Over the years, I’ve enjoyed working with some brilliant minds from the technology world. From my early days in Telecom and the pioneering days of interactive TV, to the groundbreaking revolution in eCommerce, smart technologists have astounded me with their vision and capabilities. As marketers, however, I find that they often fall short in a few areas.

A 4-Step Action Plan to Build Your Brand as You Scale and Grow

In Part 1 of this blog series, we took a look at the connection between a strong brand and enhanced company value – particularly when considering private equity investment. We also shared some steps with you that should help you to start considering the ingredients to brand strength within your enterprise.

Why invest the time in fortifying your brand now? We can heed the example of someone who has mastered brand ubiquity, Amazon Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos. He never overlooked the value of the brand, famously saying, “Your brand is what other people say about you when you're not in the room.” Bezos advocates that a strong brand is what will grow your business – and keep it on a healthy track.

How to Build a Solid Brand Foundation to Win Customers and Investors

As B2B technology companies focus on building new, agile products and creating scalable lean processes to serve their customers more efficiently, it’s easy to defer marketing as a “nice to have, but not mandatory” focus. But it cannot be underscored enough how essential building your brand position is to your ability to succeed in today’s fast-moving competitive workplace. A solid brand foundation will help you secure early investment, as well as attract, acquire, and keep customers. It can also significantly impact an eventual successful exit by enhancing the company’s long-term value.

When I meet with CEOs in my role as a fractional CMO, it’s usually at a time when their company’s growth, revenues, or market share – or some combination of the three – have flattened. Often, these CEOs are finding that their current marketing efforts aren’t delivering the results they expect. And in most cases, their companies are in “scale-up” mode with substantial emphasis on sales and operational excellence.

An unintended consequence of this critical stage in a business’s maturation process is that marketing is often relegated to a meandering series of one-off tactics such as glossy sales sheets, the occasional trade show, search engine optimization, and a basic website with the intent of meeting in-the-moment needs.

We call these types of tactics “random acts of marketing,” and while company leaders mean well in creating them, the reality is they cost money, don’t get results, and divert attention of the marketing staff from higher-value activities. Worse yet, they consume precious resources that could fund and execute a strategy to support growth and build value.

If you type in “marketing strategy” on Google, your screen will instantly become flooded with a spectrum of software tools and new-age philosophies.  With all the information available to us at the click of a button, defining and implementing the right strategic plan for your business can become time-consuming – and overwhelming.