Why Having the Domain Knowledge of Growing Your Brand From Both Operational and Client-Facing Perspectives Will Help You Win

Our corporate world has changed from a pure marketing landscape to that of a creative economy, requiring business owners from every industry to think outside of the box as often as possible, as quickly as possible – making sure to deliver quality and genuity into the landscape. 

No longer should marketers be thinking from a black-and-white lens, but from an all encompassing perspective which requires thought, authenticity, and creativity in order to generate and create real value. 

The question you need to ask yourself is whether customer centricity is a core pillar of your business differentiating itself? How you engage your customers requires a vast knowledge of what your customers want and are thinking, as well as what the industry is currently doing (or missing). 

One of the marketing world’s biggest barriers to entry is the requisite knowledge to successfully operate on both sides of the company-client relationship.

By having the domain knowledge of how to grow a brand from the client’s perspective, you will be able to see both sides of the relationship, allowing you to help your client achieve the directives and goals they seek. 

Here are three tips on how to embrace both sides of the equation regardless of the type of industry you are in. 

1. Learning Which Puddles to Avoid

Successfully thriving in today’s digital age is no easy task, and can come across as extremely daunting due to the high prevalence and impact social media, particularly Instagram and Twitter, have on the general public.

In putting together your team, hopefully comprised of both digital natives, who grew up in the age of today’s technology, as well as those new to the space, or digital immigrants – you will be able to bring different generational skills, experiences, and wisdom to the table hoping to avoid the easiest of “puddles” to slip and fall on. 

For Slique Media, a California-based creative marketing agency launched by industry veterans Andrew Le and Thomas Pham, going through the stages of being a marketing hub for restaurants while simultaneously building out its own line of restaurants and expansions, allowed it to step into many of these puddles so it could identify and avoid them later down the line as they continued to expand. 

Launched in 2012, Slique Media initially joined the space as marketers for restaurants, eventually opening up its own line of restaurants, growing to over 11 locations in three years. 

Coming into a new era of social media where Instagram was just getting started onboarding businesses onto its platform, the company admitted that it was also a very strange time for any restaurant to be on Instagram, because nobody was there to help navigate them through the new space, while lacking the understanding of what worked, how to properly market, and what strategies were effective to implement. 

“At the time, it was always someone doing the marketing in another space that eventually transitioned into this space – whereas for us, we built our agency specifically for restaurants.” 

Pham elaborated on the effectiveness of stepping into these many “puddles” along the way by sharing that in their ability “…to speak with hundreds of restaurant owners, we have been able to better understand our own marketing techniques on social media as well as off those platforms, increasing our domain knowledge of how customers interact with a restaurant on and offline.”

2. Caution Your Reliance Upon Social Media Communications 

Last year, Facebook’s newest division, Meta, announced that it would be investing $1 billion dollars into programs specifically to help creators monetize their content they post to Facebook and Instagram by the end of 2022, according to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. 

With the rapid rate in which social media channels are growing and expanding, knowing where to start as a small business owner or even a successful marketing chain can be daunting in and of itself, making it all the more important to understand the time/place/manner by which businesses utilize these platforms, making sure to avoid pitfalls that seek only to destroy the client relationship. 

Did you know that the average person spends two hours and 25 minutes on social media per day, scrolling through Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn? 

Targeting consumers with personalized and localized content goes a long way. Think about how any brand’s particular narrative and messaging work together (or against each other). For example, is what a client is saying in the store the same as what is being communicated online – and vice versa? If not, understanding why that communication gap and barrier exists will help the brand convert and build quality relationships, including ambassadors and today’s form of thought leaders and influencers.

3. Work Both Sides of the Equation

Think back to algebra, as painful as that may be – what was the biggest takeaway from the class?

Always balance the equation. One of the biggest issues marketers face today is that many approach clients from a one-sided perspective of the swimlane they know, and fear to drift out of it for any reason at all – simply because it’s uncomfortable. 

It’s time to be comfortable being uncomfortable and approach clients from both ends of the spectrum, which requires you to have a solid understanding of how all parties operate, think, and work together (and against one another). 

“We went the extra mile to learn both sides of the business, taking the time to understand how to grow our brand from both the operator’s side and the client’s side. Posting nice photos on Instagram or Facebook is not going to do enough for the purposes of adding value to your client and/or business,” he says. 

Pham referenced an example where a client may want to battle the ongoing COVID-19 mandates by starting to go on delivery platforms. The problem, according to Pham, is that when they start there, “[they’re] ranked #200 and nobody wants to order from you, so how do you combat that? And does it make financial sense to the restaurant or brand to make that infrastructural shift? How do we help them climb that ladder?”

“It takes so much more than that for a client to win – in our case, looking at the interactions at the store level, how the brand is telling its story, and how they interact digitally with customers and with third-parties who may be at arm’s length.”