Indy Marketing Leaders has launched several marketing meetups in Indianapolis, all with a focus to connect marketers and grow an encouraging community of innovative leaders. The latest panel, “The Science Behind Your Brand and Product Category Creation,” featured Sapphire Strategy CEO Jenn Lisak Golding, alongside Indianapolis marketing leaders Christian Beck, Executive Design Partner at Innovatemap, Kolby McElvain, Senior Product Designer at High Alpha, and host Liz Prugh, owner of Kitsune [Marketing] Consulting. The panel’s inspiration stemmed from an article we published on a similar topic, “Building your brand’s aesthetic: How a business’ brand shapes its culture and overall success.”
Highlights from the panel included the science behind how agencies and designers craft a brand’s visual presence, as well as its messaging. All panelists agreed that these two facets of a company are equally as important, working in parallel to tell a brand’s story.
Storytelling was a major topic of the panel; as marketers, we hear the phrase “storytelling” quite frequently! Several companies use the, “who we are, what we do, why we’re different messaging” to convey their value props to prospects and customers. Per our CEO Jenn Lisak Golding, this is only the first step in building out your company’s messaging. The next step is to understand and create a narrative that speaks to each of your company’s buyer personas, ensuring that your value is truly resonating with each type of audience you sell and service to.
When it comes to storytelling in the design process, a company’s visual brand works in parallel to the narrative being told. At Sapphire Strategy, we have a Marketing Lifecycle Model that outlines how we work with companies to achieve these, starting with Phase 1: Market Understanding. We believe that before you can make an impact in your space, you need to understand the terrain you’ll be mining:
- Who are your competitors? What stories are they telling, and what’s resonating?
- What holes are in your industry that you can fill? How can your company tell a narrative that fills those gaps?
Market Understanding comprises three elements: industry research, competitive and SWOT analysis—internal and external factors that can impact your positioning, sway or repel buyers. All of this research is the foundation for creating a company’s brand, ensuring that the visuals and messaging being published resonates with an audience.
Where to start in building your branding, or if you’re going through a rebrand.
It’s never too late to perform the steps in the Market Understanding phase of our Marketing Lifecycle Model. In fact, we encourage companies to perform industry research and competitive and SWOT analysis every six months. Especially in the SaaS space, the landscape is changing rapidly, driven by consumer and user behavior. Pivoting how you reach consumers is crucial to staying relevant.
Get Started with Building Your Brand Today
We can help you establish your story to create a meaningful brand. Let’s talk today!