission to contact everyone on your list and follow the anti-spam legislation.

4) Develop your template – there are limitless template options in email marketing programs which would probably satisfy your needs; however, don’t underestimate the importance of remaining true to your brand. You may want to consider reaching out to a graphic designer to help you build a “design” worthy template that really features your company as the industry leader.

5) Develop your content – make sure your subject line is compelling and that you are providing relevant information to your contact list whether they are a customer, prospect or distributor. Remember, the quality of the content is much more important than the quantity.

6) Include links – When developing your content, make sure you include several links. Short snippets of information are better with a link to a full article or blog rather than lengthy text. Also, make sure when you are including a link that the site you are taking the reader to is up-to-date. For example, if you are announcing a new product, you most likely want to take the reader to a specific landing page that talks directly about that product rather than a general link to the company’s homepage because it will be a lot less effective.

7) Send your email – there are peak times and days to send your email so I would recommend testing out a couple of days and times to see what works best for your industry.

8) Update and Report – you will want to review the metrics and take a look at open-rates, click-through rates, bounces and of course, spam reports (you definitely want to avoid any of these). Analyze what worked and what didn’t and update your contact list regularly.

Email marketing is a cost-effective way to communicate with your existing customers and prospects but everyone’s time is extremely valuable so follow these 8 easy steps and you will be well on your way to creating effective email marketing campaigns.

The post 8 Steps to an Effective Email Marketing Campaign – Karen Hazan appeared first on The Mezzanine Group – B2B Strategy & Marketing Blog.

There isn’t a “one size fits all” answer to this question, such as that every B2B company should spend X% of its revenue on marketing. Still, based on my work in the trenches over the past 10 years with B2B companies big and small, I can share here some rules of thumb.

The first step is to consider these five key variables:

YOUR SECTOR

Companies in sectors such as software or design traditionally spend big on marketing, while those in commoditized industries or ones with thin margins lay out next to nothing. It’s important to know the benchmark marketing spend in your sector in order to help determine your own spend. One way to do this is look to your industry association. These organizations often do studies across their membership to determine how much members spend on a variety of business functions, including marketing.

YOUR COMPANY’S SIZE

Large businesses, ones with revenue topping $100 million, usually spend a smaller percentage of their target revenue on marketing. A small company needs to spend a higher percentage in order to build its brand and generate sales leads. For example, a company with revenue of $150 million might generate a tremendous ROI from spending just 1% of its target revenue on marketing, so a marketing budget of $1.5 million would suffice. But a company with revenue of $2 million needs to spend more than 1%, because $20,000 won’t be sufficient to build brand awareness and gain market traction. A company of this size may need to think of spending more than 2.5% ($50,000-plus) in order to get meaningful results.

THE POSITION YOU DESIRE IN YOUR SECTOR

Companies that want to establish themselves as leaders or premium providers in their sector will likely need to set aside a larger marketing budget than ones that are just looking to be price competitors.

YOUR TARGET MARKET

Some buyers and influencers are harder to reach than others. For example, a company selling to the CEOs of major hospitals will likely need a larger budget that one that is targeting purchasing agents for small and mid-sized health-care clinics. In order to set an accurate budget, you need a sense of how challenging, and therefore costly, it will be to get a message through to a particular target market.

THE SCOPE OF YOUR OPERATIONS

Companies that are pursuing a global market should spend more than those focusing on a small geographic area. For example, if you’re selling in North America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia, your marketing budget will need to be larger than if you’re selling exclusively in Calgary and Edmonton.

Once you’ve considered the above five variables, here are two rules of thumbs I’ve developed based on my experience with B2B marketing budgets:

• Product launches: For the pre-launch, launch and Year 1 of a new product, spend 5% of your Year 5 target revenues. So, if your target is $5 million in sales in Year 5, you should spend $250,000 for the launch and Year 1. Again, consider the five variables above when setting your budget. As an example, a company that’s launching a new product in a mature sector might start with the 5% rule of thumb, then opt for a budget of 3.5% because companies in its sector don’t spend heavily on marketing. On the other hand, a young mobile app development firm might need to spend significantly more than 5% in order to gain market traction quickly, knowing that it operates in a sector full of aggressive marketers.
• Going concerns: In general, B2B companies that are beyond the startup phase should consider 2% to 5% of their gross target revenue as a marketing budget. For example, if your target revenue for this year is $10 million, spending $200,000 to $500,000 on marketing is reasonable. Most B2B companies start in this 2% to 5% range, then consider the five factors above to shift up and down as appropriate. A technical services company that sells to risk managers in the global nuclear industry might budget more than 5%, given the scope and challenge of its tough-to-reach target market. But a trucking company with $300 million in revenue that has just celebrated its 50^th anniversary might be fine with a marketing budget of less than 1%.

As you can see, these are wide ranges, and the “just right” marketing budget varies considerably based on the five variables listed above. Keep in mind that there are often reasons to go above or below the 2% to 5% range that I use as a general rule of thumb. There are B2B industries that commonly spend above 5%, and many that spend less than 2%.

To illustrate this, here are two very different companies I’m working with now and their marketing budgets:

• Company A is in a traditional industry that historically hasn’t done a lot of marketing. It has well over $100 million in sales, and its marketing budget is just 0.15% of its revenue target. That budget is more than $500,000, and it provides a lot of opportunity to raise awareness and generate leads. Despite the percentage being very low, I’m excited at what this company is going to be able to accomplish in marketing this year.
• At the other end of the spectrum is Company B, a business-services company with a $3 million revenue goal for this year and a global market. It will spend closer to 8% of its targeted revenue on marketing, and we’re having to be very practical and creative to make sure we generate strong ROI on the marketing investment.

That last point is the most important one to consider when you figure out how much to spend on marketing. The goal of a marketing investment is ROI—regardless of the number of dollars you budget. If you spend $50,000 on marketing this year, it needs to generate at least an additional $50,000 in profits than you generated last year—and, preferably, much more!

The only way to determine the right marketing budget for your business is to systematically measure your spend and your results year over year. Do a comparison, and over time you’ll see a pattern that will help you determine the budget that gives you the best return. Only then will you know that your spending is just right.

The post The ‘Just Right’ B2B Marketing Budget – Lisa Shepherd appeared first on The Mezzanine Group – B2B Strategy & Marketing Blog.

When advising my manufacturing clients—pointing out the lack of employees featured in their campaigns, product launches and even company website—they nod in wholehearted agreement. They understand that their workforce is their greatest strength, but don’t quite know just how to position them front and centre.

Here are a few ways you can market your employees and team:

Imagery – Hire a photographer to take corporate headshots of the those in your company. Additionally, have the photographer capture images of the work being done in the factory and in the office. Great imagery shows just what it is that you make and what it is that you do. It brings customers that much closer into your manufacturing world.

Company website – Create a team page on your website that features up to 10 key team players, along with their headshot and profile description. Also, populate your site with pictures of people working within various product pages.

Brochures and collateral – Mention the core staff involved in a particular product’s development and acknowledge their achievements.

Company news – Share achievements of team members through your company’s website, blog, LinkedIn page and announcements. This shows that you have the best people working for you.

Thought leadership – Create content based on team insights gained from experience working on specific products or projects. Leverage your team’s knowledge to develop case studies, whitepapers, blog posts and more.

By highlighting the people behind their products, manufacturers can connect that much more with the customers they serve. In effect, they bring their brand to life.

The post Marketing a Manufacturer’s Strongest Asset… Its People! – Elmira Abushayeva appeared first on The Mezzanine Group – B2B Strategy & Marketing Blog.

“Branding is at the core of all marketing,” writes Terry O’Reilly author of The Age of Persuasion and host of a long-running advertising program by the same name on CBC Radio One. “Different marketers have their own take on what branding really is, but to me, it means defining what a product or service promises and how it differs from the competition.”

Every company needs a solid brand strategy to attract customers by standing apart from competitors. Even businesses experiencing growth in the absence of a brand strategy should make this work a priority.

Why? Because the absence of a brand strategy leads to these three common pitfalls:

1. Design: The visual appearance is indistinguishable from that of the competitors.
2. Messaging: The messages don’t address differentiation, aren’t quantified or reinforced, and don’t address buyers’ motivations.
3. Personality: The tone of the visual identity and content is incoherent and inconsistent.

These are important because they influence buyers, which inevitably equates to market share.

A few months ago I began working with a financial service company. Of their nearly 20 competitors, all but one has a blue or green (or both) design. Many have similar names and logos, and several use the exact same stock images in their collateral. When competitors are indistinguishable, buyers can’t keep them straight.

However, visuals are just one part of branding. Companies also need to differentiate themselves through messaging; this means what they say to customers, and the tone in which they say it. In my client’s case, they described their services the same way as all of their competitors: fast and easy, with high approval rates. These are merely table stakes. When companies promote only the table stakes, they leave buyers unsure about which company is their best option.

It is a revealing two-minute exercise to do a side-by-side comparison of your marketing collateral and messages with those of your competitors. How well does your company differentiate itself?

My client has an opportunity to stand out based on how they conduct their service. Offering superior responsiveness and support is already part of their practice and can easily be featured. Quantifying these messages will further strengthen their effect, along with finding ways to translate the friendliness and responsiveness they offer their customers.

Some companies invest an enormous amount of time and energy in developing a brand strategy, while others take a more simplified approach. If, internally, you don’t have the time or expertise to do this work, you can outsource it to a team of marketing experts.

Once you have a strategy in hand, you’ll need a tactical plan and a leader to bring it to life, the same way a boat requires map and a captain. This plan will also make the task of implementation methodical and less overwhelming.

How much of a difference can a strategy make? This month my client is ditching their blend-in blues and generic stock photos for more inviting warm reds and yellows and bold illustrations. They still offer fast, easy service and high approval rates, but they will actively promote the ways their service is superior to the rest, which they’ve quantified for greater impact and veracity. Internally, working on a brand strategy has re-energized their team, made them focus on their corporate culture and brought unity to the way they describe their service and company.

If your company doesn’t have a brand strategy, it’s not too late to start. Why spend your days adrift when you could be heading somewhere exciting?

Do you have experience with brand strategy? Share your thoughts below.

The post The Marketing Mistake That’s Leaving Companies Adrift – Liz Teodorini appeared first on The Mezzanine Group – B2B Strategy & Marketing Blog.