Many brands have high expectations for marketing despite the limited resources they have available. It sets up the field for innovative and creative expressions. If these are tactically executed well, they can contribute to interesting campaigns and programmes. We share some tips that brands can consider when doing the thinking and planning through.
It’s a reality that marketing and communications professionals face on a constant basis. There’s never enough budget or capacity to take advantage of and manage all the brand and lead-pipeline building opportunities available at any point of time. There will never be a chance to use all the available tools to target all potential audiences at any single point of time. No matter how tempting that thought is, dividing and diluting resources across as many opportunities as possible, is not possible (and not recommended).
So, how do you decide where to use limited resources?
This question is usually pre-qualified to mean how does an organisation build awareness for an offering, or how to identify and build relationships with the audience.
From a strategic communications approach, the steps do not change. The brand has to provide an offering that meets a market need. They should identify influencers and connectors that can be pitched to and convinced to believe in the offering. Initial outreach should revolve around sharing information to the audience segment that can help broadcast to their network and community.
How does limited resources empower the approach?
Firstly, it encourages focus by prioritising the audience segment to do outreach to. You cannot reach everyone up and down the decision and purchase chain. Instead, determine the minimum number of people and who these persons are, to share your brand with, that has optimal effect This group becomes an audience segment for your brand. Critically, pick an audience segment that is ready to have a buying decision.
This group is the equivalent of an innovator or early adopters, that is, the audience segment members have a higher risk profile when it comes to new offerings.
Secondly, limited resources forces an organisation to test the areas they can control. These are typically areas such as the mission, value of the offering to the customer, positioning and messaging. As these areas and tools get refined, they become better and achieve more stickiness with the audience segments.
Finally, while the brand or offering is too new or has not achieved critical mass, it can still build and set context for the audience segments. These are achieved not through mass marketing tools, but dedicated sessions with influencers and connectors.
Working on convincing them about the viability and value of the offering, such that they can offer information to their network and community, can help your brand build more momentum.
Your offering cannot be primed to sell to your target audience before they are ready. A large part of making the customer ready is for them to hear about your offering from third parties that they find credible. These third parties could be influencers, connectors, subject matter experts or the media.
We are Brand Utility is a business consultancy. We work with brands in the corporate, retail, travel and technology spaces.
We offer strategy and tactics to support growth outcomes - revenue, scale, regional expansion and market entry – for our clients.
Areas of support include:
· Strategic communications: Approach to market, brand concept and map, positioning, messaging, story and narrative, thought leadership
· Marketing: Campaign/programme planning, story-based marketing execution, digital marketing, community amplification, content planning and production, go-to-market execution
· Lead generation: Digital advertising, social media advertising, social commerce, e-commerce
· Integration of marketing with business operations: We plan and execute as a seconded marketing and/or PR lead for your brand
Discover more about our services at our website or book an exploratory consultation through this link.
Photo by Prateek Katyal on Unsplash
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