Month: February 2022

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Jeff Bezos’s private space technology company Blue Origin was founded back in 2000. You’d think that no one could recreate a product so sophisticated and advanced as space rockets, right?

In 2002, Elon Musk created Space X. He was swiftly followed by Richard Branson and Virgin Galactic in 2004. 

With enough resources, products can always be copied. It’s tough to compete on product alone and you’re likely to see diminishing returns.

The solution: build a brand. The moat you create with brand is harder to replicate.

According to Edelman research, when that trust is built, 61% of people will become vocal advocates, 57% of people will purchase more products, and 43% will stay loyal. 

In this article, you’ll understand how to build a memorable brand that your customers want to buy from. Learn how to identify what your customers want from your brand, how to build momentum with content, and then explore some brands that excel at brand marketing.

Brand is your strongest asset

For most of 2021, CXL didn’t have a marketing team. And yet, revenue went up by 45% YoY. 

Why? Brand.

Your brand is your strongest, most sustainable long-term asset. It keeps working for you when you’ve logged off. Your brand is your reputation – that intangible thing that determines whether your customers trust you above the rest.

There have never been more brands competing for attention than there are right now. Studies show that only 5% of B2B buyers are ready to buy. You can’t force the other 95% to move into a buying position now; you can only create brand awareness so you’re what they think of when they’re ready. 

If you spam the non-buyers with sales CTAs, you’ll only annoy them.

Your brand is how you differentiate, build awareness, and sear your solution into customers’ minds so they think of you when that time comes.

Why should customers choose to do business with you? How do you ensure they have a first-class experience?

Build the answers to those questions into your brand strategy. Lean into your strengths, and don’t try to appeal to everyone. 

CXL, for example, leads on the strength of its course instructors and the depth of its course coverage. Our instructors are the top 1% of practitioners from real, successful companies—not self-labeled gurus.

By demonstrating proven marketing expertise, we can provide a consistent, valuable experience for our audience. 

Build a radical, memorable brand strategy

Define your unique value proposition— the primary reason your customers should buy from you. This process helps you zero in on who your customers are, what they need, and what they expect from you. Do this, and you’ll know who your brand is for (and who it’s not).

Understanding what your customers crave 

Your brand is a combination of words and action. Both should reflect what is important to your target market and accentuate your…

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Studies show only 5% of B2B buyers are ready to buy right now. You can’t force the other 95% into a buying position by spamming them with nurture sequences.

When people are finally ready to make a purchase, your goal should be one of two things:

1. Customers recall your brand, or at least; 
2. They recognize you in a lineup of other brands.

If you haven’t invested in brand awareness marketing then the opposite will happen. Your audience will flock to brands with a strong reputation because they don’t associate you with their need.

In this article, you’ll learn what brand awareness marketing is and how to become the only obvious choice when the prospect is ready to buy.

What is brand awareness marketing, really? 

Brand marketing is the most powerful weapon in your growth arsenal. When done right, it works tirelessly to build your reputation. 

Brand is how you win in crowded markets. It’s what builds shortcuts to your solution in your customers’ minds when it comes time to decide which is right for them.

Brand awareness marketing is the way to accomplish that. It’s the sum of activities to help your brand become the instinctive choice for consumers.

Those strategies are built on two components: brand recognition and brand recall.

• Brand recognition happens when your target audience recognizes your brand when they see it (even if they’ve never used your solution). This level of familiarity means you have successfully made it past “obscurity.” Your brand is now closer to being chosen when the need arises.
• Brand recall goes a step further. It happens when a customer can name your brand when reminded of what you sell (aided recall) or without that reminder (unaided recall).

Brand awareness marketing’s most formidable opponent is direct response marketing. Direct response aims to generate immediate action by asking customers to do something. Brand awareness marketing aims to make your brand the name people think of first and trust above all others.

While direct response is still popular, it’s not what it used to be. 

1. There’s too much competition today asking people to take action. Consumers need trust to drive decision-making and loyalty. 

2. You’re not guaranteed to reach your customers when they need you. Hammering people who aren’t ready to buy with cold calls and nurture sequences isn’t likely to be profitable.

If you want to direct more of the 95% of consumers that aren’t yet ready to commit toward your brand and away from competitors, brand awareness marketing is the way to go.

Why should marketers care about brand awareness marketing?

To get more eyes on your brand and build trust, you must understand and communicate why you’re different. What makes you the right solution to a specific problem?

It’s becoming increasingly difficult to stand out on qualities like features and customer service alone. Brand awareness solves this. Anyone can create a chatbot, but there’s only one Drift. 

Take Canva,…

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When you think of an office, you’re probably picturing something like this:

Or if you’re feeling fancy (and worth billions of dollars) like Google is, so you’re thinking something like this: 

These days you can even think of an office as a rented, shared space like WeWork:

Thanks to 2021, more offices than ever before are looking like this, home offices that we’ve set up in the quietest corner of our homes:

Although let’s be realistic…how many of your home offices actually look like this:

Yep, I’m raising my hand too.

When you think about work in 2021 and beyond—we’re no longer just thinking of this:

We’re thinking about a hybrid or totally remote model:

And that changes how we build our agencies.

Our offerings and products can stay the same—but the way our agency works internally…can completely shift.

There are 3 organized models that you get to choose to run your agency from nowadays:

#1: Gig Model

Short-term tasks that can be managed by one, or at most, a handful of people. With the Gig Model, you’re the opposite of a stage 5 clinger. Your business runs project-to-project and you’re focused on excelling at each of those projects—and then moving on.

There’s no need for water stations or happy hours because your team is distributed. You’re entirely remote and all of your workers are freelancers. Chances are you’re the only person on your payroll.

This model works great for startups that can’t afford full-time employees yet and are still getting themselves off the ground.

#2: Corporate Model

Hire a team to work on long-term open-ended jobs that can last for years. This is what you picture when you think of an office—lots of computers and people. We’re thinking of water station conversations and in-person team happy hours (remember those?!).

This is how DigitalMarketer ran pre-March of 2020. We had some freelancers, but the majority of our workforce was in-person, full-time employees. And it worked!

This model used to be an inevitable transition once your business required some full-time staff. It usually starts by bringing on some sort of operations or marketer—and quickly turns into full-time HR people, office managers, and interns.

But there’s a model in-between that most of us have missed—and it wasn’t our fault. We missed it because pre-March of 2020…we just weren’t thinking this way.

We were all thinking home offices and gig workers → rented office space and full-time employees. That was success in terms of an agency. Especially if you could afford the *good* coffee and the fancy snacks for your team.

Having to figure out how to run our businesses entirely remotely for months and in some cases over a year has taught us that…

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