Beyond Marketing: The New Era of Brand Building and Employee Engagement

“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

Gone are the days when brand-building solely rested on the shoulders of the marketing department. Today, we stand at the threshold of a new era where every employee becomes a brand builder. The heart, soul, and spirit of your company's brand exists within each team member, a collective force that can shape your culture, revenue, and success.

However, with this shared responsibility comes the potential for challenges.

Sometimes, we stumble or make missteps that could impact our brand's reputation. It's in these moments that we recognize the significance of unity, consistency, and experience—of rallying our team around a shared purpose and vision.

We sought guidance from some of the brightest minds in marketing and sales, asking them:

"Is brand building solely the responsibility of the marketing team?” 

Their responses revealed a powerful narrative—one that embraces a new era of brand building and employee empowerment, where every team member becomes a true brand champion driven by a common cause. 

Check out what they had to say.

Morgan Lippitt, Group Product Marketing Manager at LinkedIn

Fundamentally when you have customer-centric strategy, B2B marketers have a much clearer understanding of value props, positioning, and RTBs. - which further reinforces this idea that brands are built by your people, reached at scale, and marketed in a targeted way through seller and product touch points.

What I love about what Opensense is doing is that they’re helping brands create consistency in the brand experience at the seller touchpoint. That’s how you actually get coalition internally and drive impact for your brand. 

‍Tom McMahon, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Highspot

Brand building is a collective effort; it goes beyond the marketing team. With building a brand, you're trying to make a connection between what you're providing your customers and the customers themselves, right?

And you want to build a relationship that resonates. But there are so many facets to that relationship that will be delivered either through implementation, ongoing calls with account managers, or trust exercises that compound when the relationship builds up over time. And so marketing might be there at the start. It might be there at different pieces throughout the life cycle of the customer, but there's a collective effort of many people involved in building that trust.

‍Rob DePersia, Director of Demand Generation at Rattle

Brand building is certainly a collaborative effort. I think marketing can help, but what I find to be most successful is when our sales reps, the people who are day-to-day interacting with customers, with prospects on social channels like LinkedIn, are doing their part to help expand our brand and really be the ultimate face of who we are and what we do.

Marketing definitely sets what the brand could be, but we rely heavily on sales and a great partnership with sales to do a lot of the heavy lifting for us.

‍Irwin Hipsman, Director of Customer Marketing at Forrester 

Brand building is clearly a responsibility of more than just marketing. A lot of people touch the customers, and a lot of people touch prospects in ways that we never imagined. There's employees in sort of the day-to-day, but there's also clearly, sales, customer success, the product team... We're all involved in creating a brand that people will trust and value. 

Barbara Hoffman, Director of Product Marketing at Delinea

I believe that brand building goes beyond just a logo. It’s inherent in every interaction that your customers have with every employee within your organization. Your people, as much as your logo, are your brand.

‍Ryan Bovy, Solutions Consulting Manager at Drift.

Every employee's responsible for building a brand, from that first website visit and the developer behind that website to your product's implementation and use. All of that is your brand experience, and everybody is responsible for building a great experience that helps retain and delight every customer at every step of the journey.

‍Hannah Kusper, Event Coordinator at Fathom

Brand building is important not just for marketing but for the whole organization, as everyone has to be there to support the brand, build the brand together, and really establish that in the market.

‍John Sharpe, Director of Sales at Fathom

I personally believe that brand building has more to do with your team than just marketing. Everybody who talks with a client and interacts with the people you work with has an opportunity to build that brand. It’s a collective responsibility for the whole of the brand to take that seriously.

‍Liz Saxen-Duggan, EVP of Strategic Consulting at Smith

I think that brand building is a cross-functional responsibility, beyond just marketing. You need product-sales alignment to make sure that you have consistency across every single customer touchpoint.

‍Jenna Calhoun, Partner Marketing Manager at Klaviyo

I think brand building is not just a marketing function. Pretty much anyone who touches the customer or represents your company is going to be building your brand in some capacity. And so it's really a function of everyone at the company to ensure the brand is consistent across all touchpoints. It’s not just a marketing job.

‍Kerry Beach, Director of Product Marketing at Zelis

I believe that brand building belongs to everyone at your company. There needs to be intentional effor to come together and be aligned to build the brand and then take it to market.

‍Benjamin Schaefer, Senior Brand Manager at Analog Devices

Brand building, to me, is a consistent identity presence in the market.

‍P.S. As a very special bonus, we have one more! This answer will invigorate you with some additional inspo on: How does consistent brand experience across various channels contribute to brand recognition and loyalty? 🙌

‍Katherine Chambers, VP of Revenue Marketing at Cart.com

A brand is a promise. With today’s proliferation of buy anything anywhere, a consistent brand message is more critical than ever before. How else would you break through the constant clutter and bombardment? With consistency comes repeat business and loyal customers. Win win.

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There you have it.

Use this as a resource to show your leadership the power of brand building through your best brand evangelists, your team. Leveraging your internal brand builders to take your brand to market gives each brand the opportunity to tap into the collective trust, credibility, equity and relationships each member of your company has nurtured to deliver on your brand promise. 

Curious about how we can help you empower your employees to step into the role of brand builders through easy, accessible methods, especially email signature ad banners? 

Hit us up to learn what Opensense can do for you and your organization.