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If your brand isn't crystal clear in 15 seconds,
you're stuck in the white noise.
White Noise = Weak Brand = High Cost of Sales = Anemic IRR
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Marc Rudov Tells Steve Bengston of PriceWaterhouseCoopers:
The Root of Weak Branding is Poor Communication
(Hear how VCs worsen the problem. Click on the icon below)
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Every Company Needs a Strong Brand
- What It Is: Brand = unique value proposition = identity. Brand's power is measured by the gut reactions it evokes from targeted customers: military, industrial, commercial, and consumer
- Prerequisite to Selling: Continuously sharpening the brand is a necessity, not a luxury, through every economic cycle -- especially a recession. Unique, strong brand is a prerequisite to selling
- What It Ain't: Merely displaying a photo, product description, tagline, and fancy logo is not branding ("Do They Understand Your Brand?")
- CEO's Neck on the Line: If brand is unclear to employees, investors, partners, customers, and suppliers, they'll define it in whatever ways suit them. This blunder will kill revenues, cause wars between marketing and sales organizations, and put the CEO's neck on the line.
Strong Brand: Teflon for the Sales Funnel
Confusion begets no selling. In today's competitive, technology-oriented world, it's nearly impossible to distinguish one vendor from another. Look, for 15 seconds, at a typical Website; what do you see? Product attributes, posted for and by product designers. Waste of words. White Noise. Confusion. No brand. Window shopping. Search-engine optimization can't fix that!
 This discussion is not about Website design. If you think it is, go back to the top of this page. Start over. Read carefully.
I focus on the Website because it's the most-visible indicator of brand strength. If your brand is weak there, it's weak everywhere: CEO presentations, sales pitches, employee training, channel recruiting, financial documents, executive summaries, product brochures, corporate advertising. ("Brand Always Pulls the Revenue Cart")
Strong branding begets easy selling. The ideal salesforce is a group of ordertakers, every CEO's dream. You want ordertakers? Invest in becoming a unique standout, in creating a strong brand: Teflon for the sales funnel. The stronger the brand, the faster and easier the sale.
Weak branding begets slow selling. Weak branding means life in the white noise -- locus of slow sales, no sales, or being ignored altogether. It's true. If customers don't grasp your brand, your sales funnel will operate like a clogged drain.
Why CEOs Should Care: Weak Brand = High Cost of Sales
Why Investors Should Care: Weak Brand = Anemic IRR
Marc Rudov: The WhiteNoise Doctor™
I am Marc Rudov, The WhiteNoise Doctor™, a skilled communicator and internationally known thought-leader whom my clients and peers consider unique. I coined GutShare™ -- that portion of space in the customer's gut that one's product or service occupies -- because mindshare doesn't move people to purchase products and services. Penetrating the gut is the key to creating a unique brand.
Using my extensive business and media backgrounds, I can help you break through the white noise, stand out from the crowd, create a unique brand. Remember: Be unique or be ignored.
OK. Now what?
- Startup Company: Baseline Branding. In one day, we can forge the unique messaging that will resonate with your prospects and get you attention. If there's more work to do after one day, and there usually is, we'll proceed accordingly. CLICK HERE to contact me.
- Existing Company: Messaging Makeover. In one day, I will work with you and your team to review your corporate and product value propositions, compare them with customer feedback, and create new, impactful, customer-infused messaging. If your customer feedback is inadequate, we'll extend our engagement, as required, to gather and analyze the customer input necessary to create a strong, unique brand. CLICK HERE to contact me.
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Your Company's Key Branding Platforms:
- Keynotes
- Business plans
- PPMs
- Investor presentations
- Sales presentations
- Websites
- TV appearances
Do these platforms effectively articulate your company's value proposition? Do your target audiences get it -- how do you know? You can't build a brand they don't understand.
Two indicators of messaging effectiveness are length/close-rate of sales cycle and length/close-rate of capital-raising cycle.
If you ever say, "Those customers are idiots; they just don't get it," you are the problem -- your message is the problem.
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Do people ever ask, Tell me again what your company does?
Do journalists consistently mischaracterize your company?
Does every employee describe your company differently?
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If the answer to any of these questions is yes, your competitors will eat you alive. I'll bet your best customer could not stand in a crowded room or elevator to explain -- compellingly and succinctly -- what your company does.
Why? Because you can't explain -- compellingly and succinctly -- what your company does. This communication deficiency attenuates your success. It negatively affects product development inside your HQ and its acceptance outside your HQ. Poor messaging repels potential customers, partners, and investors.
Why did people camp out to get the first iPhone, a ridiculously expensive and inadequate product? Because Apple knows how to get people emotionally jazzed up. Apple can communicate.
Look at your company's Website and brochures. Listen to its sales pitches. Are they laden with vendor-speak or replete with customer-speak? Are they full of technology and product jargon, or well-articulated customer problems and associated solutions?
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Stop thinking that customers care about your products. They don't. Customers care only about themselves and their problems.
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Communicate so that customers react to, remember, and repeat your value proposition, so that investors fatten your balance sheet. Get them to get it!
Most companies cannot do this effectively.
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Engage me on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. I can help get your company's value proposition reacted to, remembered, and repeated. As a radio/TV personality, with exec-level experience in technology, I have the unique blend of skills to help you communicate effectively to your customers, investors, and partners. CLICK HERE to contact me.
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Copyright © 2003-2009 by Marc H. Rudov
All rights reserved.
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