I'm not a great believer of the corporate 'vision and values' nonsense. Mainly because this tends to be an outdated boardroom internalised fairy tale view. 

More often than not it was set up many years ago by leaders no longer with the organisation and is longer relevant, or internally believable in relation to what today's customer actually experiences.

When buying customers are trying to satisfy a combination of emotional and belief needs - So, why do we choose one brand over another?

Traditional marketing encourages us to sell benefits, not features. 

Brand marketing goes one level deeper and connects with people’s beliefs.

When you speak to people on the level of their beliefs, you have an opportunity to connect emotionally — to customers, employees, and even investors.

The key question to ask yourself is: what do you believe and how do you attract other people that are aligned to those same beliefs? 

Great brands create a belief system that is both internally and externally aligned.When done correctly it simplifies the challenge of defining your brand.

Branding is a combination of a topic that ‘your’ audience is curious about and creating a brand belief system they can relate to.

Let's be truthful - there isn't a business or person who hasn't experienced some kind of 'transformational' impact as a result of this crisis - including me. 

Because consumer behavior has already changed I would strongly argue that Covid has been the catalyst for you to urgently get to grips with your post-Covid 'Why'.

Companies must have a strong sense of who you are appealing to if you are to build a sense of personality (brand) that starts customers on the road to buying from you. 

The stark reality is that Confused companies, confuse customers, who buy from someone else. 

Growth is a combination of agility, and innovation along with the ability for a company and its leaders to accept and be willing to recognise the external changes in customer behaviours and look to understand how to adjust and implement 'change'.

Customer acquisition is something every business continues to do, it doesn’t matter if your in B2B or B2C.

What varies of course is the type of business you’re in, along with the gestation time and cost it takes to acquire new ones.

So, is the answer to continue fuelling the intrusive, fraud ridden ad tech world, along with the cost of those cosy introductory offers to entice people to sign up?

Or is it time to consider a new strategic approach - something lo/no cost and invest in your upskilling your leadership team and your employees?

The reality is that Customer acquisition and retention cost is the price we pay for not understanding how to use Social Media.

If done right, and with the right training your cost don’t increase with reach, you don’t need a database, you don’t need to pay to get the ‘right’ attention, and your customers become your advocates. 

If your a regular reader of my blogs (thank you) you will have seen I produce quite a lot of stories, or 'content' as some call it, I produce and publish 2/3 articles each day. 

This includes posting on a weekend when I know we're all taking time out.  

And I'm usually 1.5 weeks ahead to allow me to do business as usual stuff.

For you to become a producer of content there are a few things you need to sort out first, otherwise, and based on my on experience you will simply not enjoy it, and most likely give up.

1. What's your passion - where do you have subject matter experience and expertise?
2. You need to understand your purpose - what's the subject matter?
3. Whose the audience - who is it aimed at?
4. 'Why' are you doing this?
5. Content Calendar - align your output and timings, the input will be aligned to this.
6. Don't sweat the grammar - try and be authentic, use natural language.

However, blogging without a strategy or an audience in mind won't really get you very far. 

And if it's all just a bit random and tactics you will lose heart very quickly.

The reality is that producing content is hard work to start off with, if you ever went to a gym or chose a weight loss program the magic didn't happen overnight, you got better at it, as you got better at it, if you get my drift?