Over time, a brand promise can lose it impact and uniqueness. This doesn’t happen overnight, but slowly over time. Suddenly your market has become highly commoditized. Your competitors are virtually saying the same thing you are. And the lead generation efforts that worked so well, not so long ago, are producing fewer and fewer website visits and conversions.
All of this means it’s time to rethink your value proposition and brand promise. Here are some ideas for revitalizing your big-picture messaging, in order to generate more leads, conversions and revenue.
Establish a clear and differentiated promise.
Take a hard look at your brand promise from the perspective of a prospect/customer. Have you established a clear differentiator for your brand in your market space? Or are you really just selling the same product/service story as everyone else — and telling people you’re incrementally better?
If so, you need a game-changing offer/promise to separate yourself from the rest of the pack. For instance, if everyone is touting the same technology, maybe you need to lead with your reliability/service story. Or the fact that your company is more adept at crafting customized solutions for each and every customer.
Develop core messaging to communicate the promise.
Your new differentiated brand promise will be called on to communicate across multiple channels. In many cases, this will require an economy of words. That’s why it’s important to distill your value proposition into a body of succinct core messages. Then integrate these messages across all inbound and outbound communications channels — to keep your revitalized brand promise front and center across your online presence.
Create content to address all phases of conversion.
A prospect encountering your value proposition could be discovering your brand for the first time. Or right in the middle of researching multiple options. Or getting close to making a decision. You need to develop a series of marketing pieces that address the mindsets and concerns at the various stages of the decision-making process. While matching each piece to the marketing channel that would best serve the message at hand.
Create and implement an automated content plan.
A consistent lead-nurturing program using marketing automation will outperform an on-again, off-again effort every time. Devise a plan for content sharing and engagement that creates a synergy among the channels you’re using. Specific tactics could include:
- Social media posts to drive prospects to your company blog.
- Email drip campaigns using white papers and/or e-books for offers.
- Distribution of a targeted white paper as part of an online webinar.
Use testing and analytics to refine your core messaging.
The real beauty of web-based marketing is the substantial ability to analyze data and enhance your efforts. Dive into your analytics on a regular basis to see which messages are producing better results than others. A/B testing also remains an invaluable tool for gauging the effectiveness of various email campaigns, landing pages, response forms and other elements.