The dance between marketing and brand
…and where to focus your energy for the best output
A little change of pace in today’s article…
After a brief hiatus, I’m back writing content, and I’m not going to lie — it feels really good.
The last year has been incredibly rewarding from a personal and professional standpoint — but after 5–6 years of slogging it in TENASU, but I came to the realisation that I was progressively piling too much on my plate, with little to no rest or reprieve.
No matter how much I said I was striving for balance — if I’m being brutally honest, it was all lip service.
Every quarter, I would go into planning mode, add more, systemise more,
To a point, where I got tied up in some toxic productivity and self-development.
I would free up more time, only to fill it again.
I would hit milestones, aim higher, tick the box, barely coming up for air and smelling the roses in the meantime.
Building and building.
Brick by brick.
By the time the last week of December came around, I was running on fumes — when I stopped for the break, I literally slept for three days.
But from there, I didn’t continue to rest and recover properly (despite my telling myself that I would), and then I came out of the gate setting a ton of meetings in my first week back in January.
The exhaustion crept back in and I realised something needed to change.
It made me realise that if I wanted to continue to improve, I needed to slow down to speed up.
One of my favourite Drucker quotes is
Follow effective action with quiet reflection.
From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.
I’m sure everyone that has gone to the effort of creating an ABN has experienced the above, I know I’m not alone in that.
But today is not a pity party, it’s about the lesson.
It starts with understanding the transferability of energy output, and its role throughout our marketing campaigns.
For me, I am fortunate my business model allows me to adapt and adjust with little repercussions.
I was able to pull back on almost all of my business development activity and focus wholeheartedly on existing clients and their needs.
As business owners, I think we are afraid to take our foot off the pedal for fear that we’ll lose it all…
So, in a way, it was a bit of an experiment to find out what truly moved the needle, and what was burning energy for the sake of ‘being busy’ but potentially chewing into the ability to scale in a way that is aligned with what I want from the business.
This is a beautiful segway into the conversation of the energy involved in marketing, and the importance of focus to ensure we are leveraging our time, energy, and resources, rather than allowing them to burn out like a forgotten candle, eventually collapsing into a puddle of itself.
To move past this, we have to understand the duality of Brand and Marketing as an area of focus for businesses, and how we have to understand the importance of energy and momentum in how we approach it.
For the longevity of ourselves, and our businesses.
There are constants, and then there are ebbs and flows.
It’s a dance between the essence (brand) and the energy (marketing)
So what’s the difference?
And more importantly, how do they play in concert with each other?
Brand is the essence — it is who you are, and the connective tissue between what you stand for, and how you communicate the shared mutual desired outcome for your clients.
This is part of everything we do.
The clarity of our message, and the cut through it creates in our marketing campaigns is the force that dials up our conversions.
When the brand becomes correctly refined, defined, and aligned, it is an attracting force, and allows us to do more with less.
Marketing is the energy — it is directional in where and when you direct this message across your marketing activities (operative word, it needs to shift momentum).
It is the means and methods that you employ to achieve the desired result.
While a creative pursuit, it is often very process driven in terms of refining and reviewing what has worked, and what needs to change for the business to hit it’s goals.
People often speak about Marketing and Brand in isolation, however, they can only truly work in synchronicity.
Failure to understand how they work will always negatively impact the stickiness of a campaign, and ultimately the return on investment.
On the other side of the coin — if you have an established brand message, and the correct marketing implementation — you attract the right customers, with higher lifetime values.
They spend more, and more often.
They advocate for you, and refer you more business.
Your sales process becomes smooth as butter, and your client experience is energising for both parties.
Your clients love to buy, and you love to serve them.
The energy represents the rising tide that lifts all boats.
It’s all positive motion, and from this place, we can continue to build,
This is why the starting focus needs to be on creating momentum from activities that are generating motion.
Creating energy is infinitely harder than directing it.
It is undoubtedly easier to move what is in motion, rather than what is still.
I believe this is exactly WHY so many businesses fail to take the next step with their marketing.
Because they don’t understand it, and are fed diatribes by so many marketing experts, consultants, and guru’s that they need to take Massive Action and create all of these campaigns.
It becomes overwhelming, so nothing actually gets started*.
Correction* thoughts, and conversations start, but nothing is put in motion. As many prospects have said in the past — “I spend a lot of time THINKING about marketing”
If the thought of creating campaigns makes your head spin, then start with building out the brand, and clarifying your message.
The stronger the essence (brand), the more impact it will have when directed as energy (marketing).
When we spend time strengthening our brand, our key messages and campaigns become much more resonant with the markets that matter — they cut through the noise.
So many of us take an all or nothing approach with marketing, which is why it can feel exhausting before it even starts.
Focussing on implementing tactics we have little understanding of, without strategy is a tiring endeavour.
It is always in flux.
Instead, nail down the strategy, built from a place that harnesses the connection between your solution, and the problem that your favourite clients experience.
If you need some questions to get the process going — use these to start understanding why you’re important to the people that matter (your clients), and you’ll start to see what will make you attractive to more people like them.
Who are our favourite clients (name them, real life examples)
Why do they choose you?
Why do you love working with them?
How do you reliably solve their problems?
How would they describe the outcome and experience in their words?
What would they say about you to the previous version of themselves, or to their friends and family?
Once you start connecting the threads of what is most important to them, then you can focus on the next step.
I’ll write something on that specific process soon, let me know if you have any specific questions in anything marketing and brand and I can tailor the article to answering those.
Zac
Ps. I’m developing new marketing structure for FY 20 / 21 and it’s all about creating leverage on a month to month basis. It has 12 focussed parts to work through each month. It’s not finished yet, but let me know if you’re interested, and I’ll share it with you for free when it is.