As We See It - The Branding Continuum

Branding & Positioning

Branding & Positioning Strategy: The Building Blocks of Marketing
Before any of our clients invest their time, resources and budget, we first consult with them regarding the extent to which they have developed a position and a brand, and the strategies for making these assets contribute to their overall mission, growth and business development.

Where do you stand on these critical measures or any others that affect how your target audiences view who you are?

Positioning

Positioning -- the single-minded idea by which your constituencies know you -- is the unique attribute of yours that stands alone in the category. It's not a slogan or a tag line, but a simple, relevant and differentiating factor that clearly defines your benefit. Positioning is your cue to your external public that you know what he or she is looking for and that you relate to those needs. It is the very room of market responsiveness.

Successful positions are highly unique, highly relevant the highly compelling. Getting there combines analytical, business and creative skills. The result is a message that can answer your strategic and business development objectives.

B2B Branding -- Business-to-Business Branding Matters Because Business People Make Rational Decisions with Emotional Underpinnings

Effective business brands transport and fortify your unique position. Brands open doors and create expectations about your organization and its products and services. Brands communicate credibility and more importantly, they create the expectation of something special, valuable and worth the price, the membership fee or the commitment. They help business decision makers complement the rational portion of their decision process with an emotional "kicker." Branding's most powerful by-product, loyalty, can only be earned if the qualities of the brand are represented in “all points” of the brand. The many brand points that influence your key audiences may surprise you.

Strategy – Making Ideas Achieve Results

Positioning and branding are powerful ideas for creating relevance and preference. The key point is that they are only ideas – ideas that need to be implemented effectively before their worth can be realized. That's where strategy comes in.

Positioning and branding are foundational strategies in and of themselves. As we put these ideas into action, other levels of strategy are developed as well:

• Macro Strategy – the overriding marketing strategy that prescribes the overall plan of attack. This level of strategy directly answers your overall business objectives, but with information on your marketplace, the behavior of your competitors and the realities of your budget.
• Creative Strategy – the specific approach for relating to prospects sentiments via verbal and visual communication.
• Communication Strategy – the ways in which we your budget dollars are allocated to derive the most cost- effective and efficient vehicle for delivering the outcomes of the creative strategy.

Now more than ever business marketers need to take advantage of the power of positioning, branding and marketing strategy. The complexity and competitiveness of the business environment coupled with the status of the global economy make it a critical necessity for business development and successful growth. Marketers can increase the effectiveness of their business development programs many times over by standing for something unique, creating ties with their key audiences and delivering these differences in cost-effective ways.