If you want to fix your marketing, start by thinking about your home.
What’s one of the scariest home repairs you can imagine? What’s one you just know is going to cost ungodly amounts of money, and yet, you know it has to be done?
Your mind might go to the roof, or any sort of wire or pipe that lives behind the walls, but how about this one?
Cracked foundations are the #1 cause of marketing fails. They let mold, moisture, and decay into campaigns. They warp the structure itself, but the damage can be hard to see until it’s late in the game.
The only difference here is that most businesses and nonprofits with cracked marketing foundations have already spent an ungodly amount of time and money - and they still have repairs to make.
We have a bit of a crusade we’re on at Brand3, to protect small businesses and nonprofits from marketing waste. We can’t stand to see it happen.
It’s interesting to ask business leaders why they think this happens so often - why so many marketing campaigns flop. They’ll often talk about things like vanity metrics, ever-changing algorithms, agencies who didn’t seem to care - all of this is valid.
But if you ask me or anyone on our team here about the real source of marketing waste, we’ll say,
And often, when you say that, people just kind of blink.
But that’s where the problems start. 99.99% of the time marketing campaigns fail because of a lack of a solid brand foundation.
Brand is one of the most misunderstood elements of marketing. It feels ephemeral, or it feels like it’s just about logos and colors.
Here’s what it is.
It’s the story that powers all of your marketing.
The goal is simple. Tell the right story to the right people - in words, in images, in logos and colors (but mostly in words).
A strong brand strategy process digs in to understand your business or nonprofit, who it serves, and what story will make the people you serve feel heard. This story is the foundation of all things marketing. It helps your ideal audience know you understand their goals and the obstacles in the way. It helps them see that your story and theirs are the same.
Without this strategic messaging alignment between business and audience, foundations crack.
And without this foundation being laid in the first place, marketing campaigns are built on shifting sand.
The reason is simple. If you talk about stuff that people don’t care about, they won’t respond to that stuff.
That’s why you’ll see us out there shouting “Brand-First” to the rooftops. A Brand-First marketing strategy builds a solid foundation for connecting with your audience, earning their trust, generating qualified leads, and making marketing an engine of growth.
If someone offers to build your marketing house without this foundation, run. Run fast, like Tom Cruise fast. Make your getaway and find an agency who wants to build your structure on a strong, strategic foundation.
Matt Wolfe is a Partner and Director of Brand Strategy at Brand3, a full-service marketing agency based in Havre de Grace, Maryland and his home base near Seattle, Washington. He brings storytelling expertise gained from decades of experience in professional theatre to his work as a brand strategist. He is also an expert in narrative marketing and one of the most experienced, certified consultants in the StoryBrand marketing framework.
As part of the Brand3 Marketing consulting team, he helps B2B businesses, B2C services, and nonprofits to repair underperforming marketing campaigns using a Brand-First approach. This addresses the most common cause of wasted time and money in marketing: the need for a strong, strategic brand message that speaks loud and clear to an organization’s target audience. Using this message, Matt’s team helps them generate qualified leads and unlock the growth they’ve worked hard to earn.
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