The Spark

This is stuff I'm enjoying out in the world (it's probably not B2B).

There was a box on my stoop Monday night. I didn't order anything so I had no idea what was in it. Inside was this beauty...

It was a gift from my friend Kathy to celebrate the upcoming one-year anniversary of going full-time with The Creative Brand. Completely unexpected. Completely awesome!

Of all the YETIs I've had (and if you work in tech, you know how high that number is) this is far and away my favorite. I've been carrying it around with me all week and it's been a very productive one. Coincidence? I think not... Thanks Kathy!

Also check out the new Tyler, the Creator, album drops next week!

The Deep Thoughts

This is what I'm thinking about.

Earlier this week I was catching up with a startup marketing leader about their budget—90% of it was allocated to demand. This wasn't a point of pride or a flex, just a fact.

This company doesn't have brand guidelines, messaging, or even processes for creating the ads that support that 90%. On top of that, sales, CS, and the rest of the company just say and send whatever they want. 

It's not the inefficiency or waste that upset me most when hearing this, it was the broken trust with their customer. It feels like many of us marketers have forgotten that the goal of building a brand isn't just to differentiate yourself from your competition, it's also to build trust with your audience.

Your Brand is the Key to Building Trust

Last week's newsletter was all about the Brand HQ. The purpose of it is to enable the rest of your company to utilize the Brand in all of their content, comms, and pitches. This is important because consistency in visual identity and messaging is an important way to build trust.

If your ads look and feel different from your website which is then different from your emails and finally is different from your nurturing and sales process, guess what's gonna happen... you're going to confuse your audience and likely lose them along the way.

Consistency in your brand is the throughline that builds trust and opens wallets.

Prove the Value of Brand

The situation described above is the perfect example of a company that doesn't value Brand. Their Marketing leader does. He actively wants to build the tools and assets required to help his colleagues. The issue is his colleagues don't see the value and that's what I want to help you with today.

If I were starting from scratch, you know what I would do to make Brand a priority and to get buy in from across the organization? I'd prove it's value! I'm not talking awareness or sentiment, I'm talking cold hard cash.

There are two approaches I would start with and almost every organization I've ever worked at or with has had the opportunity for at least one these. 

Find Your People in Sales

When Sales doesn't use your decks or one sheets or key messages it can be incredibly frustrating but they're not doing these things out of spite, they're using what works for them. This is your first opportunity to prove the value of Brand.

Every Sales team on the planet has at least 1 or 2 AEs who are curious about new technology. Today it's AI, last year it was video, a few years before that it was personalization. They're good at what they do and they have a process but they also want to stay ahead of the curve to book that P-Club trip. These are your people! Find them.

When you do find them, ask them about their pain points and what they're thinking about, then help them come up with a solution (almost sounds like a sales process...). This solution should of course solve for their problems but it should also solve for yours. 

An example from a few years ago, personalized sales videos were starting to take off. This was before AI tools could do this at scale so every video needed to be created on a one off basis. There were some AEs who wanted to give it a try but they were having trouble. They reached out to one of the senior video editors on my team for help. He reached out to me because he saw the opportunity. We found budget and time to build a mini setup for the AEs, provide editing help, and best practices on how to deliver their message most effectively. Those AEs ended up being very successful and a bunch of their teammates wanted to make videos too.

This worked for a number of reasons. The primary one being that it supported revenue—these videos became a new (and differentiated) way for the business to make money. And if you're making money for the business, people will listen. The second reason was that it supported the Brand. The videos looked good, the messaging was on point, and it became clear what we offered. By providing our help we built a relationship that would pay off for years to come. 

Once the videos performed we could make the case to the execs that this is something we should invest in. That case wasn't backed by hopes and dreams but by data that supported the recommendation. And you know what, it's much easier to influence a larger group when you have supporters one your side. It started with a few AEs, then their peers were interested, then their managers. By the time it was time to sell it through to leadership, the job was pretty much done.

Help the Regional Teams

Sales is a great way to build influence but an even better (read: more fun) way is to support the regional teams. If you're company is expanding into foreign markets, that likely means there's maybe a handful (if you're lucky) of people who are responsible for every aspect of marketing and sales in that region. They need help!

This is where you come in. Find out what their specific pain points are (there will be many so prioritize) and help them out. For me this has been everything from setting up blogs, to funding photo shoots, and building more localization friendly templates. It can literally be anything because there are usually a ton of gaps to cover.

I love this route because...

1. The team is usually so happy. You'll never meet someone more grateful than a regional marketer who finally has help.
2. You'll get to learn about different regional nuances and considerations because, believe it or not, not everyone speaks English, different regions use different channels, and different markets have different levels of sophistication in their marketing. Honestly, this is one of the quickest ways to learn about different cultures and their marketing preferences.
3. You've helped a new region and program get on it's feet and those happy regional marketers from #1 will let everyone know who went above and beyond to help them.
4. You'll have proven the value of Brand for the full flywheel (or funnel, if you prefer) in that region. That data can be applied internationally or at least used for the basis of experimentation across different regions and languages.

Find Your People

The point here is that if you want to prove the value of Brand, you need to find places where you can influence the team to use it. Very rarely in a career will you put out an idea that affects hundreds or thousands of people where the response is "as you wish." If you do find yourself in one of those situations just go, seriously, run because it just doesn't happen.

For every other situation you need to find the pockets of people who you can help (and who can coincidentally help you in return). 

The Pitch

This is what you should be thinking about.