Our Blog – Market Development

Brand Value: How Is Your Brand Perceived?

Posted Tuesday, February 15, 2011 at 05:30 PM by Leslie Sutherland

One of the biggest challenges of any partnering effort is to communicate your brand value to your partners and their customers.

At PhoenixCG, we promote strategies and tools that help you take control of your brand by defining what your brand is before your partners and their customers do. We also help you communicate that brand consistently -- via your partner sales tools, social media, marketing communications and joint marketing programs.

That's why I'm pleased to announce the availability of my new e-book, Before the Brand: Using Positioning and Messaging to Build Brand Identity. It contains a step-by-step process to create positioning, value propositions and messaging, making it much easier to communicate the value and control the perception of your brand in your partnerships.

What's in a Brand?

Brands are created by knitting together multiple marketing elements. Much like an equation:

Look + Features + Benefits + Perception = Brand

But brands are risky business because brands are basically opinions about your company or solution held by a marketplace. Without conscious effort to create a brand, a brand will be created for you - by your partners and their customers. Scary thought. Instead, take control of your brand by defining what your brand is before they do.

Positioning and messaging help you do this.

Positioning helps you establish what makes your brand exceptional. It establishes who your target market is, why your product will appeal to that market (the value proposition), and why your product beats the competition. And it clarifies for your partners and their customers exactly what value your brand has for them.

While positioning gives you the fuel to influence your partners and their customers, messaging is the engine that conveys the significance of that position. When you have these two pieces in place, you have a foundation of that makes generating a perception about your brand that much easier.

In this book, will learn how to create the tools of positioning and messaging:

- Positioning Statement
- Value Proposition
- Key Messages
- Proof Points
- Brand Message Architecture
- Messaging Document

Use these tools to direct the attention of your partners, their customers and other audiences to your greatest strengths and most important differentiators. Armed with this information, your partners, their customers and those who read or learn about your products will be that much more likely to create a perception of your brand that you are happy with. To learn more or purchase Before the Brand, click here.

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Tags: brand value, positioning, messaging, partnering, value propositions, Before the Brand, Leslie Sutherland

Building Sustainable Partner Value Propositions, Part 2

Posted Tuesday, June 29, 2010 at 12:00 PM by Norma Watenpaugh

In my last post, I talked about the "value triangle," and how it creates win-win-win value propositions for you, your partners, and customers. Today, I'll flesh out what I mean by solution, financial, and sales and marketing value, as well as present a case example of how a global systems integrator...

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