When someone asks you who your product targets or what its unique selling point is. Make sure you are not mumbling and you are not deviating from the subject. You are not trying to sound dumb and look blank. If any of such things are happening to you. Let me be the one who gives you the bad news: you are scattered and need a brand strategist immediately.
Don’t tell me the features of your product; every product has them.
Don’t tell me why your product is good; every founder blabbers it in their sleep.
I want to know why your target audience should care about your product so much that they decide to buy it.
Running a business is not an easy task. As young founders and SME owners, I can fathom the pressure and risk you people subscribe to, but let’s be honest, we all are here to stay, and we all are here to make it big. In the pursuit of growth and expansion, you often need a partner who helps you in comprehending things that you can’t do alone. This is where a brand consultancy becomes a vital ally.
Turning your business into a successful brand is a perpetual process of making ends meet and carefully executing each and every step to make things work.
Focus, I didn’t say make things pretty, but make things work.
But an entrepreneur often focuses on one thing, and that is ROI, return on investment. For a business owner or a founder, almost all processes are projects, each task is an assignment, and they keep on asking the same question: what’s my return on this?
Now, returns can be both short-term and long-term. But to realize them, you need to invest first. This brings us to our main topic, the ROI of hiring a brand consultant. Don’t look here and there; the class starts now.
Your ROI is CLARITY.
At the beginning of this blog, I told you that if you are fumbling to describe your own product in front of your potential clients and customers, you need a brand consultant ASAP.
But why? What will they do?
The answer is clarity. When you hire a brand development strategist, you’re in for a joyride that’s going to bring you close to your product’s truth. A creative brand consultant is not hired to be servile, to entertain, or to laugh at our jokes. They are appointed to make you aware of your product’s true market position. They remove the fog and bring the curtains down on whatever dream world you were living in.
They start by asking questions, questions that most founders fail to answer, questions that many entrepreneurs never really cared to answer. I always sell clarity as one of the key ROIs that you will ever enjoy via a brand consultant. The reason I stress over clarity so much is because it becomes the seed that blooms into other branches of the whole tree we like to call branding.
Clarity induces sharp identity, which navigates your target audience to sharp, smart, and subtle selling of your product. With no fluff and confusion, you announce a perpetual and consistent brand voice and messaging, which not only reaches your target audience but resonates with them. Leads increase, conversions occur, and sales follow. This is often the result of collaboration with a skilled brand identity consultant.
Your ROI is STRATEGY.
You know why most brands, although they start well, get fixated in mediocrity. They lack a brand strategy, which serves as a blueprint to run marketing campaigns and branding operations and helps founders in making data-driven decisions. In a nutshell, I would describe this scenario as planning to reach a certain milestone only to go blank and clueless about further journeys.
Let me be very clear with you. There is absolutely nothing wrong with your product or business model. But I can still visualize you falling in the same potholes where 90% of the businesses stumble. Strategy is an amalgamation of various small aspects that are thought, placed, and executed in synergy with the brand's content, vision, goals, and definitely the market persona.
We all watch television; if even 3 out of 10 commercials stick in your brain and you cannot help but hum its jingle, recall the brand, or laugh about its script, that’s proof of strategy. You think it's just an ad. No, I can guarantee you that the most viral ads have a brainstorming and brand marketing strategist behind them. Of course, there are other people and departments who contribute, but a brand positioning expert is who actually orchestrates it.
This is exactly the kind of strategic thinking you get from brand strategy consulting firms or a solid brand consulting agency.
What happened to the other seven commercials? Well, I think you know the answer to it.
Your ROI is stimulated SALES.
Yes, now we are talking. I know most of the founders think that branding is just a part of the decoration. It will never bring any positive element to the company. By positive, they typically mean conversions, sales, revenue, and profit.
From an entrepreneurial point of view, I totally agree with this. I mean that’s the whole point of a business—to make a sale and generate revenue. In the modern times, even the most sorted entrepreneurs do not understand the power of branding, they still pursue the old conventional methods of driving sales. They totally negate the significance of brand strategy and so the brand strategist.
On the contrary, a brand management consultant can help you shorten the sales cycle which directly uplifts the sales and increases conversions. Yes, this can be done by a brand strategist by carefully weaving a brand strategy for your product. It can reach and penetrate the target market in a better way. In this process it not only attracts the potential customers but also eliminates a series of doubts by sharp and clear messaging. When this happens, there is nothing left but you, your product, customer and the sale, that's bound to happen.
Last Notes
The bottom line remains the same: you cannot risk not hiring a brand consultant. The problem here is sooner or later your competitors are going to make the move, and by then it will be very late for you. Who knows? They already have hired a brand consultant agency. But I’m not trying to scare you off; I’m just trying to explain to you the gravity of the situation.
A brand strategist works in miraculous ways. But if you are still having this conversation of budget, expense, and bargain in your head, you are already losing the game in the market. Okay, that’s enough for today. The session ends, but don’t forget to make the most of it.
