About Adcetera Content Marketing company in Houston, United States
ADCETERA is an integrated creative services company offering strategy, innovation, content, design, interactive, motion, and experience.
08/04/2020
All marketers have a core goal to grow top-line revenue. They may take different approaches and use different tactics but the desired end result is the same. However there can be some confusion when organizations try to define which approaches and tactics they want to implement in order to reach their goals.
Sometimes a company will come to us wanting sales support material but as we talk with them about their needs we find that they would better meet their goals by focusing on their brand. Or they may want help with a marketing tactic but their sales team doesnt have the right resources to support what our client wants to market.
While we are very happy to have the conversations and delve into what tactics and approaches can best help you reach your companys goals it might be helpful to take a closer look at exactly what the differences are between brand marketing and sales. While all three ideally work together having a clear idea of the role each plays in growing your top-line revenue can help you determine where to focus your resources in your strategic planning.
We frequently talk to people who will ’smoosh’ brand marketing and sales into a single amorphous concept when theyre scoping marketing services. But these three concepts are not equal and theyre not strictly linear. You can have strong sales before youve fully developed your brand. You can if youre very fortunate have a strong enough brand that you dont have to invest much in marketing. However to get the best results in terms of growing revenue we recommend that you take a holistic approach to looking at brand marketing and sales.
Before you focus on the big picture lets examine what each of these concepts actually means.
Marketing
Marketing centers on creating information and influence to generate awareness interest and confidence in your prospects. These are activities and tactics that span the pre-purchase portion of the customer journey right through to when a prospect makes a purchase. Typical marketing activities include:
Sales
Sales encompasses the (traditionally) human-led relationship-based activities that cover the purchase and post-purchase stages of the customer journey. It uses tools and solutions to convert interest from prospects and customers into revenue. Typical sales activities include:
Brand
Brand is a somewhat different beast when compared to marketing and sales. For one brand spans the entire customer journey from earliest awareness stages to creating brand evangelists. For another your company is not completely in control of your brand. Your brand is a balance between how you think of your company and how your audience perceives your company. Ideally you should have clarity and consistency in your message offer and value proposition across all parts of your organization so that your customers vision of you is closely aligned to how you view yourself. As you may guess this means many activities could be considered part of branding but some core brand activities include:
Basically sales drives revenue marketing drives margin and brand helps drive the entire customer journey.
So if some hypothetical marketer (who in no way resembles you of course) has been guilty of the brand/marketing/sales smoosh in the past how can they now separate the three and figure out exactly what sort of challenge theyre facing? Here are some examples to offer a bit of guidance.
If your customers are getting different answers when they ask questions about your company or your offering depending on whom in your company they talk to if your employees struggle to explain how you are different than your competitors or if people in your industry have an unflattering view of your company you may need to put some focus into your brand. This may be an opportunity for you to develop some core messaging and train your employees on what it means.
If youre having trouble getting the word out about your products or services if you have little to no credibility among your target audience or if your prospects dont see you as a solution to their challenges you likely have a marketing problem. You may want to look at how you can more effectively deliver relevant information to your target audiences.
If youre experiencing a low success rate on your proposals if you arent seeing much repeat business from your existing customers or if you just arent seeing many of your qualified leads converting to purchases your sales organization many need some additional support. Putting resources into identifying possible roadblocks to conversion could benefit your company.
While your company or an individual business line can generate positive revenue while being weak in one or two of these areas youll have a much better chance of success when you can interconnect brand marketing and sales and take an orchestrated approach to all three. If youre unsure how to get started Adcetera can help. Wed be happy to discuss the current state of your brand marketing and sales efforts and how we can help you create your own roadmap to revenue.
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