It’s amazing how many companies try to “get on Facebook” before figuring out a communications strategy. After doing this for a while now, I can tell you that nothing reveals gaps in a marketing plan quite like social media. That’s why we always start with a brand’s existing Positioning Statement before even attempting to build a presence on the social web. We believe whatever a product or service promises to do for customers should extend to their efforts on the social web.
However, sometimes we realize halfway through the process of crafting a social campaign that the brand positioning needs to be addresses before we can be successful. Social media marketing is perhaps the one marketing media that is most closely in tune with customers and can be a litmus test of sorts as to how relevant a brand’s marketing messages truly are. In situations where we realize a gap, we often recommend ways to address a brand’s positioning so that it better matches needs, wants or expectations held by their customers – all the while taking into account the marketing positions held by competitors.
Other times, as with LEED Consulting firm, BVM Engineering, we are able to “start over” and help guide a company through crafting a unique brand position before jumping into marketing collateral or social media marketing. In cases like this, we can take into account competing voices in the marketplace, examine how outside factors have changed the industry and look carefully at what potential customers need from providers like BVM Engineering before revealing a new brand presence to the world. Not surprisingly, this tends to work out better for everyone.
We’re happy to have been called in by Resource Real Estate Marketing to help solve this problem for BVM Engineering. We’ve finished stage one, but can’t quite reveal the actual brand position yet. Check back once we’ve nailed the creative portion with RRM and we should see an example of what happens when you balance customer needs, competing claims and opportunities provided by the newly social web to make a business successful.
