This episode, the Founder of SHFT Agency Jason Vana talks about the power of an effective brand strategy, the importance of brand strategy in the B2B space, and how companies can create an impactful brand strategy.
Jason Vana is the Founder of SHFT Agency, where he develops brand strategy and positioning for B2B service companies to help them use branding and content to attract the right potential clients. Jason has over 25 years of experience in branding, content creation, and lead generation. Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of The Consulting Trap:
- What a brand strategy is.
- How to create a brand strategy.
- How brand strategy relates to marketing and sales.
- What an ideal customer profile should look like.
- Creating a brand experience that leaves an impact.
- Common mistakes businesses make with their branding.
Resources:
Connecting with Jason Vana:
Connecting with the host:
Quotables:
- 1:45- “I think a lot of it comes down to not really understanding what branding is, so I think what happens especially in smaller businesses or startups people tend to think that a brand really is a logo fonts colors if they’re a little more progressive they think it’s a message or a feeling all of that is included in a brand but a brand really is the customer-facing side of your business strategy, and so a brand and specifically more a brand strategy is really what should drive your entire business towards growth.
- 5:08 – “Who’s your ideal customer? Well, it’s anyone who would do this. No, it’s not when you don’t have a brand strategy if you say our client is everyone who would do this you’re not ready to go to market, if you can’t answer the question why would someone buy your product and your answer is well we’re the best or we’re the cheapest that’s not a good reason that’s not going to create this drive in your ideal clients to say I need this.”
- 10:15 – “That’s what happens when you see brand as just design or just messaging is that it becomes this fluffy add-on that your like ah we don’t really need to do it until we have revenue coming in and we’re bigger. I hear that a lot from startups is we don’t need to do that until we reach that amount and I’m like well actually if you did a brand strategy you’d reach that amount in half the time, because your marketing, your sales, your operations would all be aligned on the same messaging the same direction the same importance for the ideal customer.”
- 18:35 – “When I say brand messaging I mean your identity, what’s your tone of voice, what are your values, what are those core drivers, what’s your purpose as a business beyond making money, what’s your customer vision, so kind of all that internal driving and then the external, what’s the message for your website, what’s the message your tagline your slogan all about and then we start working on this experience.”
- 25:09 – “If you walk into an apple store and you are going to buy a MacBook. If you walk in they have the MacBooks angled, the screens angled, and everyone’s always, you walk in and the first thing you have to do to even see the screen is grab it and move it that is a brand experience decision on Apple’s part because what happens is if they were all open at a good angle where you don’t have to touch the machine, touch the laptop you’re missing out on a very tactile experience.”
- 28:18 – “A good brand strategy looks at who are you going after, what’s the experience they want, and what can you deliver on consistently 99 percent of the time, and let’s build that out to start, and then once you have that engine going and it’s pulling people in, how do we improve it?”