Why You Must Tell Your Brand Story Before You Start Selling

Branding

Feb 12

When many businesses approach marketing, they want to jump right into the tactics that drive sales. It’s no surprise. Sales and revenue are the lifeblood. But, there is something that must come before selling.

Before you can focus on the lifeblood of your business, you need to start with the heart of your business — and that is your brand.

Your brand is the story of who you are, who you serve, why you exist, and what problems you solve. Your brand isn’t the product customers buy, but it is the reason why they buy from you.

So, before you start demand generation and sales campaigns, start with your brand story.

What Does It Mean When We Talk About Brand?

Branding is often misunderstood and undervalued. It is usually seen as a purely visual component. While, yes, your brand includes visual identity such as logos, color palettes, typography, and graphic style, it’s much more than that.

Brand also reflects story and messaging such as your:

Purpose: Why your brand exists
Mission: Who you serve and why
Values: What is important to you
Positioning: What makes you different
Voice & Tone: How you communicate

Your brand is who you are and how you present your company to audiences, prospects, and customers. It’s the foundation that captures attention, builds recognition, and then, drives sales.

Why Your Brand Must Come First

The first step in getting customers to buy from you is getting them to know, like, and trust you. A clear, compelling brand is how you start this process. Without it, customers will struggle to build a relationship with you.

An inconsistent, unclear, and confusing brand makes it difficult for customers to know, like, and trust you.

Without understanding who you are or what you do, customers will get stuck and fail to move toward making a purchase.

We recently saw an example of this with a company struggling to sell membership programs. We looked into their marketing campaigns and saw why audiences weren’t buying. The brand had missed a step. Before building adequate brand awareness and affinity, they jumped right into campaigns designed to sell the features of the product. We guided them to take a step back, tell their story, and form a relationship with their customers before selling to them. The brand must come first.

Why Your Brand Might Change

Defining a brand isn’t a one-time task. A strong brand will evolve and adjust its story to stay relevant and adapt to market changes. A variety of factors could force a brand to rethink how they approach their relationship with customers and how they tell their story. Factors include:

New industry trends
Shifts in culture
A change in leadership vision
New audience perspectives and needs
Introduction of new products and services
New competitors in the market

Brands change whether we want them to or not, so it’s imperative to regularly audit your story, control the narrative, and make adjustments as needed.

Is Your Brand Telling the Right Story?

Before you invest in demand-generation marketing tactics to promote and sell, go through the following steps to ensure your brand is strong enough to support a sales strategy.

1. Audit your brand identity.

Take time to gather all of the information that represents your brand. If you don’t already have a brand guide, start there. Build out a central document and folder that clearly defines your brand identity.

2. Check for cohesion and consistency.

Once you have your brand clearly defined, review your assets for cohesion and consistency.

Is your visual brand consistent across digital platforms?
Does your website accurately reflect your story? Do you need a website redesign?
What stories are you telling through blog posts, social media, and emails?
Are you using the correct positioning?
Are all departments operating from the same brand guidelines?

Companies that have been around for years can easily slip away from brand consistency. As new stakeholders come and go and changes are implemented, it can slow chip away at the cohesiveness of a brand. This is another reason why audits and reviews should be a part of your annual or bi-annual marketing planning.

3. Talk to stakeholders.

Review your brand identity with key stakeholders who can share their perspectives on whether your story is hitting the mark. Conduct surveys and interview those closest to your brand, which may include:

Sales teams
Product teams
Customer service teams
Customers

Use their unique perspectives to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats to your existing brand. Their opinions can help you identify places where you need to shift to your story and identity.

4. Identify potential pivots.

Consider where you can make changes to strengthen your messaging and make your mission more pronounced and relevant.

Is your mission statement still accurate?
Are you speaking the language of your buyer personas?
Are you addressing pain points in the best way?
How strong are your unique selling propositions?
Is your messaging still relevant in the existing marketplace?
Do you have new stories to tell? How can you incorporate them?

Don’t get stuck in the old ways of doing things. Acknowledge what has changed and keep moving your brand into the future.

5. Document brand changes, and notify your team.

Once you’ve identified ways to update your brand, make the changes official. Update your brand guidelines and most importantly, share the changes with your team.

Keeping your team on the same page is fundamental to strong branding. As your brand evolves, make sure all departments know what is changing — and why they are changing.

A brand is also about how your team sees and represents your company. Getting your team to tell the same story is the final piece in the puzzle of building a brand that can launch successful sales and demand gen campaigns.

Get Your Brand Ready to Sell

Having a strong, cohesive brand is essential for successfully promoting and selling products and services. If you don’t think your brand is strong enough to support the weight of a demand gen campaign, let’s talk.

SpotOn’s team can help you audit, analyze, and improve your brand and use it to get more customers to know, like, trust, and buy from your brand. Talk to us about how we can elevate your brand and sales campaigns. Contact us today.

Robyn Spoto