Branding is an important prerequisite for advisers when creating marketing materials or programs. Without creating a strong brand, your marketing efforts run the risk of being disjointed or inconsistent, and lacking purpose and effectiveness. Your brand is your story and all the elements of how you communicate it: visually, verbally and written. It serves as the foundation of all outgoing marketing and communications for your firm, and it's important to define it on your own terms.
A strong brand knows its target audience, and speaks directly to them in terms of what's important to them. It addresses market issues or problems head-on, and supports everything the firm does. Strong brands give careful consideration to tying their messages to perception, as well as to aesthetic look and feel.
For too many firms, branding is an afterthought rather than a well-thought-out process that starts before any marketing activities are started.
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Creating the right messages for your brand starts with asking some hard questions to define who you are and how you want to be perceived. Why are you in business? What is your value proposition? What's your style?
Marketing efforts that don't tie back to the brand may do your firm a disservice.
Consider the investment management firm who never considered defining their brand before creating their website and other marketing materials. They have a logo, but the logo appears inconsistently in various shades of blue, placed on different color schemes, making it hard to recognize. Multiple writers hired by different partners at the firm use different voices to create marketing materials with contradictory messages, each using a different graphic designer who starts from scratch creating a visual theme.
In total, the firm's marketing communications materials look like they could be the materials of several different firms. The sales team picks and chooses which materials they like best — or they create their own, adding to the pile of mismatched collateral. Some members of the team focus on selling the firm's value product, while others focus on selling growth. Still others focus on practice management which, while helpful, doesn't tie back to the products or services.
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The result is a firm lacking a consistent, professional image, with a sales team that operates like they all work for different firms, and with no clear direction for the firm's future. Many firms start off in similar manners with little branding or marketing direction, but at some point, to get to the next level of success, they need to take a step back and build a brand.
Before you start on new marketing efforts, take a step back and think about what you want to say and how you want to be perceived. How does what you are saying tie back into your value proposition for your clients? Do your marketing efforts support your brand, reinforce your message, and follow the look and feel defined by your brand? Is there a clear takeaway or call to action that ties back to your message?
If you can't answer these questions, then it's time to reevaluate your brand and the effectiveness of your marketing communications efforts. Developing and strengthening your brand will take some time, effort and investment, and then if it's done well, it'll take your firm a long way.
Amy Zimmerman is the principal of A.Z. Communications, a marketing and branding firm for investment professionals.
