It’s easy to fall in love with your marketing, especially the brainstorming part. It’s a chance to present your brand the way you see it. The way you plan for it to be perceived. It’s a chance to be creative, to dabble in something that doesn’t (always) have its roots in numbers and problems and logistical challenges.
But are you sure that everyone on the team, and your product itself, fulfill the dirty promises your catchy slogan and pretty images make?
If your key marketing message, as expressed in a $50,000 ad and marketing campaign, is something along the lines of “we deliver stellar customer service,” how effective will it be the first time your customer service associate is unable to help a customer on a routine matter? Or the first time your new customer waits for 40 minutes to get any help at all?
Branding is much more than a good ad campaign. It’s EVERY single point of interaction between you, your product, your staff, team and partners and your customer. And if your marketing campaign proves to be inauthentic, it’s worse than if you’d done nothing at all.
So before you roll that next big direct mail campaign out, ask yourself (and your managers) these questions. They’re not fun. They’re hard. You may need to answer a few to yourself privately. But rest assured that if you don’t answer them honestly, your prospects (and competitors) will happily answer them for you.
These aren’t fun questions to ask, and they’re even less fun to answer. But trust me. Marketing begins here—not with a great design or unusual font.