Konrad Sanders

Your brand positioning should be: a) relevant to your target buyers (which is why you should do buyer interviews/surveys) b) distinct from your competitors (which is why you should do competitor analysis) c) authentic to you and your team (which is why you should do internal stakeholder interviews and/or workshops) The good thing about b) - zagging while the industry zags - is that most industries are full of copycats; lookalikes and soundalikes. So it's usually not that difficult to differentiate. When analysing our clients' competitors, we tend to reverse engineer core brand elements, such as their - brand personality traits - brand values - tone of voice - value proposition & brand story - target audience - strengths and weaknesses

Business strategy and brand strategy would both be iterative processes. Sure, when you craft a visual and verbal brand identity, you should base it largely on target audience insights (i.e. make it relevant) and built it to last (i.e. make it durable). But the most successful businesses and brands see marketing as circular, not linear. As you grow, gather more customer data, review, iterate, tweak your strategy and subsequent marketing collateral to be increasingly targeted at your (potentially fluctuating/evolving) target audience.

Content marketing, and marketing in general, should be circular, not linear. Too many marketers just look forward rather than backward, to see what's actually working. This circular approach involves continuously measuring the impact of our campaigns, gathering insights, and then using this feedback to refine and improve future strategies - and what content is already out there working for you. Let's break the cycle of one-and-done campaigns and embrace a more dynamic, responsive marketing model that truly resonates with our audience and drives sustainable growth. Oh - but also don't get trapped in analysis paralysis. Many parts of the customer journey happen in the 'dark funnel' which is much harder to measure.

"You also want to find out how they describe their challenges and goals" is a key point here. We call this voice-of-customer (VOC) data collection. It can be done by sifting through your buyer interview transcripts and/or survey results and/or from reviewing mining (implicit desktop data collection). Generative AI can help you speed up this process these days. One extra important thing to glean from your buyer research is their perceived barriers. I.e. what reasons did they/do they have for NOT buying the kind of products or services you offer (generally) and yours, specifically. With this intel you can create a value prop and copy which preempts these barriers; which knocks those walls down immediately.

Much like branding a business, creating your personal brand TOV, as well as your core content buckets, is a delicate balancing act. Picture a Venn diagram. In one circle we have 'authenticity'. I.e. be real, be human, be true to you; how you speak, act, behave & your field of expertise. In another we have 'relevance'. I.e. write in a way and about topics your specific target audience will find valuable, interesting and entertaining. In the third we have 'differentiation'. I.e. look at what competitors in your space are doing and carve out key differentiators that you can keep consistent - in terms of your voice, your formatting and design style, even the way you dress in those selfies. Aim for the sweet spot in the middle of all three.

There's power in numbers. And employee advocacy is a no brainer. By that I mean - when you're posting content either as an a individual team member or from the company account, share the link and a teaser with the rest of your team in an internal Slack (or other) thread. Your teammates should be the first people to interact with your content, so that it shows up in their network's feeds too and panders to the algorithm. Use the power of your people. Build this into your workflow. For larger companies, an employee advocacy tool like Gaggleamp can help to gamify and incentivise that advocacy. It works well for getting your sales people stuck in!