When it comes to talking about ourselves, most of us feel like we can’t come up with the right words. But oftentimes in marketing, we have the opposite problem: we can’t shut up.
If you’re having trouble with a brand strategy — whether for a client or your own business — it might be because you’re using too many words to do the work of one pithy phrase that’s the true center of your brand strategy.
In their new report, “How to Drive Effective B2B Brand Strategy in 2020,” B2B marketing agency Renegade, LLC analyzes common pitfalls in business-to-business marketing. In 12 easy to digest sections, Renegade CEO Drew Neisser offers insights culled from interviews and work with over 350 Chief Marketing Officers.
In tip #6, the report lays out ways that marketers often fall victim to the problem of too many words. Just because lots of ideas are flowing doesn’t make them all genius. A little editing to get from verbose to pithy can make or break a marketing strategy.
The Strategy Behind Just 8 Perfect Words
Renegade’s own marketing strategy work frequently starts with developing a “purpose-driven story statement,” according to the report. And while many marketing firms might also work to define their brand’s story, they might fail at doing the hard work of distilling those complex ideas onto a digestible phrase.
Renegade points to the “perfect 8 (or less) words” as their goal for any brand brainstorm. They explain, “Done artfully, these carefully crafted words represent an organizational promise, a purposeful commitment to all stakeholders.”
Great B2B Marketing Frequently Involves Introspection
When developing internal brand awareness, great companies need to also feed their own employees’ awareness of what they stand for. It works to not only build brand loyalty from within but also to help revise and refine that outward-facing messaging as well.
In the Renegade report, they discuss a recent Renegade Thinkers Unite podcast conducted with Survey Monkey’s CMO Leela Srinivasan. In it, she noted that the company’s dedication to their customers as well as their employees, they worked hard to encourage buy-in to their own strategy: “Power the Curious.” From employee-created surveys to an entire conference built around the power of curiosity, Survey Monkey helped stoke the fires of their own brand strategy not with more ad buys, but with real engagement.
So the question remains: what’s your brand strategy and how are you working to improve it at it’s simplest core? Can you even get to that core easily? Or is it trapped behind a wall of too many words?
Want more details on how to accomplish a pithy brand strategy and other tips? Read the full report online for more insights on B2B branding that works.
