The cornerstone of a captivating brand narrative lies in asking the right questions.
Exceptional brands tell compelling stories that resonate with customers, driving revenue and fostering unwavering loyalty.
Crafting an engaging and sustainable brand narrative that resonates with your internal team is an immensely gratifying endeavour. However, it doesn't commence with possessing all the answers; it starts with asking the right questions.
Consider the following:
Clarity on these three questions is paramount, though it's no easy feat.
These three questions compel us to delve into the minds of our customers and grasp our appeal. Engaging in this exercise of customer mindset research propels us to sharper value propositions and effective communication, enhancing margins and volumes.
Arguably, the first question holds the utmost significance. Whether selling food, innovative widgets, or business services, brands must appeal to the emotional core of their audience. Is your product poised to elicit happiness (like Disney), instil a sense of security (like ASB), nurture a feeling of competence (like Mitre 10), or foster trust? It's imperative to realise that customers rarely buy solely the product itself; they engage in a multi-faceted decision-making process to discern you from your competitors. Effective communication hinges on pinpointing that singular aspect.
The second question, quite evidently, aims to describe the values and personality traits your brand will embody. As humans, we base our decisions on emotions – "Do I like you?", "Are you relatable?", "Do you understand me?" To get customers to choose our products, we must ensure our personality shines through. To achieve this, your brand must have distinct personality traits. Envision your brand/company as a fully-formed individual you meet for the first time. Within moments, you should understand their essence and forge a bond compelling you to return. We gravitate towards individuals who possess self-awareness and embody values resonating with our own. Similarly, brand and company personalities should adhere to these principles.
The final question should prove somewhat more manageable. While few products may be entirely unique, differentiation is essential for success. Identifying your unique selling proposition (USP) can be a transformative exercise, guiding your brand towards a distinct position in the market. Your staff constitutes the backbone of the business and the brand; their qualities can contribute to its uniqueness, and bringing them along for the ride is imperative. Recognising the individual strengths and talents of your team members can be instrumental in crafting a brand identity that resonates authentically with your audience. While your product or service may not possess outright exclusivity, uncovering that elusive spark – that special ingredient or approach that sets you apart – is crucial. It's about leveraging every aspect of your offering, from your team's expertise to your brand's ethos, to carve out a compelling and memorable identity in the minds of consumers.
The final component in crafting your brand story entails garnering buy-in from every corner of the organisation, inspiring and energising all involved. In marketing, we seek the grand "why" – it's not "what" you do, but "why" it matters. An organisation that passionately believes in itself ensures success.
This will render your brand irresistible to customers.
Whether you are starting a business now or weathering the current recessionary storm, a slowdown can feel scary; but being on the front foot with your marketing can make sure the revenue keeps coming in.
I started my business in 2010, when the great recession of 2008 was still very much with us. Was it a good time to start? My reasoning was that it might be tough, but things were going to get better and optimism is a key part of any success. What I did realise straightaway was that a reliable sales & marketing machine would be key, as less customers would be around and I wanted to stand out from the ones that were there.
Running a business is beyond exhilarating, frightening and crazy, often all in the same moment. There are so many things to work through. At the start, you cannot imagine getting into a rhythm of staff, sales and actually looking around with a satisfied smile, marvelling at what you have created. To see your first employees and trade happening daily is truly one of life’s great experiences. Adapting to changing times is the key to longevity; knowing when to allocate resources to capture extra revenue is tough to get right, but crucial for success.
Recession makes you that bit more careful and conservative with your growth projections. This can be hugely beneficial because underestimating targets is a significant problem to have. However, you must double your efforts on sales and marketing; the revenue is harder to get, but it is out there for those who have built a trustworthy brand.
How do you go beyond securing today and tomorrow, and really start securing future demand in a systemised way that can be relied upon to deliver? The reality of any business is that unless you have a reliable pipeline of new business, you don’t have a business. If you can solve this pipeline in these trying times you will see phenomenal success as we climb out of recession.
What we are really talking about here is systemising your business identity and marketing so that potential customers know what you stand for, why they should buy from you, and for you to be where your customers are when they are considering buying your particular product or service.
Human behavior, if analysed, is wonderfully predictable; with this predictability comes the ability for businesses to make informed choices in how to set up their ‘marketing identity’. The biggest, single factor in getting potential customers to buy from you is trust. They must trust you in the first interaction with your ‘brand’ or it is a lost opportunity/sale. The biggest factor in trust is consistency, so you need a system to make sure your brand is consistently compelling wherever people are interacting with it.
Think about your business as a person you have created, that you want people to really buy into; it is a brand, just like you. This person needs to have a great way of speaking, they must look right, be charming, know their stuff and be able to close the sale. To get your brand to this level you need to work out the detail: What is your brand built upon? What is its competitive edge? On your best day, why do people love you? How should you sound, look and feel? By thoroughly documenting this, and making sure it is compelling, you can create the best representation of you and what your business stands for 24/7, 365 days a year – it is the salesperson that never sleeps.
It doesn’t matter how strong the economy is, you will always need to be seen and to be appealing to customers, especially in a downturn. Now is the time to take the best representation of your brand to reach customers beyond the geographical confines of the physical operation. We are, of course, talking about a top-notch website that makes you irresistible to buy, or in other words your new ‘store front’. People visit your site, find it easy to navigate and get to know you, think you know your stuff and are likeable, and they want to either proceed to check out online or pick up the phone to do business. While this is an extremely simple representation of the user journey online, the mechanics remain sound. As your store matures, refining the information and journey becomes key to ensure you’re ahead of your competitors, and what you offer is a true reflection of what your customers want. There are only two roles for a website: creating revenue and ongoing loyalty. Done right, a website will be the best investment you ever make.
When you have created such a good website, it makes sense to get it in front of as many people as possible; this is where digital media and a performance strategy are your new best friends. In recessionary times it is even more important to get this right, because you want to be where the customers are; there may be less of them, but they are still spending. You want to make sure that when people are searching for products in your category, or even your competitor’s product, that you come up first. You are front and centre whenever anybody is in the market to secure the sale. We can do this through a mixture of digital ads, social media and SEO, which is simply making sure you are at the top of the Google search results.
The key to an effective performance strategy is ongoing refinement. Dashboarding of results provides real-time access to performance, and the ability to isolate the effectiveness of individual advertising platforms, different target audience segments and different creative messages. A test-and-learn mentality is crucial – a testing framework should be developed to test different platforms, audience or messaging variables, with clear hypotheses, and clear benchmarks for measuring what success looks like in order to learn effectively. This should also be continued on your website, ensuring that the user journey online is constantly being improved and optimising the rate at which we convert site visitors to purchasers. There are many levers we can pull, and it’s all about developing the knowledge of how these will assist sales and then applying them to drive sales and revenue growth.
Most adults spend almost half of their time awake online, through mobile, PC, laptop or tablets. People spent more time online during the 2020 & 2021 Covid lockdown years, however the daily average is now almost back to pre-pandemic figures – a sign that we’ve reached an internet saturation point.
At the same time, typical online behaviours we’ve seen since the internet’s creation are shifting - finding information, whilst still the number one reason people use the internet, is also one of the fastest-falling reasons why they use it. Social media algorithms are giving us information, potentially before we even know we’re looking for it, meaning that finding information doesn’t mean the same thing that it used to. Google’s own recent data has shown that nearly half of young people look to TikTok or Instagram instead of Google Search or Maps for answers.
Other foundational internet behaviours like sharing opinions, general browsing, and keeping up with news, whilst still popular, are slipping also. More people now say they see news on social media than they do on a news website, app or anywhere else on the internet.
The consequences of time online falling and behaviour shifts are broad and will be a challenge to address. A possible solution lies in incentivizing daily use by creating experiences that internet users can only do, and want to do, once a day – Snapchat, Wordle and BeReal are thriving on this.
The way that consumers are finding products is changing. Along with the decline in using the internet to find information, less emphasis is being placed on researching products – there has been an 8% drop in consumers saying they do this before buying an item since 2020. This has implications for many online retailers, who will need to rethink their approach to succeeding online.
Internet users are increasingly looking to find inspiration online. A ranking of 741,000 16-64 year old internet users found that ‘Finding Inspiration’, as being an important reason for using the internet, had jumped from 9th place in 2018 to 6th place in 2022, overtaking ‘Product Research’. Younger audiences are starting their search from a place of curiosity, and expecting to be led to new ideas, rather than directed to lists of brands or products.
The number of people doing their shopping-related research on social networks has shot up since 2015. These platforms have even surpassed search engines among Gen Z, and Millennials are coming close to this also. With these spaces being trend driven, brands need to keep up with what’s culturally relevant to their audience, if they are going to cut through the clutter. Younger audiences are also more likely to turn to Tik Tok to get honest reviews, than other online reviews from traditional search tools or big name influencers, so brands should consider visually showcasing real people and their views.
Discovery-led e-commerce is meaning that scrollers are more spontaneous than they were. 41% of Gen Z and Millennials make an impulse purchase online every 2-3 weeks, rising to 48% among daily TikTok users. This drops to 10% among Baby Boomers. Motivations for impulse buying are quite different between generations, and marketers will need to tweak their approach depending on who they are targeting. Older groups are more motivated by sales/deals, limited time offers and product usefulness, so social ads can be more product or information focused. Whereas younger generations impulse buy for a wider range of reasons, such as recommendations from their online community, flexible payment options and convenience with quick & easy online checkout process or social media “buy” buttons.
Businesses need to build their online shopping experience around the expectations that social media searches create, setting the scene for inspiration, discovery & ease.
In the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, despite expecting consumers might cut down on treats, luxury lingerie sales soared. While the economic road ahead looks bumpy in 2023, it’s important for brands to remember that not everyone will be paring back spending completely. Many consumers will be carving out space for their must-have treats.
We know from previous recessions that products & services can quickly shift from essentials to treats, or to expendables, in consumers minds. While we don’t have a crystal ball, August 2022 research showed that the top 5 categories that consumers on a budget would buy as a treat for themselves were clothing, food/drink/snack delivery orders, tech items, dining out and travel.
Trust for a brand ranks third out of a list of 14 purchase drivers, coming ahead of discounts, good customer service, and purpose-driven factors. Previous recessions have seen the trust gap widen during times of uncertainty. As consumers lose confidence, brands that build trust with them become a safer bet.
In 2023 businesses can build trust by being open & transparent about how price changes are impacting their business, and focus on direct relationships with their customers to keep their loyalty even as they raise prices. At the same time, messaging and actions that demonstrate empathy can also have a similar effect.
As businesses increasingly compete on price, the retailers that look set to stand out are those that prioritise building trust, keep innovating, and drive empathetic, value-add messaging – focusing on the person behind the product.
Keep an eye out for our soon-to-be-published, more detailed, blog on marketing in a downturn.
Wearable technology ownership grew markedly during the pandemic driven by the increased health & wellbeing focus of consumers. Wearable technology and digital health-based offerings are likely to be a key battleground in 2023. TikTok acquired a Chinese hospital group in late 2022 which is an interesting diversification strategy for the entertainment-based tech giant, where there seems little obvious synergy.
In the Metaverse, Meta recently released its Quest Pro VR headset which they encourage users to use in virtual work environments where collaboration is key, rather than purely for entertainment. Apple will also be stepping into this territory, releasing a mixed reality (augmented reality & virtual reality) headset in 2023, with a goal of eventually replacing the iPhone with AR in 10 years. Coming at hefty price tags, uptake is likely to be slow.
Sources: GWI Global 2022, WARC 2022
With any business strategy, it’s clearly smart to listen first and then come up with a plan of action. This is particularly true if you are going to embark on a B2B advertising and media campaign to drive sales. Many commentators are saying recession is coming, or is already here, and if you run a business (like we do), you know things have changed massively in the last 6 months and business confidence is not what it was.
We are all having to contend with record petrol prices, skyrocketing mortgages, inflation uncertainty and staff shortages. This doesn’t even consider the steady slow down consumer demand or the uncertainty of coming into an election year. All this comes on top of three years of COVID; running a business has never been tougher.
However, the reality is that there is still a great deal of demand out there for B2B products and services in the market and media opportunities at bargain prices.
So, what to do?
Well, first we need to acknowledge the pain and worry we are all feeling, this shows we have a shared understanding and care about better outcomes for all of us. We need to remind people of success and the fact that business makes Aotearoa a better place. When business does well, families prosper, and we all share in a better community. We come together and are stronger. These community messages are not only the right thing to do, but they bond us around a common purpose, and say unequivocally that the company the communication comes from is one you want to do business with for the long term.
Once we have this tone of voice, our value proposition can be more readily heard. The value proposition we have for our business should fully consider the needs of the person we are selling to; what will it do for their business? How will they benefit? If we lead with this, we counteract the stresses of recession because we provide a solution to their needs. How refreshing.
Now, how to develop a strategy for B2B growth?
Recent research by Les Binet and Peter Field has established 5 guiding principles for effective B2B advertising. It supports using emotional, brand building, B2B communications to best deliver ROI and achieve long-term growth.
So, the next time you are thinking about marketing your business, remember the 5 guiding principles for B2B growth, and the ‘me’ in SME – appealing on an empathetic level will work wonders in this environment, or any for that matter.
