Effective b2b Marketing Follows Branding

Why Marketing Strategy Must Grow Out of Branding Strategy

My client Suzanne Tulien of The Brand Ascension Group and I violently agree about something - effective marketing comes after a firm establishes its brand identity. Suzanne talks about “Brand DNA”, which is a fabulous metaphor, because truly, the brand has to be in an organization’s bones before it can mean anything to customers.

So much of b2b marketing, alas, is a brand-less recital of features and benefits. A marketer can only do so much with that kind of raw material. Let’s take the hypothetical ABC Company that sells…

The Branding Power of Search Engine Optimization

When people think of search engine optimization (SEO) - the art and science of making your web pages rank highly on search engines - they usually think of precise, tactical activities aimed at specific sets of keyword phrases. SEO is all that, but it can serve another purpose, one that may be more significant than driving traffic to a web page to sell a particular product or service.

I’m talking about branding.

What is the cumulative effect of having customers in your niche see your company’s name over and over again when they search for anything…

From Hugh Beaumont to Hugh Laurie - Changing Cultural Icons and the Marketing Challenge

Is anybody here old enough to remember Hugh Beaumont, the actor who played the father on the 1950s-1960s classic TV show Leave It to Beaver? That Hugh was a cultural icon, the perfect father.

Nowadays, a new Hugh, Hugh Laurie, has become something of a cultural icon in his role as Dr. Gregory House on the hit TV drama House M.D. My, how things have changed. These two Hughs couldn’t be further apart.

From perfect to flawed. Beaumont was the perfect Dad. If there were any chinks in the armor, we never saw them. Laurie is damaged - a description…

Should Consultants Call Themselves Consultants?

Trigger Words - When Branding and SEO Collide

Many consultants I work with dislike referring to themselves as consultants. They think the word consultant has a bad connotation and furthermore, does not accurately describe their services or methodology.

In terms of consultant being a trigger word, they are absolutely correct, at least in my experience. When I was in the corporate world and a consultant contacted me, I thought -

• Expensive
• Unfamiliar with our needs
• Theoretical
• Long meetings
• Loss of control
• No results

Not exactly the kind of thoughts that would warm me up to hiring this person. But here’s the rub. Whenever I was looking for outside assistance, what word do…

9 Ways to Discover Your Marketing Purpose

Collective Wisdom of the Word Sell Community

If your business is launching a website or blog, how do you determine what to write about and how to write it? Taking it a level up, what are you trying to accomplish?

Questions like these are not as simple as they sound. We had a recent discussion here on marketing discovery, and readers suggested all sorts of wonderful questions we can ask to ferret out the answers.

The Nine Pillars of Marketing Wisdom

1. Customer focus is a resounding theme. Andrew suggests, “What do our customers and key stakeholders want to achieve from a visit to our…

Why I Love Working with Consultants

“I’ll admit it. I’ve had my consulting practice for close to 20 years and I just created a website, and only because my book was published. I am what you’d call a late adopter in any technology cycle, other than the Apple I phone which I bought after it was on the market for a year and the bugs were worked out. So starting a blog, critical to building awareness for my book, felt personally and mentally overwhelming. Brad made the whole process effortless, with easy to understand information about blogging, guidance for my decisions and steady encouragement. On my…

Put a Little Love in Your Marketing

Love is the ultimate motivator. Even though we are generally more inclined to buy something to avoid pain rather than achieve gain, love is the exception. We do crazy things when we’re in love. We do things we’d never do when we’re in love. Some of us have even died for love. If your marketing can tap into those deep and mysterious waters of love, you can unleash a mighty river of new business.

Consider one of the greatest advertising campaigns of all time. The print ad features a baby in diapers sitting next to a tire. The ad…

The Lighter Side of Banking?

Is there a lighter side to banking these days? In this cartoon, I was trying to find it, but if I were a bank, I wouldn’t be using humor in my advertising just now.

Actually I’ve never been a fan of humor in financial institution advertising. Remember those WaMu TV spots with the fuddy duddy band of bankers? Or the Capital One “What’s in Your Wallet?” campaign? Trivializing personal finance, portraying a loan as a lark or a walk in the park … that’s the wrong message.

Where do you see humor used inappropriately in advertisements and marketing?

…

Help Luke Gedeon Hit 100 Comments

Luke Gedeon has an end-of-year project going on. Like I once was, Luke is in search of his first 100-comment post.

You can find his post here. It’s all about Microsoft Office 2008, Open Office, and “free” offers. It’s witty and informative.

(As an added attraction, in the comments section of this post, I reveal my secret for extending blog post conversations to infinity.)

If you have a few minutes to spare, check out Luke’s post and offer a comment. Or two. We ought to help Luke usher in the new year in style, don’t you think?

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Eco-Friendly Christmas Cartoon

Here’s our Christmas cartoon that appears in the December issue of Packaging World magazine. I create these Eco Ed cartoons with client Dennis Salazar, who conceived the character, and they are drawn by uber illustrator Mark Hill. Eco Ed is the most fun I’ve had all year … you never know what kind of environmental issue he’ll be tackling (or fumbling with) next.

Merry Christmas!

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