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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. 

• What do I or my brand do well?  Conversely, what don’t I do well?  (You don’t have to, and probably even shouldn’t,  include the latter in your campaign, but you’d better address it and be sure you don’t advertise it as a strength.)
• What do people and the industry think about my product and/or brand?  And this is not what do I think people think about my brand.  Know what they think, or find out.
• Does the market understand my message?  Maybe you know what you mean when you put it out there.  But do they?
• Does everyone in my organization know and understand the customer?  What the customer wants? What the product does?  Unless you’re the only one answering the phones and installing or delivering the product, what your staff does everyday is every bit as important as your expensive marketing campaign.
• How do my customers really feel about my service, the product’s performance and its effectiveness?  How do I know?  Better be sure, or your mismatched message may actually do damage to your brand! 

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.