Whether your brand is traveling down the hall to a colleague's office or across the globe, you need to safeguard it for the journey ahead. With freelancers, marketing agencies, internal teams, and many others using your brand in communications and content, it's easy for inconsistencies and misuse to arise. 

A brand identity kit can help by providing disparate groups and individuals with the tools and information they need to uphold your brand consistently. In fact, a brand identity kit is an absolute must-have for all businesses!

Your brand is your company’s most important asset. It’s more than just words on a page or images on a screen ⏤ it’s how you communicate with and attract your audience. From your logo to every customer interaction, it’s the identity of your organization.  

To stand out in a competitive market, consumers need to easily understand who your company is and what you provide. Brand consistency helps consumers feel confident in their decision to become a customer because they know exactly what to expect from you with every interaction.

So, how do you ensure a consistent experience that builds brand loyalty? Develop strong brand guidelines.

Business environments today are tough. Things change fast. From a new competitor on the scene to shifting market conditions, technologies, and buyer dynamics, there’s a lot that’s simply out of our control. Because of this, organizations are putting more and more emphasis on the things they can control — like their brand. 

Brand management, once a practice reserved for the Coca-Colas and Nikes of the world, is now a commonplace practice for any organization looking to win the hearts, minds, and spend of their target audiences. And, just as you see with other business priorities, it helps to put a dedicated person in place — like a brand manager — to ensure it succeeds.

These days, you can do some pretty impressive things with content. However, you’re not the only one using content to win the attention and mindshare of audiences. Thanks to the success that content marketing has seen over the years, there’s a lot (and we mean a lot) of competition out there. For example, there are over 4.2 million blogs written each day. Pair that with the nearly 1.8 billion websites out there — and you have a lot of content to contend with.   

To break through the noise, you need to add some horsepower to your content marketing efforts by incorporating visual content. To help you do this effectively, it’s important to know the what, why, and how behind it.

If you want to achieve success as a brand in this day and age, it’s time to fully embrace the reality that you’re in the experience business.Transactions are no longer a simple exchange of money for goods or services; consumers demand more. They expect you to win their affection and loyalty by delivering consistent, memorable experiences at each and every interaction.

Because of this, the digital assets and content you use to tell your story, educate your audiences, and represent your brand, are more important than ever. To thrive and grow in the experience economy, more and more successful brands turn to digital asset management (DAM) systems.

Anyone who has worked in digital marketing knows that marketing and technology go hand in hand. Successful marketing strategies rely on a variety of tools to evaluate data, connect with audiences, and create engaging content. With thousands of martech tools to choose from, the key is determining the right ones for your team. 

Video has proven to be one the best tools — if not the best — for communication and promotion. Its ability to convey and elicit emotions is without equal. So it’s not surprising that  video is now the number one form of media used in content strategy, overtaking blogs and infographics. 

And while demand for video is expanding, so are the tools to take high-quality video. Cameras in today’s smartphones have better video capabilities than professional cameras had as little as 10 years ago. With the right knowledge they can yield extremely high quality results — without a George Lucas-level budget. Let’s explore four areas where the right tricks and tips can help your videos look professional and achieve the desired impact:

Around 15 years ago, digital marketing technology was in its infancy. Marketers were searching for ways to sell to individuals rather than to mass markets. They were trying to create the marketing approach outlined in the 1996 book from Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, “The One to One Future.”

That quest for one-to-one marketing led to a group of new tools. “Contact managers” and “sales force automation” software from companies like Brock Control Systems became best sellers. It was those early efforts that birthed the customer relationship management (CRM) industry, finally promising the holy grail that might deliver on the promises of one-to-one marketing. 

Now, digital marketers have CRMs, digital asset management (DAM) software, product information management (PIM) solutions, customer data platforms (CDPs), and predictive analytics. Consumers have TVs, smartphones, smart watches, social media, Internet of Things (IoT), and virtual reality (VR) at their fingertips. Between all of those, there are thousands of tools, technologies, and apps to tie the customer experience together.

That kind of complexity requires a whole new species of marketer: the marketing technologist. These individuals know the technology and have the organizational skills to make the one-to-one customer experience possible. If you’re one of these rare creatures, you could even aim your career at the role of Marketing Technology Officer or Chief Marketing Technologist. To get started, you need to develop a certain kind of mindset.

It’s nearly impossible to keep up with all the new martech tools. Just look at the 8,000 solutions that show up on the 2020 ChiefMartech marketing technology landscape, which grew 13.6% from the previous year. 

While understanding the functionality and benefits of all  these technologies would be overwhelming (to say the least), you can still make learning a priority for you and your team. Well-rounded marketing technologists develop a habit out of experimenting with new systems and technologies, seeking out
martech training, and talking with technical experts.

Martech, short for marketing technology, is about much more than your technology stack. While one part of the martech equation is the technology, the other part is the people who use it. You need a team of unique individuals with the right balance of traits and skills that interplay to create success. 

Marketing technologists with the right competencies can seem like mythical creatures. Thankfully, they’re more like butterflies than unicorns — they actually exist. However, it’s easier to find them when you adopt a marketing competency framework to guide your hiring decisions and team development.

With the right framework, you get clear on the skill sets and behaviors you need in your marketing technologist(s) and across your team. Thankfully, you don’t need every attribute in every person. You can map out your competency needs for your team like you can map your marketing technology. Then fill it in across your organization as you go.