Branding starts with the boss – What can marketers do to help?
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Marketers are the cornerstone of branding
Let’s face it, every company, big or small, wants to earn money. Nothing solves that problem more than making sales. After all, no sales means no revenue, and cash flow is already the biggest problem for small businesses. 82% of businesses fail due to problems with cash flow, said a US Bank Study.
Securing more business lets your boss worry less about the day-to-day and more on the survival of the company. If you’re a marketer, it’s your job to incorporate his/her goals into your marketing strategies. Strategies need a goal, and that goal is the company’s one.
All that being said, our bosses need to be advocates for branding if we want anything to take off.
Fran Kelly, one of the brains behind some game-changing ads like Volkswagen’s “Drivers Wanted” and the anti-tobacco campaign “truth”, said, “To do superior branding the firm needs to strive to be great, and that requires support from the top.”
The ball starts rolling when the boss is on board (How to do it)
The case for small businesses is that your boss is too caught up on day-to-day operation, forecasting future deals and maintaining relationships with partners.
What we can do when proposing a marketing plan or strategy is to explain in terms that your boss is interested in. “It’s about speaking the CEO’s language and accomplishing the CEO’s mission.” – Fran Kelly
They are probably interested in how much ROI the strategy will deliver. Since marketing is intangible, gathering data on previous campaigns, especially for SMEs, may be a tad difficult but it’s about time you start collecting – from today!
We suggest drawing from case studies, statistics reports online to prove your point. Hootsuite has a great resource library that conducts case studies and analysis.
Datasets to collect on your next campaign:
- The number of clicks on your ad (Click-through rate, CTR)
- Visits to your website (Website Traffic)
- The number of actions (Conversions) – i.e. sign-ups, downloads, sales
- Total revenue – solely from that ad
- Cost of your campaign
This will give you a simple ROI to work with and other metrics to tweak your campaigns and track your progress. If you’ve never tracked Roi before, here’s a basic ROI guide from Google. You can use this guide as a starter for data analysing.
If you manage to get a 6-month long brand campaign or longer, get the sales figures from previous months and compare that with your brand campaign of the equivalent length.
You can attribute the difference to justify that branding was the near-direct cause of increased sales. Of course, this assumes the scenario that your campaign is a success that delivered a positive ROI. Don’t forget, even small increments are a sign you’re heading in the right direction, so don’t stop there.
Turning your boss into a brand advocate
Keep the objective simple, show your boss what he needs to know. They are busy so don’t waste their time. Don’t explain branding and marketing jargon with him/her, especially if they’re not familiar with them. Explain only when it’s absolutely necessary. If there’s an easier way to explain, use it.
Once your boss sees the results, he/she’s going to be all in for branding. They will buy into the creative endeavours so long as it brings in business and attributes to the company’s success.
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