Strategies for helping reluctant clients find better ways to express themselves.

^{Yes, this is a dung beetle pushing a large ball of dung.  At least I didn't use an image of Sisyphus.}

Yesterday I wrote about how to approach the problem of a client with a brand identity you don't like, and making sure you're not mistaking 'personal opinion' for 'professional advice'.

But what happens when you've asked yourself the right questions, remembered you're not the target, and still come to the conclusion that the client's brand identity is getting in the way of overall marketing success?  

Negative know-it-alls never prosper

You know who I'm talking about:  The people who waltz in and proceed to tell the client, with a boatload of condescension, that everything they've done up to this point is a giant heap of awful and they need to rebuild everything from the bottom up if they are to have a hope in hell of getting any more business from anyone, ever.

These blowhards do manage to get the odd client, but it's amazing how they never seem to keep them for very long. Because anyone who tells you they have the magic marketing answer to everything never does - sooner or later clients realize this for themselves, and go elsewhere.  

When you first meet a client, you don't know how much money they've already spent on their brand identity; you don't know how emotionally invested they are in it; you don't know how the organization feels about it; and you definitely don't know if what they're doing is working for them or not.  Walking up to someone at a bar and saying, "You know, you're really kind of ugly, but if you fix your hair, makeup and wardrobe, maybe we could go out sometime..." is the start of a totally dysfunctional relationship.

Ask questions, build trust

Client relationships are like any other relationships:  Before they're going to take your advice, they're going to have to trust you.  So before you make pronouncements about their brand and their organization, start by asking questions.  These are the questions I ask when I think a client may need a brand identity overhaul:

1.  Tell me the story behind your brand.

As I said yesterday, a logo or brand identity that looks unappealing to you may in fact have a great story behind it.  You may even find that that story has value for their sales team, or quite a bit of equity in the marketplace.  ('Kleenex', for example, is actually a terrible name, and the logo isn't much better.  But it doesn't matter, since 'Kleenex' has been around so long, and is so ubiquitous, that it's become the generic name for any paper-based facial tissue.)

How this can help your case: If they struggle to tell you the story behind their brand, you can suggest that building a brand identity with a proper story behind it will make their sales and marketing efforts a lot easier.

2.  Tell me the history of your brand identity.  Have you worked with designers or marketing people before?

This is important to know, because if they say they just spent $50,000 on a new brand identity - especially if they worked with one of the blowhards mentioned above - they're going to be highly sensitive to criticism or suggestions for change.  On the other hand, you may discover that the current logo was designed by the CEO's 18-year-old nephew.  

How this can help your case: If you discover that they're new to 'marketing', educating them about how a properly-articulated brand identity can help them position and sell themselves can be all you need to propel them in the right direction.

3.  Tell me about how you think marketing can help your business.

Good marketing starts with understanding the client's business, so by the time you're talking about branding you should already know what they do and why they think they're unique in the marketplace.  Now it's time to drill down to identify gaps or opportunities that marketing can help to fill.  Ideally this will become a discussion between you and the client - with you recommending opportunities, not just taking orders from the client - but it's good to start with what the client is thinking about how you can help them.

How this can help your case:  If the client identifies a specific challenge ("Our salespeople aren't getting enough meetings" or "People aren't spending enough time on our website"), they open the door to a conversation about how the brand identity might be part of the problem.

4.  Who is your target audience/market?

Over the years, I've worked with several property management-related companies, many of whom have had dreadful brand identities.  At first I tried hard to get them to change, until I realized that 95% of their business happened as a result of long-standing relationships within a fairly tight-knit community of guys (yes, it's usually men) who have known each other forever, have owned commercial/industrial properties together, and tended to make business deals based on handshakes and beer.  They didn't need expensive brand identities with charming brand stories - they just needed some basics to make them look professional.

However, when some of these businesses grew, and were looking to penetrate larger consumer markets, then it was time to push a better brand identity.  

How this can help your case: Knowing your client's target market will allow you to demonstrate who else is excelling in their space - and show them how important it is that their brand identity is good enough to compete.

5.  How do you see your business growing in the next 12-24 months? 

As a business grows, so does their need for marketing materials.  Today, all they think they need are business cards and a website; 6 months from now they may need anything from billboards to tradeshow displays to RFP templates; 2 years from now they may need branding and materials for line extensions. 

How this can help your case: The more you know about your client's future plans, the more you can help them identify the marketing and communications materials they'll need down the line - and the easier it is to demonstrate how their current brand identity won't accommodate that kind of growth in the long run.  

It's an organic process

It's a rare client who, after being asked a question or two, says, "Okay! I get it - let's revamp the whole brand identity! How soon can we do it?" That's okay - I'm a firm believer that the best brands are built over time, and as a result of a close relationship between the organization and their marketing team.  Asking the right questions will help you build that relationship.

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You love your new client, but you hate their existing brand identity. Here's how to approach it.

In the past week alone, 4 different people - designers, web developers, content writers - have all called me and said the same thing:  "I've got this great new client, who have this really interesting product, but their brand identity is terrible.  It's so bad that I'm worried that whatever I do for them will end up being terrible too, and they'll either be mad at me or I'll be embarrassed to tell anyone I did it.  What do I do?"

This is what I say:

1. Is it really as bad as you think?

If you're 'in the business', you probably have some very decided ideas about the way marketing materials should look and feel. I myself can't stand inconsistent fonts and colour palettes - they stick out like sore thumbs to me, they make me think that everyone involved with the company is unprofessional and highly un-detail-oriented, and I want to give the people responsible a stern talking-to.  

But many times when I mention it to the client, it turns out that neither they, nor their stakeholders, have ever really noticed that there are 3 different fonts on their homepage.  Their business is percolating along, with no noticeable gap in sales, and they've got bigger fish to fry at the moment.  And so I have to step back and realize that I am not the target, I am more critical than the average person, and what I see as a 'disaster' isn't, really.

2.  Is it actually having a negative impact on the client's business?

I think this website is terrible.  The colours are totally 1990s, the site is loud and far too 'sales-ish', and I end up feeling that the guy behind it is far more interested in selling me stuff than in 'helping' me.  But here's the thing:  This guy makes a lot of money (he famously retired at 35); lots of people love him; and I understand that his website does a fantastic job of sales conversion for him.  In other words, the site is working - so it doesn't really matter if I don't like it, or respond to the story he's telling. 

The whole point of marketing is to drive the business goals. Unless you can demonstrate that your client's brand identity is actively getting in the way of doing this, you may just have to accept that your client may in fact know what they're doing.

3.  Is there a good story underpinning a bad look and feel?

For years I worked with a company called Head2Head, and everyone hated their logo, which looked like this:

I inherited this logo - I didn't create it.  In fact, it was created by the founder, who famously drew it on a napkin (and painted it) in the very early days of the company.  Initially, I hated it, too - but then I realized that (a) it had a nice backstory; and (b) it became a sort of interesting talking point.  

Plus, it's relatively easy to contain a difficult logo with good design:

See how nice and polished that looks?  In fact, we often got compliments on our materials, and it didn't matter if those compliments were followed by "...but I still hate that logo." 

(To celebrate their 10th anniversary, Head2Head renovated their brand identity, and it looks great - but now it has a different kind of backstory.)

4. What does the target audience think?

You may hate the look and feel of this website, for all kinds of reasons.  But they "manufacture and supply researchers in the biomedical fields with specialized complex organic small molecules", and I'm pretty sure their target audience doesn't really give two hoots about how sexy their brand identity is - their brand equity and credibility is going to reside largely in word of mouth via scientists and whoever else cares about complex organic small molecules.  

On the other hand, if you're about to spend a huge amount of money on a custom-designed house, are you going to trust a guy whose sense of aesthetics resulted in this site?  Not so much.  

Before you start worrying about the brand identity, it's important to remove yourself from the equation and insert the target market instead.

5. Is the current brand identity going to cause problems in the longer term?

One day last year, I got into a bit of a fracas with some woman on Twitter who took issue with my assertion that logos should never be black and white and brand identities should always include 4 colours in the official colour palette.  She seemed to think that black-and-white logos and single-colour brand identities were just fine. 

She was wrong, and here's why:  Successful businesses will eventually need all kinds of materials, from websites to infosheets to business cards to product line extensions and patented processes.  All of these things require graphics, imagery, and a brand identity that retains consistency even when fresh ideas are added.  If you don't plan ahead, you'll run into trouble later on - it's almost impossible to shoehorn a new colour into a black-and-deep-red brand identity, for example.  What's more, without a broader palette and a couple of fonts, you run the risk of a monochromatic site that doesn't give you anywhere to go, design-wise.

TOMORROW:  How to guide a client to a better brand identity, even when they like the one they've got.

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Knowing how you're going to fit into the marketplace should happen even before you've picked a name.

I came across this image today, over at Brands for the People, a new online brand development company which is designed to help small business owners create new brand identities for reasonable prices. 

It's an interesting concept - and one for which I think there is probably a pretty good market - but what really caught my attention was the order in which they've arranged their 6 steps to creating a brand identity.

You'll see that 'Naming Your Business' is the last step in the process.

As someone who's been helping clients create brand identities for 10 years now, I could not agree more.  Too many times, I've worked with organizations which have spent all their time and money on creating a product/service, getting an office, hiring staff - and only then start to think about how they're going to go about marketing their wares.  And of course it's hard to create a marketing strategy when you don't know what 'story' you're going to tell to potential customers, or where you're going to fit in your competitive set.

I was going to write a long explanatory piece here, but the more I look at 6-step diagram, the more I think it speaks for itself.  (The only one which might need explanation is Step 3, because what they mean isn't so much "how does your supply chain work" but "how will we approach the way we get things done".)

The bottom line is that before you choose your name - or lease an office, or start hiring office managers - you need to know why you're different, why you're better, how you'll stand out from the competition and why people will care about what you're doing.  Knowing all that will determine whether you name your company "Clara's Cakes" or "Baked Nirvana", and whether your brand identity will be home-country-kitchen or super-modern-cult.  And knowing those things will determine where your office is and what it looks like, the type of staff you hire, and even your product offerings.  

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You need to be able to explain your advantage in 10 seconds or less

Here is a conversation I had with a potential new client a few weeks ago:

ME:  "Okay,  I understand what it is you do and sell, and you've told me a little about your sales goals and that you have an aggressive growth strategy for the next 18 months.  But I can think of a few players in your space who seem to be doing similar things.  Can you tell me how you're different or better?"

CLIENT:  "What do you mean?"

ME:  "I mean, if a potential customer is trying to decide between buying your product and buying that of a competitor, what factors will make them choose you?  Are you cheaper, faster, more reliable...?"

CLIENT:  "Well, we deliver a quality product."

ME:  "Yes, but what does that mean to you?  What will that mean to the customer?"

CLIENT:  "Hhmmm...I'm not sure."

ME:  "Well, how are you getting clients right now?"

CLIENT: "Most of our business comes from referrals from our existing clients, actually."

ME:  "That's a good sign - it means you're doing something right.  Why are people referring their friends and colleagues to you?  Are they telling you why they're calling you?"

CLIENT:  "They say that we're more trustworthy than other companies in our space, and that we have better customer service, and that we do a better job of solving their problems, and we become a better long-term partner.  Oh, and we always save them a lot of money over the long-term, because we don't sell them stuff they don't need."

Aha!

Marketing is really all about communicating key differentiators

I knew this business had something going for it, because I happened to know that it had done pretty well in the preceding 2 years, even without doing any marketing.  So clearly it was delivering a decent product.  But getting them to articulate their key differentiators - service, strategic partnership, cost-effectiveness - was like pulling teeth.

This is a common problem for small businesses, especially those in the 'professional services' category.  They've had initial success as a result of personal relationships - typically those of the founder - but after a couple of years, those relationships are saturated.  They know they need to broaden their target market, but when it comes time to explain why they're different, and better, than their competitors, they find themselves  tongue-tied or reliant on 35-page PowerPoint decks.  Either way they lose the 10 seconds they've got to make a big impression with a potential new client.

Here's the thing:  If people could do what you do, they wouldn't be in the market for your services in the first place.  In other words, they probably don't know a whole lot about your industry or field.  So you have to make it easy for them to understand the benefits you're offering before you try to explain all the details to them.  

That's where the key differentiators come in.  It's all about boiling down the ways in which you're different - and better - to a few key points that you can use any time you're communicating to a potential client, whether that's in marketing materials or in person.

Don't try to squeeze everything in at once

As I wrote the other day, trying to explain every little detail to a customer can backfire - people only have a limited capacity for new information at a given time, and the goal of marketing is to capture their attention long enough to get them sufficiently interested to give you more of their attention.  So rattling off a laundry list of features and benefits isn't the best strategy.  Instead, pick 2 or 3 and work them into a compelling story. 

Here's how:

1. Make a list of all the features and benefits of your product or service, and how they're different from your competitors
2. Choose the top 3 based on what your current customers are telling you mean the most to them 
3. Construct your messaging around these 3 differentiators
4. Test the messaging in the marketplace, and take note of which ones seem to resonate with potential customers
5. Refine as required

Over time, you'll probably find that different messages work with different target groups:  Your public-sector clients may respond best to cost and security messages, while your private sector clients may respond best to the fact that you deal with other 'big names' in their industry.  That's okay - at least the next time someone asks you how you're 'different and better' than your competitors, you won't have to say "What do you mean?"

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