A new product can do nothing.

A new logo, website, product or branding will do absolutely nothing for your company if the business management or care is horrible. You need to have great business and product development as well as management.

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

You need a marketing strategy then you advertise, but first you need to define the brand. Focus on building, developing quality products and a business model that fits. The brand will form itself over time, branding begins the moment you start speaking about the company and its offerings, that’s when you develop what I call functional brand assets. The first asset you may already have is a logo, you may have had one initially to start with for people to identify you in the market, rebranding may change that mark once the brand forms.

The brand strategy leads to the marketing strategy, then the advertising strategy — Awareness, knowledge, commitment, and supply chain management — You need concise, consistent, informative, and witty advertising. Marketing focuses on sales and customer acquisitions and the company focuses on maintaining quality products, and business services that are consistent.

The 4 elements of a marketing strategy:

• Strategic plan
• Positioning
• Value proposition
• Business management/care

This leads to your sales strategy. Marketing strategy is a process that can allow an organization to leverage itself or its resources for greater opportunities intended on increasing sales and achieving sustainable advantage.

A sales strategy is a plan to achieve the sales goals of a business. The sales strategy describes how a business will gain, retain and develop customers. I believe what startups refer to as the ‘customer development strategy’.

Here are some things I mentioned in a previous article regarding a sales strategy:

1. Value proposition
2. Urgency to change
3. A lot of deals are lost to “no decision” not competitors.
4. Share a real-life experience
5. Explain the customer journey, not the sales process
6. Don’t rely on buyer personas as a sales strategy
7. Avoid a commodity trap
8. Lead with insights, not questionnaires
9. Sales and marketing must be aligned with brand and business management
10. Tailor the sales strategy to customer expansion, growth
11. Support, consistent quality services

Don’t use a fill-in-the-blanks template, create a strategy that communicates more value in conversations. A great sales conversation is just that, a conversation that leads to a sale, a potential customer does not like being sold to. Therefore, the strategy must be centred around building relationships, a conversation that understands what a company or customer may actually need help with.

Photo by Stefan Cosma on Unsplash

Companies often try to offer new products, which is fine, but this depends on the intent. If the intent is to increase sales and improve existing client relationships while getting new ones. Then a new product may do nothing for the company. The sales strategies are also, mostly, throwing darts into the dark and hoping one of them hit something.

Aiming to have 50 leads that you can funnel down into at least one successful sale is not a strategy, that’s hope. I call this a convoluted pyramid. A strategy is a targeted plan, you learn about the target or targets and you develop a strategy of achieving the intended goal. A new product must be solving something, fill a need, not just new to sell something shinier.

You need to focus on a new marketing and sales strategy, and this may require a rebrand and new advertising based on that rebrand.

Some people may not be ok with this, but there is no brand design industry, no logo design industry, or visual identity design industry, these are components of skillsets, disciplines and knowledge bases. Everything in brand design and development falls under Advertising and Marketing, as an industry. A brand is a feeling, an impression that is imprinted on the mind based on an association with someone or a business. The identity — visual or otherwise — is the representation and communication of the brand. The brand does not sell anything, not directly, marketing does. You develop marketing strategies that influence the advertising based on the brand identity and positioning.

Advertising builds awareness and marketing focuses on sales.