For product marketers, “brand” can be a scary word
“Brand” is one of those words that is especially good at messing with product marketers’ heads. We have our reasons.
Big tech companies have a history of siloing brand marketing. Smaller companies have a habit of ignoring it. And so most product marketers don’t have a lot of experience with it. Which can make things awkward when it comes up.
I’ve written a lot on LinkedIn about how I think the “division” between product marketing and brand marketing is unhelpful, contrived, and maybe not even real. I’ve also said that in B2B tech companies (especially those tackling brand for the first time), product positioning is a good starting point for brand work.
You got an earful of this perspective if you heard my appearance on This is Product Marketing. I’ll tell you why I think it’s so important.
We need to get our message into our buyers’ memories
There’s a growing rallying cry to reach buyers before buying cycles begin. I see people making this point on LinkedIn a lot now, which is a good thing.
A couple of years ago, Bain released a study that perfectly captures why this is so important. They found that in B2B buying situations, buyers almost always buy from a shortlist they created before searching for a product.
Here’s a quote:
“Fully 80%–90% of respondents, depending on what they are buying, have a set of vendors in mind before they do any research. Just as important, 90% of them will ultimately choose a vendor from the day one list.”
This is tricky for product marketers. It means the content we make for product pages, sales enablement decks, etc., might not be as influential as we hoped. It means the best thing we can do with our product message is get it into buyers’ brains before they kick off a buying cycle.
…And, unfortunately, your buyers are not going to memorize your feature comparison grid.
What if product marketers focused on getting simple messages into people’s heads?
Brand marketing is all about bold themes, assets, and messages that a company uses to speak to its entire market.
Product marketing focuses on presenting a clear message defining a product, its value and functionality, and then helping buyers learn about it in detail.
So, yes, these can feel like two different things. But product marketers can bring them together and in the process, unlock a superpower they never knew they had.
Product marketers can lead brand work
I’ve spent my entire career working with B2B companies, primarily in tech, and now run a positioning consultancy that extends into brand. I’ve done and consumed a lot of brand work, as a creative, strategist, and marketing leader. At different times, I’ve been the person crafting the brand, commissioning the work, and using it.
My diagnosis is that brand work gets way too complicated, is too self-focused, and often misses the point entirely. Usually because we choose things like our vision, purpose, or mission as the epicenter of brand work.
In product-centric B2B tech companies, I think product positioning is the best foundation for brand work. (This is especially true in single-product companies.) And because of that, product marketers can and should be participants in and facilitators of brand efforts.
We should go about it differently than you see people talk about in branding books.
I recommend three simple steps.
- Understand the corporate strategy
- Position the product
- Define the brand
First, get your head around corporate strategy
If you’re a PMM in a single-product company (…or any company), this might be a foreign subject. But I do think it’s very important to begin any meaningful brand or positioning work with a clear sense of where the company is and where it’s going.
This starts with the company’s vision and mission but should include a few more things:
- A diagnosis of your situation and opportunity
- A definition of how you’re refining the product and go-to-market to seize the opportunity
- The category where you will compete
- The market segment you’ll win
These are short bullets, but they’re not small subjects. And while they are essential, in fast-moving tech companies, this stuff isn’t always documented…or even discussed.
My suggestion is to ask for it. You probably won’t get a perfectly baked strategy document. But the people at the helm of your company should have a basic command over the topics I’m talking about here.
Wheedle it out of them if you have to.
Then, do positioning
Once you’ve got your head around the corporate strategy, do positioning work.
This article is biased toward single-product companies. Multi-product or platform positioning can be more complicated but can still follow the same rough process I’m laying out here.
I like to use a modified version of the positioning process April Dunford describes in her book, Obviously Awesome. But however you get there, positioning work should cover:
- The product category, market segment, company profile, and best-fit buyer persona you’re aiming for
- The problem you solve for the buyer
- The alternatives you compete against
- The winning differences that set your product apart from those alternatives (I recommend considering the “Four Cs,” product capability, convenience, credibility, and cost)
- The unique value your best-fit buyers get from you that they can’t easily get in any other way
There are plenty of good resources (starting with April’s book) that get into the weeds of exactly how to get through these five steps. (Shameless plug: you can also find posts in my LinkedIn feed and articles on my website that may be helpful.)
I will make a very long story short here and say this: Have a process. Own it. Run it. Land it.
Then, build a brand that expresses your unique value
To summarize: At this point, you should understand where the company is going, the market segment and buyer you’re playing to win, the competition you need to beat, the differences that help you win, and the unique value you deliver.
Now, you need a brand that delivers on that entire list.
But because you’ve done work with integrity and a clear logical thread binding your thoughts together, you focus on just one thing: conveying your unique value to everyone in the market.
This is a moment where many unhelpful branding approaches, tactics, tools, and exercises I mentioned earlier rear their heads.
Depending on who you ask, you might hear people say that your brand is an expression of your purpose, a Jungian archetype (Seriously, Google it), or some kind of vague “essence.”
I recommend thinking of it this way.
Your brand identity is a system of foundational tools you’ll use to build a cohesive, distinctive presentation layer across all of your communications that makes your unique value obvious to everyone.
Think of an expensive restaurant in a major city. From the first instant you encounter it (down to even the moment you hear its name), you are engaging with a presentation layer. The location. The facade on the building. The sign. The way you’re greeted on the way in…and everything else from the lighting to the music to the menu design.
All of these things are distinct from the ultimate product (the food on your plate).
A $100 steak served in a styrofoam box on a street corner is not a $100 steak. A $100 steak served on a gleaming white plate by a skilled waiter in a beautiful dining room is.
Presentation telegraphs value.
Your job as the owner of your brand is to make sure your presentation layer telegraphs the unique value of your product.
What goes in the brand box
To do that, you need just a few things.
- A distinctive communication style
- A small set of themes you communicate about
- A small collection of memory hooks you’ll use again and again
Communication style
The first item is the most straightforward. You need a clearly documented visual and verbal communication style, and a set of tools that make it easy for anyone to use it.
There are a few ways to get at this. A simple document that describes your brand personality and voice is a fine way to start.
People love to dismiss these documents. If you feel tempted to roll your eyes, hear me out. I think brand personality documentation isn’t lame, but lame brand personality documents are.
My recommendation is to look across your category at how other companies and products show up, look back at how you defined your unique value, and craft a communication style that helps you stand out while making your unique value clear.
The question is simple. How do you want to show up?
Once you know the answer, and you’ve documented your personality and voice, then bring in a qualified brand designer and have them work with you on visual communication.
The final deliverable here should be a brand guidelines document that covers your brand personality, voice, and a complete set of guidelines for how you’ll represent your brand visually.
We’ve all seen those documents before. They cover things like fonts, colors, graphical styles, etc. Nothing exotic. The challenging part is to make sure that all of it, taken together, leads to a brand that sets you apart and makes your value obvious. Your role is to shape the process and the work itself to ensure that happens.
Themes
When I work on a company’s brand, I ask myself, “What is this brand about?”
As in, what are the underlying themes behind the product, or that tie all of the products together in a multi-product company? Try to figure out what those are and document them as clearly as you can.
A theme could be a narrative about a big change or struggle in the world, a problem or “villain” you position against, or a concept about the particular way your product solves problems.
If you have 2-3 clear, obvious themes that your brand needs to communicate, that’s great. Write them down.
Hooks
Your brand guidelines will be a substantial document. As it comes together, you should keep an eye out for what I call “memory hooks.”
A hook in a pop song is a short, repeated melody, lyric, or rhythm that gets stuck in listeners’ heads. All of the big hits have them. All the great artists and producers are very good at creating them. As you build your brand guidelines, I suggest developing a sensibility around what might be the strongest hooks in the toolkit.
In this case, a hook is any element of your brand that is especially important, unique, and frequently used. It’s the stuff you’ll repeat over and over again to help buyers notice and remember what you show and tell them. I like to wrap up any brand guidelines presentation with a breakdown of where the hooks are.
Another thing about hooks is that as you use your brand, they will reveal themselves. A certain accent color, line of copy, or visual element will become something you rely on and use repeatedly.
How to evaluate brand work
One of the hardest parts of brand work is deciding what’s best once you have ideas on the table.
You’ll be looking at different ideas for your visual identity, marquee copy, etc. You won’t have hard data to tell you which option is better. This is where the positioning work I suggested really delivers its value.
Your brand’s job is to position your products. (To repeat myself, it’s all about teaching the entire market why your products are uniquely valuable.) Therefore, you should shape the brand that does the best job conveying the unique value of your products (identified via product positioning work) to the entire market.
You want a brand that:
- Sets your products apart from competing alternatives—instantly and powerfully
- Telegraphs your unique value to everyone who comes into contact with it
…that’s different from choosing a brand based on what your CEO thinks looks cool, what your head of content thinks is clever, and what you personally find attractive.
It requires objectivity.
But because you’ve led a thorough and balanced process, you’ve got it.
You can do this.
