Ed Field of Maverick presented a 9-stage approach to developing perfectly tuned communications for international growth. The approach involves establishing clear brand foundations, developing a visual style and comprehensive plan, creating brand materials, building a customer-centric website, and nurturing the brand over time. The goal is to cut through clutter and engage prospects by speaking clearly to their needs. Case studies showed companies achieving better results and shifting from commodities to brands by following this approach.

1. Accelerating international
growth with perfectly tuned
communications
Enterprise Ireland
Digital strategies for international markets
Dublin, Oct 2019
Presenter:
Ed Field, Managing Director, Maverick ( Maverick-intl.com )

2. Clear, engaging, persuasive, comprehensive communications.
A solid communications foundation. Perfectly tuned to align with your sweet spot
prospects’ perceptions, needs and journey.
A proven marketing engine.
Reach, engage and nurture your sweet spot prospects. Build a successful, sustainable
set of marketing activities.
An effective sales engine.
The people, systems and processes to convert.
1,2,3 to drive sales and growth
1.
2.
3.

3. This Session
Step #1
An executive’s guide to developing perfectly tuned market facing communications.

4. Brand & Communications touch points
• Website
• Social media channels and presence on third party websites
• Sales materials, sales people, proposal documentation
• Publications, press releases, advertising, direct mail
• Trade show stand and experience, promotional materials
• Customer onboarding, training, support and service materials and people
• Vehicles, buildings, packaging, work wear, stationery, email signatures

5. In today’s digital world,
perfectly tuned branding
and communications can
spark extraordinary gains
for your organisation.

7. Dedicated to fuelling success for ambitious,
B2B companies and brands.
Since 2005.

8. No matter how
complicated your
business, service or
product, the outward
expression should
always be clear
and simple.

9. Simplicity is the
ultimate sophistication“ Leonardo da Vinci

10. The Challenge
Needing sharper tools to
break new markets.
Carey Glass

18. Results.
Traction in the US market. Significant and accelerating sales.
“We are now getting in front of the exact architects and
glazing partners that we had been continuously
struggling to engage.”
Michael Carew, North American Sales Director, Carey Glass

19. With the same business strategy,
the same products and services,
and the same people, you can
achieve significantly better results.

20. You can now cut through the clutter, reach
anyone, anywhere and engage, educate,
excite and amaze.Raise Your Expectations

21. When a right-fit prospect, who has never heard of your brand, sees your
advert or lands on your website, there is an immediate, positive first
impression made, consciously and sub-consciously. You’ve immediately begun
to build trust . You’ve sparked interest. They want to hear more.
Expect 1-second impact

22. When the prospect explores a little further, for example on your website, you
connect with their needs, answer their concerns, further build trust, and lead
them to the next step.
Expect 60-second engagement

23. Expect an increased flow of educated,
warm, fully engaged prospects. Expect
shorter sales cycles, higher conversion
rates, reduced sales effort and more
sweet spot clients.

26. How clear is your
broadcast? Are
your prospects
hearing you
clearly or is your
message lost in
the noise?

27. The single biggest
problem in
communication
is the illusion that
it has taken place.
“
George Bernard Shaw

30. How?

31. There is a way

32. Stage 1: Prepare the ground
Stage 2: Establish the foundations
Stage 3: Develop a plan
Stage 4: Rethink brand identity and style
Stage 5: Create and collate the ingredients
Stage 6: Build a customer-centric website
Stage 7: Develop compelling sales supports
Stage 8: On-board and go-live
Stage 9: Nurture and evolve
9 Stages

33. Ensure business strategy is clear
The clearer the strategy, the easier it is to produce on-message, on-brand, effective
communications.
Audit current communications
A brief, independent, expert assessment can help bring all on-board.
Research - Understand your audience’s perceptions, needs
and buying behaviours
Research all three thoroughly as this awareness underpins everything.
Research - Examine best-in-class
Take inspiration from the best communicators in your space or in related sectors. What
can you learn from them at a macro and a micro level?
1. Prepare the ground

34. Clarify the facts
Clearly establish:
1. what you do
2. for whom
3. how you do it
4. how it’s different
5. what value it provides
Before you work on how to say it, be sure you’re crystal clear on what to say. Forget
about the language initially, just get the facts straight; crafting the copy will come later.
2. Establish the foundations

35. Define your brand personality
Re-examine and re-define your brand personality, which needs to be true to the
company and tuned to resonate with your audiences.
Examples…
2. Establish the foundations

36. Before

38. Define your purpose, your ‘why’:
People first engage with why you do what you do, not what
or how.
A business/brand with a clear purpose is a more powerful
one.
See Simon Sinek’s TED talk.
2. Establish the foundations

39. Define your purpose
Our purpose is to help protect our clients’ people, environment,
materials and reputation.
How we do that by:
• staying specialist in our niche
• ensuring that every client gets the precise storage solution they need
• staying fully committed to our total-quality solution

40. Define position:
Your prospects’ minds are busy. You can only own a tiny spot,
if anything. What’s the lead idea or attribute you want to be
known for?
Once identified, deliver sustained messaging and stories that connect your brand with
this position. Burn that connection into the mind of your audience. For a short, succinct
lesson about the power of positioning: ‘Positioning’ by Al Ries & Jack Trout.
2. Establish the foundations

41. Craft a succinct, compelling value proposition
The value proposition is a distillation of all the key facts you have clarified under each of
the 5 headings, and is aligned with your purpose. This can be further summarised into
one statement.
1. what you do
2. for whom
3. how you do it
4. how it’s different
5. what value it provides.
2. Establish the foundations

42. Kneat is a specialist, purpose-built, enterprise software
solution that enables life sciences companies to smoothly
and completely transition from cumbersome paper-based
validation to smarter, faster and easier digitised validation.
Succinct Value Proposition

43. Draw up a succinct, top-level plan for your brand and communications development.
With the foundations established, you can define what is to be produced, who will
undertake those tasks, the roadmap, timeline, and investment required.
Communications development plan to include:
• Overview of website requirements
• Outline scope for photography & videography
• Outline scope for copy development
• Outline scope for all other sales supports
3. Develop a plan

44. Ps
Capture all in one document.

45. Brand identity
Is your current brand identity in line with your newly defined brand personality?
Visual style
Develop a distinctive, on-brand, well-worked visual style.
4. Rethink brand identity & style

48. // Developing a distinctive visual Style

49. // Developing a distinctive visual Style

50. // Developing a distinctive visual Style

51. // Developing a distinctive visual Style

53. 9 Stages
Stage 1: Prepare the ground
Stage 2: Establish the foundations
Stage 3: Develop a plan
Stage 4: Rethink brand identity and style
Stage 5: Create and collate the ingredients
Stage 6: Build a customer-centric website
Stage 7: Develop compelling sales supports
Stage 8: On-board and go-live
Stage 9: Nurture and evolve

54. Craft clear, compelling copy
Write for the website first, then re-purpose that content for other needs. Create copy
that’s clear, relevant, true, human and digestible.
Crafting copy for:
• Lead messaging
• Full pitch
• Stories
• Facts, stats, creds, proof
• Product and service detail
• Etc.
5. Create & collate the ingredients

55. Build a bank of images to illuminate all you need to
communicate.
• Photography
• Stock photography
• Icons
• Illustrations
• Treated screenshots
• Explainer graphics
5. Create & collate the ingredients

56. Build a video library
Quality video is a powerful medium. It’s excellent for:
• pitching
• telling client stories
• demonstrating how your solution works
• sharing knowledge
Determine the value of each piece and invest accordingly. Again, ensure you have a
clear, well developed plan for each video before anyone lifts a camera.
5. Create & collate the ingredients

57. Plan the website -
wireframing
• Fully define a bespoke plan for
every page, panel and feature on
the website.
• Add all copy to the wireframes, as
well as detailed design and
technical notes.
• Don’t proceed beyond this stage
until all stakeholders are on board.
6. Build a customer-centric website

58. Design the website
Each webpage template is designed
following the defined visual style and
wireframes and working with the
image bank. A simple site might need
6 to 10 templates, a larger site might
require 10 to 30.
6. Build a customer-
centric website

59. Build the website
A complete, as planned, fully tested,
responsive website should emerge in 4
to 10 weeks, depending on the scale of
the site and the size of the
development team.
6. Build a customer-centric website

60. Re-purpose the thinking,
design and messaging into
the formats you need.
7. Developing compelling sales supports

61. Bring everyone on-board
It’s vital to now bring everyone
on-board with this thinking, tone,
style and message, especially
management, sales, and service.
Go-live
Decide on, and prepare for, the
day where all the old disappears
and all the new appears. Avoid
carrying out changes piecemeal
and ensure every detail of the
new is fully implemented.
8. On-board & go-live

62. Maintain Quality & Consistency
Ensure all experiences, touch points, messaging, people and materials stay on-brand.
Inconsistency damages trust, both consciously and sub-consciously.
Keep developing
More stories, more images, more video, more website features and content, more sales
supports.
Lifespan?
The 9-stage approach outlined here should deliver a brand identity, visual style and
website that should not require a major overhaul for several years.
9. Nurture & evolve

63. 9 Stages
Stage 1: Prepare the ground
Stage 2: Establish the foundations
Stage 3: Develop a plan
Stage 4: Rethink brand identity and style
Stage 5: Create and collate the ingredients
Stage 6: Build a customer-centric website
Stage 7: Develop compelling sales supports
Stage 8: On-board and go-live
Stage 9: Nurture and evolve

64. Simple can be harder than
complex: You have to work hard
to get your thinking clean, to
make it simple. But it’s worth it
in the end because once you get
there, you can move mountains.
“
Steve Jobs

65. Commodity vs Brand
With the same business strategy, the same products and services, and the
same people, you can achieve significantly better results.

66. LSM

67. The Challenge
Production orientation to marketing
orientation. From commodity to brand.
LSM

73. Results.
From commodity to brand.
“There has been an immediate impact on every audience and every conversation we are
having. Overnight we’ve changed the perception of our organisation and our products –
in a very positive way. We’ve shifted from selling a commodity to selling a brand. I was
unsure of the value of this exercise, but now, just two weeks after roll-out, all the signals
are telling me that we absolutely did the right thing.”
John Cummins, Managing Director, LSM

74. Your prospects are crying out for a clear
voice to cut through the static and connect
with their need.
Be the one.

76. Accelerating international
growth with perfectly tuned
communications
Enterprise Ireland
Digital strategies for international markets
Dublin, Oct 2019
Presenter:
Ed Field, Managing Director, Maverick ( Maverick-intl.com )