How to Market Your Agency: Think Like a Baker

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As we are all sheltering at home and socially distancing in the Age of Corona, the absence of flour on store shelves suggests that some of you are taking up home baking. 

It got me to thinking about something that I often ask our B2B services or insights clients in the discovery process at the beginning of any branding or marketing initiative.  

The overarching question we start with is “Who you are and what do you do for your customers?” 

Too often the first response we get is a laundry list of methodologies and technologies. Qual… quant… conjoint… online… implicit… neuro… AI… analytics… 

What Kind of Baker Are You?

Once we get past this inevitable litany, we take a deep breath, then ask these clients to take a leap of faith and think of themselves as bakers and then to tell us, “what kind of baker are you?” 

There are some bakers who say: “We have flour, we have sugar and butter.  We have ovens.  We make cakes.  Want some?”

These cakes are commodities.  We don’t identify the bakers making them as unique or distinctive.  These bakers don’t convey any confidence that they deliver intrinsic value that couldn’t be gotten elsewhere, maybe even cheaper and faster.  

Then there are other bakers who say: “We help you celebrate all your life moments, with confections that make every occasion memorable!  Want some?” 

Now we can already imagine that these bakers deliver something special, and if we order something from their shelves it will be tailored specifically to our needs.  

We take it for granted that their baked goods are concocted from typical ingredients – the formula of flour, butter, and sugar. Unconsciously we assume that ovens are somehow involved. These are givens. 

The Brand Promise

But the brand promise from these bakers is that their deliverables are distinctive and differentiated. We believe that they appreciate the requirements of all our life experiences: the most important – the birthdays, anniversaries, and weddings – but also those everyday “bread and butter” moments. These bakers make us confident that they comprehend our unique challenges and “jobs to be done”. They give us reason to expect that their pastries will be exceptional.  

The more serious corollary to this somewhat facetious question about imagining yourself as a baker is at the core of a branding discussion for any B2B services agency:  who are you and what business problem are YOU uniquely experienced and equipped to solve for your customers and clients?  

Another way to think about this is a perspective espoused by my friend and colleague, Michael Roderick, CEO of Small Pond Enterprises, an expert and thought leader in the art and science of brand growth through referrals.  Michael’s mantra is that in order to grow, brands need to be accessible, influential, and memorable.  

So how do you build the recipe for differentiating your brand promise and create the marketing that will make you memorable to the audience you serve? 

Making it Memorable

The formula for memorability is not your laundry list of research methodologies and technological solutions.  We would argue that these are mere “table stakes”.  Further, clients have the right to assume you execute them impeccably well, so the fact that you use them is not a point of difference. Like the ingredients that we assume any baker includes in their recipes, it is a given that your tool kit includes validated, reliable, and sound research methodologies.  

But it is what you do with them that makes you memorable.  

To be memorable your brand needs to be a bold expression of your unique point of view for the specific clients you serve, and the problems you help them solve. How you tell your brand stories can be based on your own framework, on an academic discipline like design thinking or behavioral science, or anecdotally refer to the depth of your knowledge of a particular industry vertical or category. Most importantly, these brand stories should reflect how your firm is particularly qualified to deliver the actionable recommendations that are most relevant to your clients and prospects. 

How you articulate your brand so that it is memorable and distinctive, can mean the difference between your company being considered as an invaluable advisor versus an easily replaced commodities broker.  

Once we come out on the other side of this COVID-19 crisis, inevitably business may look very different than it did prior to the pandemic. But what will not change, will be the imperative to articulate your brand distinction, what you stand for, and the business problems you help clients solve.

So, while you are working from home, when you are considering your brand, your business, and how you are going to transform to be a resilient, sought after partner, take The Baker’s Challenge. 

Ask yourself: “What kind of company do we want to be?”