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What are the best brands doing to stay relevant, build trust, and create content smarter?
At Share Your Genius, we have the same questions, so we're tapping the best in the space for their answers—one voicemail at a time.
Join us each week for quick hits of insights from b2b marketers and leaders.
[00:00:10] RACHEL ELSTS DOWNEY:
Consistency builds trust, not the other way around. Matt Lyman, he gets that and his approach to branding isn't about keeping a tight grip. It's about giving teams clarity so they can be consistent. When the content is documented, the strategy is transparent and the feedback loops are short, people don't just repeat the message, they're reinforcing it. So I asked him, how can teams build trust so that they can keep brand messaging consistent? Here's the voicemail he left me.
[00:01:11] MATT LYMAN:
I'll dive into that just a little bit, but we need documentation for everybody. People need to understand what we have. The biggest reason that someone's not going to trust your message, internally speaking, is if they don't know that you have that message. They're not going to know what to use if you haven't documented with them what they can use.
[00:01:31] MATT LYMAN:
They're gonna go out and they're going to use Claude to build out a new white paper if you haven't told them what you have. So, if you're documenting the things that you have, then use something like a content hub. We use Notion internally, as a board where you can say, “Hey, this is the competitive battle cards,” or it's, “These are white papers you can use for this use case,”If you can then communicate that to them, it becomes extremely powerful. They can say, “Oh, I know that there’s a PowerPoint for this. I know that there's only one sheet for this competitive battle.” And so, if you can do that, I think you hit that really important area of them knowing, because the not knowing is where you start creating the bad stuff.
[00:02:11] MATT LYMAN:
You also need to have transparent strategies around it. I think a lot of people talk about roadmaps. I think roadmaps are important, but you have to tie them to your goals and your strategies. So, if you are a company that is trying to do more around enterprise, you need to have enterprise messaging and you need to have that on your roadmap and show how that ties to that strategy. It can't just be, well, if my dad would say, it can't just be all willy-nilly because then, again, it's the unknown, and there's no trust when there's a lot of unknowns. But then, the final piece is the feedback loops. My favorite thing is actually building out product presentations, product decks, product pitch decks with the sales rep that uses them the most. So, talking to them, seeing what they use, and then putting it into a brand message in that short marketing style you would use, having them test it out and giving you that feedback. And then, once it's live, getting that feedback again, having a Slack channel or an email thread where people can respond to you.
[00:03:09] MATT LYMAN:
It's really important that you do that because, again, if they don't know what's coming, they're going to build it themselves. And I would say that the consistency of it all, if you don't have a designer, that's okay. You can do it yourself, right? But you need to make sure you have consistency with that branding. An example I always use is if you don't have consistent email signatures, you're gonna look, A, silly; B, foolish; and C, in a world where externally, no one trusts anybody anymore and that's just because there's so much spam and there's a lot of people out there that are trying to get over on other people's scams and things.
[00:03:45] MATT LYMAN:
If two people from one company email one person, and their email signatures are different, you've lost brand recognition and you look like you don't know what you're doing or you're trying to scam them.All that together, using documentation, putting it all into one place like a content hub, having specific strategies that tie to those and have those tie back to them, and then feedback loops. That's how you're gonna build that trust so people know, A, that you're going through what you need to be going through; B, that it aligns with the corporate and team strategies as well as their goals and strategies,specifically meaning sales quotas, etc.); and C, you're going to externally show the world that you know what you're doing and that your team is a legitimate company with a solid tool.
[00:04:34] MATT LYMAN:
So, I just went through a lot. I know that was a lot, but if you have any other questions, like, feel free to ping me. You can always text me, too. I respond solid to that. Let me know. I hope that covered pretty well for you, and, look forward to talking to you soon. Alright, thanks.