There are literally thousands of books about marketing and if you read many of them one fact emerges: without a brand strategy, marketing usually reflects what is (or isn’t) going on inside the company. What is certain is there is no such thing as a sure thing.

Brand marketing can’t:

  1. Solve a company’s inability to make decisions. Unfortunately a company with this problem usually retards or destroys its marketing simply by not taking action.
  2. Reposition a company with lousy products or over the market pricing, particularly in this down economy when people are looking for value.

  3. Fix a company overnight who has changed its strategy 4 times in the last 5 years. This happens a lot when a new CEO comes in and feels the need to do something different. Often it takes longer to discover the true reasons the company is failing  than the board wants to wait so quick decisions are made, usually incorrectly, and then a new CEO takes his place.

  4. Redesign an entire brand marketing system only using “company staff.” Few marketers inside a company have enough perspective to do all of the brand strategy planning without outside counsel. Many companies try and many companies fail.

  5. Sustain a program with a low budget. Management says, “What can we do to get this company going?” Marketing proposes a major brand campaign to produce image and leads. But all too often management says “That’s not in our budget.” Of course it isn’t! If it were, you probably wouldn’t be in such deep doo-doo.

What smart marketing can do is analyze a company’s true position, develop a winning strategy and implement a program to raise image and produce leads. But remember, smart marketing takes time and shouldn’t be viewed as a pop-tart.

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Tom Wants To Hear Your Branding Issues:

Tom Marin, Managing Partner of MarketCues, wants to hear from you! Follow MarketCues on Twitter for branding and social media tips – as well as the latest trends. Tom also welcomes emails, new LinkedIn connections, calls to 407.330.7708 or visit www.marketcues.com. How can he help solve your branding issues?