Unlock Your Total Addressable Market

How effective is your advertising?

The answer is usually determined by the strength of your brand.

Why?

Because most of your market isn’t buying at the moment.

Research by the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute shows only 20% of B2B buyers are in-market over the course of a year. Roughly 5% a quarter.

Simply put, 95% of your buyers aren’t in the market today.

This data also bares true for B2C considered purchases (home appliances, cars, travel, real estate, education, financial services).

Most of the ads you place today hit a market that's not ready to buy. So the strength of your brand—its promise and distinctiveness—will determine if that ad spend makes an impact.

Always be closing.

Many organizations attack the market solely with performance marketing—display, digital, and search engine ads. They're heavy on features and benefits and push people to buy immediately.

This approach lacks an emotional hook and our brains have tremendous power to overlook messages that don't support our current needs. These ads are as good as invisible to out-of-market buyers.

Experience experience.

Other organizations take a safe approach to brand marketing—bland marketing. They follow the market leader with dull campaigns full of buzzwords: experience, innovating, powering, transforming, and accelerating.

We see these messages by the thousands yet they always fail to make an impact. For in-market buyers, they’re uninspiring. For out-of-market buyers, they create no long-term memorability.

Rethink advertising.

Advertising should aim to build brand-relevant memories with the total market. When they’re ready to buy, they should think of you. Creating an emotional connection is key and it will always be stronger when rooted in a distinctive brand promise.

So how do we root advertising efforts in your brand?

Discover.

What can your organization do that others can’t or won’t do? That unique strength of your organization deserves to be found and used.

Don’t downplay this strength if it doesn’t match the dominant player in your category. That is exactly why it should be wielded. You’ll never win a head-to-head match with Goliath using his tactics, but you can challenge with a strategy that you uniquely own.

Align.

Your secret sauce will never offer a competitive advantage unless the whole organization aligns with it. From the top, down. That little word "align" comes with serious weight and hard work. But a kernel of strategy can build excitement and momentum for your whole organization.

Share.

Take your focused promise to the world in a big and dramatic way. Engage your in- and out-of-market buyers emotionally so they create a mental shortcut to your brand.

Your brand story, visual identity, marketing strategy, advertising, and partnerships should all align with the strategy.

Play differently.

This is how advertising captures the hearts and minds of out-of-market buyers. Taking the same approach as the biggest player in your category just won’t work. Their size and mass allows them to be uninspiring yet still attract the market through capital and resources.

Play differently, narrow your focus, then challenge.

3 ways I can help

Brand Strategy: Build your brand holistically to create favorability with your target market.

Brand Identity: Confidently market, internally and externally, with a toolbox of visual and verbal assets that make your brand distinct.

Brand Marketing: Establish a distinct relationship with your current and future customers.