We often hear from business owners and marketing directors who are looking at our brand marketing services for their business. They may have recently lost a valuable client or have started noticing a decline in conversions from their marketing and advertising campaigns.
When this happens, your first instinct might be to switch marketing agencies, find a new SEO supplier or maybe even start moving your marketing budget into paid search engine marketing (SEM) because you’ve heard Google ads do better.
These are all understandable reactions when your business relies on digital marketing to bring in clients and grow your business. But before you start making changes, it might be a good time to look in the mirror and examine the brand that you are taking to market. This is not a branding vs marketing fight, it’s about making sure your foundations are set up for success.
The problem runs deeper than your ad spend: Is it a branding issue, marketing issue, or both?
When we meet with the key decision makers in a business to discuss what is happening inside their companies and why they are looking for a new marketing agency, many tell us their business or services have changed, but those changes have not yet been reflected internally or externally in the brand.
Often there have been changes to leadership which come with new values, audiences, direction or products. There have also been instances where a new marketing director has come on board and realised the strategy needs to change to achieve the business goals. With these changes, their brand no longer reflects where they are today.
A mismatch between the brand’s internal direction and the marketing communications creates confusion and a lack of clarity among the audience’s perceptions of your brand positioning and purpose. This uncertainty and disconnect can negatively impact your brand equity and hurt your bottom line.
Your audience’s perception of your brand may have shifted, and your brand foundations may need realigning with that new direction before you focus on marketing. Because what’s the point of investing heavily in marketing if the brand itself is unclear, no longer reflects the business or is aimed at the wrong audience?
Build the foundations first
We often explain our process to clients in a similar way to building a house. When an architect starts to design a home, they create architectural drawings for the style, layout, size, positioning and flow of the rooms. This is the blueprint that the construction company will use to build the house.
The designs are based on extensive meetings and discussions with their client to understand their lifestyle, needs, style and budget for a new home. Similarly, a brand also needs a blueprint which extensively outlines their vision, audience needs, positioning, style, voice and key messages.
Your brand is the foundation of your business and if anything changes, your brand foundation needs to reflect the changes. It is your core identity and how your audience perceives you.
It’s a structural part of your house, a load bearing wall. When compromised or the brand doesn’t reflect the core foundation anymore, your business can be negatively impacted because of mixed messages, people’s experience and perceptions being altered.
Your marketing is what draws people in. It’s the kerb appeal, the landscaping out the front, the paint colours they see on the outside or even the invitations to your place for a party. You wouldn’t invite people over if your house is a mess or there’s a hole in the roof, so why would you continue to market your business if your branding is broken?
How we fix your branding to set your marketing up for success
We’ve been working with brands and local businesses in Melbourne for over 30 years and over that time, businesses have realised how important branding is to their marketing, growth and success in a competitive market environment.
Over the years, we have developed a method of discovering your business challenges, understanding your ideal audience and their needs, as well as the areas that make your business special compared to competitors and your goals for the future.
This process transforms businesses into knowledgeable, market-ready brands that understand fully who they are and how to represent themselves to their target audience. They also understand how to convert this brand equity into sales and consumer action through their marketing activities.
We always start with brand strategy first
No matter where your business is at, whether you’re launching a new business or an established business that needs help, we always start with a business and brand strategy workshop.
This allows us to get the full picture, understand where your business is at and begin formulating the right brand positioning and unique approach you should take in your market to stand out.
Through thorough research, discussions with staff members, the leadership team, and crucial interviews with your ideal clients, we get to the heart of who you are as a business and start crafting your branding to truly reflect your business identity and values, and position you as a forward-facing brand as you market and grow.
This exploratory process allows us to clarify your business, highlight your unique qualities and develop a strategy that resonates with your target audience. This brand blueprint becomes the foundation for your brand and is used by the marketing team to lead their campaigns. If anything changes about who you are as a business or how you serve your clients, this blueprint needs to be updated to match.
Above: An example of a few pages from a comprehensive brand blueprint mapping out audience insights, competitor positioning, and feedback to build a solid strategic foundation.
Brand design embodies who you are to your ideal audience
Informed by the strategy we developed in the blueprint, we begin to design a brand identity that mirrors this positioning strategy, values and personality into your brand visual direction.
For some businesses, it could be a full-scale brand transformation with a new name, logo and visual identity. For others, it might just be a new visual direction using the original name and logo. It all depends on the foundations we set out in your brand strategy and blueprint.
The direction and look of the brand design all come from the insights in the brand blueprint. It turns the values, ideas and positioning developed during the strategy process into a tangible visual identity that communicates who you are to your target market.
Think of this stage as the building stage of a house. All the plans we set out in the blueprint become real as your brand’s look and feel are fleshed out and now truly reflect your business to your ideal clients.
This crucial synergy between your brand identity and the strategy that underpins it means that as your business changes, your blueprint and identity should always be integrated into your decision-making. When things change and you don’t communicate it through your branding and strategy, you risk losing the essence and you become less trustworthy or unattractive to your clients.
Above: Transforming internal strategy into a tangible visual identity, as shown by the updated corporate logo and modern design direction for this client.
Rolling out your new brand in marketing and communications
With your house’s structural issues fixed, you’re ready to invite guests and launch the new brand across all customer touchpoints.
The hard work of strategy, positioning and brand design are complete. Once the strategy and design accurately reflect the business, you know how to reach and connect with your ideal market with a unique value proposition that is attractive to them and solves their needs.
Marketing campaigns that are more informed about your target market’s needs and visually communicate with branding that resonates will have a longer-lasting impact, drive up brand loyalty and translate into better conversions.
You can make stronger decisions about messaging, offers, and marketing approaches when it is backed by a blueprint that clearly outlines your business aspirations, strengths and unique selling points.
Above: The final strategy in action, showing how a unified visual identity scales across brochures and brand marketing collateral.
Branding vs marketing: The verdict for long-term growth
Our approach has been successful in launching and repositioning Melbourne businesses for the long term. We’ve worked with businesses from the start, seeing them through their growth periods and even helped them launch subsidiaries and new business ventures along the way. You can explore these results in action across our branding agency case studies.
When your marketing is driven by a clear brand strategy blueprint, you aren’t just decorating a house and hoping people like it, you’re building on rock-solid foundational knowledge designed specifically for your audience to convert for the long term.
So if your marketing isn’t converting as it should, it may be worth asking whether the issue sits with the brand underneath it. Start with a free consultation with the team at Liquid Creativity, a branding agency Melbourne businesses have been working with for more than 30 years, and start rebuilding your brand from the blueprint up.
