Borenstein Group

Washington DC’s Expert Top B2B Digital Communications Agency

Digital Marketing

Public Sector Branding Fundamentals Primer

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Building or maintaining a strong brand should be an important short and long term revenue goal for your company. Especially in a recession. But for many federal contractors, the time, attention (and money) dedicated to this initiative fall short. The reasons for this are many and range for too much emphasis on set-aside status, to a desire to make marketing materials look and sound like other industry players. For example, many small government contractors want their marketing materials to sound like Lockheed Martin or Leidos, but of course, don’t have the marketing budgets of the big boys.

According to the American Marketing Association (AMA), a brand as a “name, term, sign, symbol or design, or a combination of them intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of other sellers.”
Often beginning with a Positioning Statement, a core objective of developing a strong brand is to clearly answer the following questions:
  • What is unique about my organization or brand in the context of the industry as a whole?
  • Which of these factors are most important to my clients and prospects?
  • Which of these factors are most difficult for your competitors to imitate?
  • Which of these factors can be most easily understood by my prospects?
There are four key rules of branding. These apply to companies serving both the commercial and federal sectors:
  1. For the brand to be effective, it has to be unique.
  2. For the brand to make an impact and be memorable, it has to be clear and compelling.
  3. For the brand to generate revenue, it has to foster a sense of ownership by my clients, partners, and employees.
  4. For the brand to be credible, it must be believable.

How to Choose a Marketing Communications Agency Partner

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There are some great marketing agencies out there. Depending on where you live, you probably have a decent selection of highly-regarded firms. But just because you pick a great one doesn’t mean you’ll have a stellar experience. Before you forge ahead with an agency, here are four essential ingredients you’ll need on your end:

1. Commitment to the value of marketing. Your corporate leadership must be dedicated to the potential ROI of strategically-sharp, masterfully-implemented programs. If the commitment is not there at the highest levels, even the best agencies can’t reach their full potential.
2. Availability of senior management and key team. This ties in closely with #1. Cooperation and input, starting with the top, is essential. Willingness to share details like the sales process, close ratios and programs that have worked may be required. If the vast majority of marketing efforts and mindshare is relegated to a junior level staffer, the agency won’t have the visibility they need to win.
3. Trust. This doesn’t mean free reign, but you’ll need a degree of hands-off management to let the agency succeed. The best agencies provide a mix of solid project management and exceptionally creative. If you’ve selected one that fits the bill, give them room to achieve results.
4. A strong internal liaison. This person needs to be a hustler, understand the value of their role and yours, and have a direct line to your decision makers. They also need to be secure enough to admit when they don’t know the answer and straight shoot with both the agency and senior management.

How to Produce Effective White Papers for Public Sector Marketing (B2G)

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In Business to Government marketing, the virtues of white papers are well known. Government buyers don’t buy from direct marketing campaigns. They buy based on educational materials and logical case studies that can be used as foundational concepts to build out their procurements and programs. But alas while it sounds easy, the deployment strategy too often goes off course. Many white papers become semi-sell sheets posing as white papers. When this falls short, lack measurable results are sure to follow.
A successful B2G white paper distribution strategy really only requires five steps:
1. A marketable topic that provides important content to potential buyers.
Just because your engineers are excited about a technology doesn’t mean this topic will generate enthusiastic readers. Research your topic and make sure you’re really filling a market niche and supplying needed content. If this step is not dead on, how can the program be successful?
2. Structure and content that delivers on the promise of valuable information.
This step can do one of two things. It can build on the credibility of the company that develops the white paper. Or it can damage your company’s credibility if the reader goes to the trouble to download your data, only to find the information is poorly organized, badly written, and/or hopefully week on good content. There’s a middle ground in there too, but that falls short of motivating the prospect to do business with you.
3. Visual appeal that contributes to the positive perception the reader has of the company.
White papers are marketing pieces and should fit with the overall corporate brand. Charts, graphs, screen captures and other visual depictions should be handled by an experienced graphic designer, as should all parts of the white paper. Not everyone who can design a white paper should design a white paper. After all, you want this document to be read by your audience. Visuals are important.
4. A distribution strategy of reaching potential buyers, customers, etc.
Writing the white paper is the easy part. Really. As difficult as it can be to extract important information out of your subject matter experts and convince your C-suite and peers that you’re not giving away trade secrets at every turn, the most difficult part of any white paper strategy is distribution. Take the time and allocate the budget to do this step properly. Before you embark on developing the white papers, research white paper search and syndication services, as well as more niche-focused services.
Also, determine how you will continue to nurture those leads once they are in your pipeline.
5. Benchmarking and measurement methods to determine and define success.
Before you begin, determine what success looks like. Realistically. Is it the number of qualified downloads, qualified additions to your social media, marketing database, inbound leads, search engine optimization, synergy with a PR program, etc.?
Want to learn more? Contact The Borenstein team to learn how to make your white papers a strategic marketing asset.

How Unique is Your Federal Contracting Brand?

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We’ll be the first to tell you that revenue generating initiatives are of greater value in a down economy than branding efforts. But federal contractors are different. Generally speaking, they tend to lack the strong brand identity and recognition of their commercial sector counterparts. Only, unlike their commercial counterparts, successful government contractors, with a greater immunity to the recession, can afford to make the investment in the brand building now.

But why should contractors turn their attention to branding now? Because the industry—which is already awash in tech firms, professional services firms and goods and service providers—is getting more and more competitive every day. New players are entering the fray by the minute. The contractors that have been there and done that need to raise their profile and build their brand if their long term goals include growing their business.
Let’s revisit our first of four principles: For a brand to be effective, it has to be unique.
This means the brand must be distinctive from the others in your playing field, which, unless you’ve carved out a very distinct niche, is probably pretty crowded. Occasionally we have clients approach us to say they want to create in impression on the market that “we aren’t like all the other beltway bandits.” Bravo. We love those people because they get it and because it’s job security for us. And because it’s sound marketing strategy.
If, by contrast, your branding strategy is to find out what the best-known and most successful competitors say and look like, and emulate them, expect muted results. Yes, federal buyers are notoriously risk averse and make the safe choice. But you can communicate to your audience that you’re safe while making a distinct and lasting impression.
So ask yourself, what’s unique and superior about my company? Hint: the answer is not your disadvantaged status. Trust me, you’re not the only 8a or woman-owned small business in town.
When you determine what those differentiators are, you are on your way to a value proposition. Now ask yourself how you’re communicating that to the marketplace at every step along the way in the sales cycle.