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Make your brand identity the central organizing principle for everyone and everything in a company rather than just the products, services, logos and imagery

Brands are assets that create sustainable wealth, both for businesses and wider society. Every successful brand has a clear positioning expressed through its name, logo, and identity. But, more than that, a strong brand identity has the potential to influence all aspects of a brand's omnichannel presence, including its products, services, and staff behaviors. In fact, McKinsey's nine traits of a future-ready company found that employees who say they are “living their purpose” at work are four times more likely to report higher engagement levels at work. People reach further when their energies are channeled toward a purpose. This shows brand leaders can capitalize on brand purpose to enthuse both their customers and employees. Brand positioning and identity are integral components of the overall brand strategy. Having a…

Personalized marketing, as we know from our experiences as brand-lovers and as marketers, is the make or break of any e-commerce marketing strategy in a competitive environment

Personalized marketing is all about offering improved user experience (UX) by serving relevant content, or targeting key messages in the funnel, based on your customer’s e-commerce activities and behaviour. Personalized marketing unlocks tactics for retailers to form personal relationships with their customers during their online experience (CX), to nurture leads and drive more sales from digital marketing. During a global 2022 survey of consumers who purchased something online in the past six months, 62% stated that a brand would lose their loyalty if it delivered a non-personalized experience. This is no secret to marketers who have watched a growing trend of personalization customer expectations and e-commerce investment to match. In fact, the chart below shows current customer experience personalization and…

Updating approaches to your online branding for the digital world

Brand is No.1

I want to start with a bold statement.  The online brand is the single most important element to a business or organization. If you think about what online branding actually is; a position that has been carefully established, and a set of customer promises and overall experiences based on communication and service, then not delivering on these promises and what a brand stands for will lead to failure. In today's digital landscape, strong online branding will allow you a closer connection with your prospective customers, leading to conversion and retention. Without a strong online brand, a business will experience reduced competitiveness, inaccessible products and services, customer confusion, and dissatisfaction. As your online brand shows its form in all your customer touchpoints, then to say it is everything is really not an overstatement.

What is online branding?

Website(s), search marketing, mobile content, social media,…

How to research and optimize strategic brand development. Creating a strong omnichannel brand identity based on research

Brand identity is often misunderstood as simply picking a color palette and a logo. In reality, this is just one element of brand development strategy. With every market bulging with competitors, carving out a strong brand identity is critical to differentiation and achieving cut through. The concept of building a strong brand identity is therefore grounded in research, and based on a clear understanding of the business, market, competitive landscape, and brand positioning. It’s more than simply coming up with a name and plastering a logo across collateral. It is a strategic approach to designing an identity that truly reflects the business. It requires a deep understanding of the business values, what it does, and how it wants the world to perceive it.

What is brand identity?

Brand identity is a collective term for all…

7 steps ensure top-down strategic alignment between business strategy and partner marketing

Aligning partner marketing with your organization's overall business strategy and specific strategic initiatives is essential for driving success and maximizing the value that partners bring to an organization. However, this alignment can often be challenging due to a lack of understanding and buy-in from internal stakeholders. Before exploring practical strategies to bridge this gap, let's first clarify business strategy. Harvard Business School defines Business Strategy as “The strategic initiatives a company pursues to create value for the organization and its stakeholders and gain a competitive advantage in the market. This strategy is crucial to a company's success and is needed before any goods or services are produced or delivered.”

Does your organization value partner as part of your overall strategy?

If the answer is “no” or “partly” then it will hinder the effectiveness of any marketing programme. There is a need to establish…

Find new brand building strategies to delight your customers online with our RACE Growth System

Consumer branded goods marketing is all about reaching and delighting your customers in a time and place that suits them. Increasingly, consumer goods marketers are turning to online and social media marketing for brand-building strategies. B2C marketing is an ever-evolving discipline, because customers' tastes and expectations are, naturally, always developing. With the rapid digitalization we've seen particularly over the last 2 years, the change of pace is faster, and it can be hard for marketers to keep up. Moreover, in a competitive marketplace, businesses are struggling with the challenge of growing their brand alongside also generating leads and sales. A large market share doesn't necessarily translate into a high turnover if you can't move prospects down your marketing funnel.

Optimize your consumer branded goods marketing funnel with our RACE Growth System

Without a structured marketing strategy in place, many consumer-facing…

9 pointers for strategic marketers to implement and benefit from cross-channel marketing

What is cross-channel marketing?

Cross-channel marketing is a customer-focused digital marketing technique used by marketers globally to provide an integrated experience across all paid, owned, earned media, and digital experiences. It is a powerful way of designing your marketing strategy and implementing data and analysis to create omnichannel customer journeys towards your goals. Implementing a cross-channel marketing strategy can be a little intimidating. You need to take care of multiple channels while designing your campaigns. Keeping track of every campaign and integrating their analytics is certainly not an easy task. That's where our RACE Framework comes in. So, before we dive into cross-channel marketing, let’s take a moment to assess your business' marketing needs. Did you know you can book a free 1-2-1 membership consultation to discuss your objectives in the context of our omnichannel…

How has the definition of branding evolved to reflect the modern business context?

If you type ‘what is branding’ into a search engine, you’ll be presented with two choices: “making a mark with a branding iron” Or, “creating a distinctive design to promote a product or service” Branding in today’s world is not just about standing out, but about creating a truly consistent omnichannel experience across all customer touchpoints. To achieve this, it means fully integrating brand strategy across every customer interaction, not just about creating aesthetically stable collateral. To outpace competitors in the current business climate, branding requires a data-driven, customer-focused approach to marketing. Our marketing tools and templates help you build a winning marketing strategy that supports your business objectives and boost revenue. What's more, all our marketing strategy resources are integrated across the RACE framework to drive the results you need to reach your goals. …

Discover our framework to plan, manage, and optimize your brand positioning strategy in the era of omnichannel consumer branded goods

In its best form, a brand positioning strategy for a company unifies all customer-facing comms and marketing activities. It highlights who the target audience is, and why they need your product (and how you're going to make sure they know that). More importantly, in today's age of digitalization, with Debenhams and Arcadia Group being bought by online giants Asos and Boohoo, and now GAP planning to close stores in UK, France, and Italy as part of their European review, positioning your brand online is more important than ever. That's where RACE comes in - a dedicated marketing structure your brand can use to integrate your customers' experiences of your brand,…

Branding means fully integrating your customers' experiences of your brand. We'll recommend marketing tools and training to show you how, as well as taking an in-depth look into the definition of branding

What's the definition of branding? Across numerous terms and definitions, one thing that rings true for pretty much all of them is a heightened focus on your customers' experiences of your branded goods or services, compared to your competitors. But what is meant by brand definition today? And what can brand marketers learn from this? We've all seen that, to succeed in today's competitive omnichannel environment, it's more important than ever that brands champion their key customers (both potential buyers and those with existing lifetime value) in all of their marketing activities. You need a data-driven, customer-focused approach to marketing to outpace your competitors. As a result, we guarantee that all our marketing training is integrated across our tried and tested…