Dear Brand Maker,
Let’s do this thing!
How do you build trust, enhance your reputation and generate the returns you desire? Step into a journey of brand insights, strategies and best practices brought to you as the Deardorff Brand Maker Series. Here, you’ll find perspectives drawn from decades of our expertise in positioning, reimagining and marketing brands for organizations of all sizes. For actionable tips that will help build your brand and your business, follow the #BrandMakerSeries today!
Article · 5 min read
Audit your competition to find the brand space you can own.
October 2024
The universe is filled with brands. Why do some shine brightly for all to see, while others appear distant or faded? It may be the brand positioning. When you lack a well-informed approach to positioning your brand, or worse, leave it to others to define who you are, it’s tough to stand out from the crowd.
However, when your brand is strategically built on a clear point of differentiation, and your entire organization rallies around that position, your unique space in the market becomes evident to all. So, how do you achieve the clarity you need to discern your rightful position? You start by conducting a competitive audit. This analysis helps you compare your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses with your own, while identifying your main differentiators and helping you create a more effective strategic plan.
In any competitive analysis, you’ll want to assess the major areas of potential differentiation. This includes reviewing the quality of products and services; documenting price points and pricing tactics; and assessing branding/marketing strategies. For this article, we’re going to focus our attention on the latter, sharing our process for sizing up your competitors’ branding and marketing attributes and finding the gaps and opportunities that arise for you.
How to Own a Mind Space
Our brand development process brings your strengths and opportunities into focus to define the space only you can own. Powered by research, it delivers game-changing strategies and brilliant creative that can transform even the most complex business challenges into a memorable, ownable story. Time and time again, it’s a process that has resulted in success for our clients.
Article · 5 min read
How to Avoid the Pitfalls of Messaging Indifference
June 2024
How often do you find yourself scrolling through your social media feed, only to encounter posts that fail to pique your interest? A vague motivational quote slapped on top of a stock photo, or an obviously scripted behind-the-scenes video from an event you attended years ago – it all elicits a feeling of indifference. Like trying to start a fire with damp wood, these kinds of posts struggle to catch your attention and fail to produce the desired spark. This pervasive phenomenon has been termed “messaging indifference” in the content marketing world. Let’s delve into why we’re facing this problem today and explore practical strategies to tackle it head-on.
Article · 5 min read
A Q&A with Donna MacFarland, Leading Research Expert
April 2024
Deardorff spoke with Donna MacFarland, Senior Research Strategist & Qualitative Moderator at Accelerate Strategies LLC, a strategic marketing consultancy and full-service research supplier focused on the financial services and retirement plan sectors. She has held senior-level marketing and research positions at Lincoln Financial Group, The Vanguard Group, Citigroup, Merrill Lynch and Smith Barney.
Article · 5 min read
How to Use Brand Maker Bracketology & KPIs to Test Your Campaigns
March 2024
1 in 9,223,372,036,854,775,808. That’s the chance you have at a perfect NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament bracket if you’re completely guessing. To put that into perspective, you have a better chance of picking out a specific grain of sand on the globe than achieving this.
However, there is one way to even the odds: knowledge. With educated guesses, researchers say this specific task becomes 70 million times easier (but still quite a feat at 1 in 120.2 billion).
As in basketball, where knowledge and strategy can tip the scales in your favor, marketers can tilt the odds of campaign success in their favor by embracing a ‘bracketology’ approach. By analyzing data, setting clear goals, and testing strategies like seasoned coaches, you can craft campaigns that are game-winning buzzer-beaters every time.
To help convey this process, we will highlight work created for our client, the Delaware Office of Highway Safety. We have created a holistic, knowledge-led process that links its social media content strategy with its award-winning website, ArriveAliveDE.com.
Article · 5 min read
Pairing the Right Marketing Message With the Right Audience
February 2024
How do you create lasting relationships with your target audience? By understanding how your brand story relates to your audience’s needs and wants – or more correctly – your audiences, because you have more than one.
Taking the time to identify all your stakeholders and tailoring your messaging to their unique needs are the best ways to find new relationships and to show your existing customers some love! Here are the steps you can take to ensure that the right message reaches the right audience.
Article · 5 min read
How to Optimize Your Content Strategy on Social Media
January 2024
In a digital world flooded with information, you need to make some noise! Yet many creators, marketers and businesses find themselves lost in the cacophony of voices vying for attention. The question is: Are you truly being heard?