Understand the difference between Marketing, Product Marketing and Sales communications tools?

Here’s a diagram I made several years ago, appropriating Blair Enns “Win Without Pitching” sales structure, to help a small B2B-focused company better understand what constitutes “brand” and why “brand” is an end result, not a starting point.

It is surprising how many professionals don’t understand the boundaries and true purpose of each functional area and how critical getting each one right is for building a brand.

To build a brand, you need to rapidly test, understand and iterate what content resonates with your customers at each stage of their buying process.

I worked for two multinationals where the corporate marketing teams were clueless as to the garbage content they were publishing, but knew exactly the font kerning they used to publish it! Worse, because they demanded control over every piece of content output throughout the business, but worked at a glacial pace, they completely killed any rapid iteration. A business function would have to live with content pieces for months or even years. No wonder big corporations have been caught “with their pants down” throughout the modern digital marketing/social media era.