brand-playbook

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Have you ever spent time producing a brand playbook for your company? If you’re on the marketing team, many of you reading this will probably say,  “we already know that information” and others might say, “ Why do we have to spend time on a brand playbook when we have real work to do?” These are valid thoughts that need to be addressed. However, your marketing and sales teams may not be firing on all cylinders and the information they’re using to communicate to prospective customers may not be as helpful as it needs to be. Now what? Enter brand playbook.

What Exactly is A Brand Playbook and Why is it Important?

Because many agencies commonly use the term brand playbook, there are many uses and forms of it. In broad terms, a brand playbook is used to provide a clearer picture of your company by taking a deep research dive into many critical areas. Below are many aspects of your business that are typically addressed in a brand playbook. Since many of these listed below impact one another, it’s important they are performing correctly. As you can see, if your company is misfiring on any of these they can cause havoc on your marketing team’s efforts and how your customers perceive your brand, all of which can negatively impact sales revenues.

  • Overall brand activity
  • Value proposition
  • Distinctives
  • Personas
  • Customer perceptions
  • Products / services
  • Price
  • Quality
  • Competitors
  • Website
  • Content
  • SERPs / SEO
  • Social media
  • Branding
  • Keywords
  • SEM
  • Promotion
  • Marketing
  • Digital ecosystem
  • Media
  • Market research
  • Technology
  • Metrics / Measurement

After the deep dive is complete and the vital components have been thoroughly researched and vetted, a clearer picture becomes evident and the strengths and weaknesses rise to the top.

Many companies big and small have never been through a brand playbook exercise. For the employees that are asked to participate in this type of engagement, it’s painstakingly long process that requires extensive introspection, but well worth it.

 This process is vitally important mainly because it validates some of the initiatives you are currently doing well and reveals other areas that need immediate attention. A brand playbook also helps to re-direct your company’s efforts by providing research data that allows for a new strategy to be implemented for the right reasons.

Why Does The Marketing Team Need To Be Involved?

The marketers in your company will be the ones that benefit the most from a brand playbook because they touch every aspect of your company. Because your marketing team is responsible for driving and sustaining the brand, marketing, advertising, promotion, lead generation as well as activating all of this to create qualified leads and sustainable sales growth, it’s critical they have a blueprint to work from. When your marketing team doesn’t have a blueprint, their efficacy will be haphazard at best.

I think we all probably agree that a digital strategy can make or break a brand. Here’s the good news, a brand playbook reviews every aspect of the digital ecosystem as well and how your brand is performing or not performing with digital channels. It also takes a look at the competition in the digital space. By gathering important data in every aspect of the brand playbook, it provides key insights and data necessary for a top-notch digital strategy.

YourBrandExposed is designed to look at digital using a creative, analytical, innovative marketing perspective. We’re a team of digital gurus working with companies who want to leverage the power of digital, web, social, mobile and content marketing strategies. Contact us if you’re feeling the digital squeeze on how to best market and expose your company.

Scott MacFarland

Chief Content Marketer | Digital Strategist

YourBrandExposed.com

HuffingtonPost | Relevance | Natcom Global

LinkedIn | Twitter: @scmacfarland

Email: yourbrandexposed@yahoo.com

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