Company Branding
The lyrics to ‘Road to Nowhere’ by the Talking Heads starts out with:
WELL WE KNOW WHERE WE’RE GOIN’
BUT WE DON’T KNOW WHERE WE’VE BEEN
AND WE KNOW WHAT WE’RE KNOWIN’
BUT WE CAN’T SAY WHAT WE’VE SEEN
The lyrics are reminiscent of the way many resellers are doing business today, especially when it has to do with company branding. They’ve seen tremendous success in the past with selling new ERP systems to organizations of all sizes and when you examine their customer database, the spread across many industries can be truly overwhelming. Unfortunately, most can’t articulate in one sentence where their focus is, what ‘special sauce’ they may have, and what they truly deliver to customers.
How to Use Company Branding
Today’s buyer is more educated, has access to more information, and is doing much more research than ever before, disintermediating the reseller from the sales process right from the beginning. Statistics show that 9 out of 10 buyers say that when they’re ready to buy they’ll find you (Pew Research). So how do you go about inserting yourself up front in that research process so that you’re still on the short list when the buyer is ready to choose a reseller?
Company Branding: About Us and Hompage
The Home Page and About Us pages of your website are vitally important and becoming even more so.
Home Landing Page
Your Home Page needs to clearly articulate why a prospect should select YOU! Don’t spout off what you sell. Tell them what they’ll gain from working with your company and highlight your uniqueness. You may have trouble pulling this altogether so use a grid to help guide you in determining what is truly unique about your firm – and if you come up blank, well then you certainly have work to do. Most resellers will have problems clearly articulating what they did FIRST, what ONLY they do, and what they do BETTER than anyone else. (You definitely need to contact us for help if your page is mostly blank after this exercise).
About Us Landing Page
Now let’s tackle the all-important About Us page. According to Marketing Profs, this is one of the most visited web pages on any website. I know that I frequently look at the About Us page to ascertain whether the owners/partners/leaders of the company look and sound trustworthy, and to evaluate the tenure they have within the industry and organizations they support. I may very well be making a decision based on what I read on that page. When I work with my reseller clients you can bet that is one of the first pages I’m going to insist is updated and you’d be amazed how reticent people are about changing that page. You’d think I was asking them to eat dog food!
So once you have the Home page and the About Us pages updated, relevant, and crystal clear, it’s time to look at the rest of your website and how you can change it up. A website is like a child, it constantly needs love, attention, money out of your wallet, nurturing, and work to avoid the many pitfalls. Just stay off that “road to nowhere” by clearly focusing on the value you bring to your customers.
By Cheryl Salazar, Senior Marketing Consultant at The Partner Marketing Group
