Marketing – Brand Strategist | MarComms

Reignite your brand’s potential

January 2, 2025January 8, 2025by Emma PotterLeave a Comment

Growing a business is no small feat, and I understand the challenges that come with it—whether it’s defining your brand, standing out in a crowded market, or building trust with your audience. I work with MDs, CEOs and founders of scale-ups, and SMEs to create brand strategies that truly connect. Together, we’ll align your brand with your market and audience, strengthen relationships within your team and with key partners, and develop practical solutions that drive real results. It’s all about creating authentic connections that boost productivity, profitability, and your business’s future potential.

As a seasoned brand strategist, I specialise in empowering businesses to unlock their full potential by crafting a compelling and distinct brand. By addressing common challenges like unclear messaging, inconsistent communication, and market saturation, I help brands achieve clarity, consistency, and differentiation. Whether you’re seeking to redefine your value proposition, create a cohesive strategy across all platforms, or refresh an outdated identity, I provide actionable solutions tailored to your goals.

Clear brand identity

Challenge: Difficulty in defining a brand’s value proposition and communicating it effectively
Solution: Develop a comprehensive brand playbook, focusing on core values, purpose, messaging, and creative assets to resonate with the target audience and establish market differentiation

Consistent Messaging and Brand Experience

Challenge: Inconsistent communications across online and offline channels, causing customer distrust and disengagement
Solution: Implement a cohesive brand strategy that ensures uniformity across all marketing and communication touchpoints, on and offline

Create Market Differentiation

Challenge: Struggling to stand out in a crowded and competitive market
Solution: Identify unique selling points (USPs) and develop a brand narrative that highlights differentiation while appealing to the target customer

Reignite your brand’s potential

Challenge: An outdated brand that no longer aligns with current goals or market demands
Solution: Guide your business through a rebranding and repositioning process to align your identity, messaging, and services with company values and target audience expectations

What does a Discovery Session look like?

To give you some insight into what it would look like to work together, following initial conversations and an agreed brief, our journey would begin with an immersive, hands-on one-day workshop designed to set the foundation for your brand’s future. This session brings together you and your senior stakeholders—and any key decision-makers you’d like involved—to ensure alignment from the start.

During this collaborative session, we’ll dive deep into your vision for the business, uncovering what makes your brand truly unique. Using a carefully crafted framework, we’ll extract your “brand DNA,” the essence that defines who you are and what you stand for.

I’ll guide you through a proven methodology to define your brand in detail. Together, we’ll explore:

Your brand purpose, values, and mission
Your tone of voice and overall brand essence
Gain clear understanding of your products and services
Uncover a detailed profile of your ideal customer—who they are, what they need, and how your brand connects with them

The discovery session is designed to be insightful, actionable, and empowering. By the end of the day, we’ll have laid the groundwork for a strategy that aligns your brand with your business goals and resonates with your audience.

Tackle challenges head-on

By addressing your challenges head-on, we will empower your business to craft a brand strategy that is deeply aligned with your market and resonates with your target audience. This strategic approach enhances market positioning, fosters stronger relationships both internally—with senior stakeholders and teams—and externally with suppliers, partners, and sponsors. The result? Actionable solutions that inspire authentic connections, fuel productivity, and drive sustainable profitability.

Together, we can reignite your brand’s potential and position it for continued growth in a competitive marketplace.

Let’s work together

With over 20 years of experience working with innovative and disruptive-tech businesses across a variety of sectors—from HRtech and digital to customer experience and interior design—I bring a blend of commercial acumen and creative thinking to everything I do. I’m a strategic yet hands-on leader with a passion for collaboration and an action-oriented mindset that delivers real results.

My approach is human to human, balancing the analytical left brain (facts, figures, and data) with the intuitive creativity of the right brain (emotion, imagination, and storytelling)—because I believe the magic happens when you combine these two key ingredients.

I’m especially passionate about growth, coaching, and the power of applied behavioural colour psychology. Get in touch to create something exceptional together!

Header photo by Eva Bronzini – Pexels.

Marketing

Cyber Exchange 360 – Insights and takeaways

November 11, 2024November 11, 2024by Emma PotterLeave a Comment

Last week I had the opportunity to join an afternoon packed with interesting conversations at the Cyber CMO 360 Meet-Up and Cyber Exchange 360 – ‘Talk to the board’ session, hosted at the Science Museum, London. The event provided a new invaluable chance to connect with peers, share strategies for maximising event success, and engage in meaningful discussions.

CyberCMO 360

Gathering heads of marketing, the CMO roundtable, hosted over a delicious lunch, presented the perfect opportunity to talk with other seasoned marketers and engage in a lively debate about the challenges facing sales and marketing teams, and aligning KPIs – specifically around events. The hotly contested topic of attribution continues, as does the desire for marketing not to be consider as a cost centre, but for sales and marketing to potentially report into a CRO. This approach would ensure teams are aligned, and trusted communications and good relations are at play – after all, marketing is a revenue generating part of a business.

Talk to the board

Following the roundtable, I was able to attend and hear Board Directors from Enterprise and Technology companies at ‘Talk to the Board’ session, part two, in which many questions were asked by moderator, Steve Hill, former global CISO, Credit Suisse, to the panel of experts. Forming a formidable line-up, the panel included Lorraine Heggessey, former controller of BBC1, Roger Flynn, Chairman, Cooke Optics, former CEO and Leader in Transformation Change, Virgin, British Airways, Prudential, Haydn Brooks, CEO and co-founder, Risk Ledger and Rupert Lee-Browne, Chairman and group Chief Executive Officer, Caxton.

There were so many insights to capture but here’s some sound bites from the ‘Talk to the board’ session, where they touched on the subject of mental fitness and the rise in the importance to talk more openly.

Key takeaways

Learn how to deal with stress in your own way, and in a positive way – there’s no such thing as a stress-free job
Be there for your team, they also need to be there for you – foster a culture that’s transparent, compassionate, empathetic and supportive
If you enjoy what you’re doing, stress can be viewed in a different way, we can thrive on it
Make sure you enjoy your job – we all have a choice where and how we work, empower yourself – take license over your own destiny
Leaders have a responsibility to empower their people and teams – install a culture that’s supportive. As a leader, you have to be able to lean on your team for insights, guidance and advice
The importance of executive coaching – from being a leader in your field to executive level, it’s imperative to work on your weaknesses. Learn how to lead and be a great leader, understand the bigger picture. If your organisation offers it, say yes to executive coaching
Transparency – where do we draw the line, to keep staff motivated and on board. How far do you go with it?
Company culture – If I was forced to choose one key takeaway, it is this. When growing or running a successful business, focus on your company culture, everything flows from here – it’s a foundational and core piece to your brand strategy – a subject I’m passionate about

Build your network

Thank you to Pulse Events for organising, and to Amanda Coles and Sarah Moss, founders of the Sphere network – a platform designed to bring together a community of great people to build meaningful connections in cybersecurity and data security marketing, for the invite to join and for hosting an insightful CMO round table discussion. Also, it was great to spend the afternoon with one of my clients, MD and founder, Paula Elliott from disruptive-tech PR agency C8 Consulting.

For those who don’t know me, I help forward-thinking, innovative MDs and founders build brand value by unlocking potential and creating change. Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn and say “Hello”.

Photo by Anna Tarazevich, Pexels.

Marketing

Tackling the hard stuff

October 1, 2024November 11, 2024by Emma PotterLeave a Comment

On Thurs 26^th September, I attended the inaugural event conceptualised and hosted by two senior board-level global marketers in B2B tech, SaaS, and cyber and data security, Amanda Coles and Sarah Moss. Having decades of experience between them, they deeply understand the challenges marketers face every day, and they launched the Sphere Network to bring together a community of great people to build meaningful connections, whilst empowering tech marketers to thrive. Think of the Sphere Network as your ‘little black book’ for all things B2B tech marketing.

Lighting a fire to drive discussion

The event titled ‘Tackling the hard stuff’ was hosted at the OXO2 on a particularly sunny day in London along the South Bank, one of my favourite spots near Waterloo and the River Thames. Panel sessions on the day covered a range of topics including – ‘The value of community: A CISO’s Perspective’, ‘Aligning Marketing with Business Objectives’, ‘Maximising Lead Generation through Data Insight’ to ‘Content creation and the best ways to maximise impact’, ‘Demystifying channel marketing and how to “partner” within your organisation’, and ‘Data driven decision making: Navigating the sales and marketing partnership for success’.

From the morning kick-off and welcome to the evening networking drinks, panellists and speakers generously shared their knowledge and insights gleaned from specialist areas in the cyber security industry. With so many voices and opinions in the room, the discussion was lively, diverse and informative. Two of the biggest questions raised on the day were “In 2025, how to we continue to do more with less? How do we create cut through?” Here’s some of my key take aways.

Top ten insights captured on the day

Vanity Metrics – Don’t’ focus on vanity metrics, it’s essential to find out what matters to the board and work that backwards, focus on what’s important to the business. Agree what good, bad and ugly looks like and focus on outcomes, see the big picture
Sales and marketing – Working in silos doesn’t work, sales and marketing need to work together, potentially reporting into the same individual (CRO), and ensure both parties agree and align on shared goals, and focus on shared metrics
Attribution – Attribution remains an ongoing challenge but do ensure you’re tracking and measuring success where possible, whilst also remembering not everything can be measured
Creative and brand – Be bold, be creative, desire to stand out and to establish your brand from the competition. To really engage your audience, you need to take them on a journey, tell an emotive story that’s connects your brand, plus develop creative that resonates as this will drive a response
Data – Use data and evidence to support and inform decision making, particularly post campaign data, so you’re not leaving any value on the table, this will help to identify trends and what’s fuelling your pipeline
Questions – Always ask questions, understand what’s keeping people your customers up at night, get feedback and listen to what’s being said, gather this feedback and use it to inform your content, then distribute on the appropriate channels, on and offline
Content – Remember that content is ever evolving, AI is good to a point to create and curate content, but it must be layered with human input. Use content at the appropriate point in the sales funnel to speed up conversations and create flow to deliver results. Go broad, go narrow, and align with business goals
Authenticity – Your customers will see through you if you’re not being authentic, have a clear and distinctive tone of voice, always think about the purpose of our content, know your desired outputs too, share value and speak directly to your customer, your audience – do what’s right for them
Scale – Things that work on a small scale are not always repeatable on a large scale, be agile, plan and test accordingly
Results – Think about what your results really mean, and always apply context. Remember, there are no silver bullets, every business is unique and requires a personalised approach to deliver your desired outcome

There were of course many other points shared throughout the day but it’s impossible to capture them all here. What is clear, is that it’s essential to manage expectations, to set them early, to communicate them clearly, and to get up front agreement. Also, it’s important to remember that marketing is a revenue generating part of a business, and when sales and marketing have each-others backs trusted relationships with good communications are created, and better results are achieved. I’m also a big fan of meeting in person where possible, so do make time for IRL communications, being face to face – human to human, as this creates stronger bonds and enables more fluid and open discussions.

Discover more about the Sphere Network

One of my clients, disruptive-tech PR agency C8 Consulting sponsored ‘Tacking the hard stuff’ and having attended on the day I’ve personally joined the Sphere Network. Given the level of energy in the room and the desire for a community of specialists get together to ‘tackle the hard stuff’, it certainly feels like the ‘Sphere Network – The Trusted Cyber and Data Security Marketing Network’, will be going from strength to strength over the coming months and years. As we head into 2025 – connect, validate, inspire, deliver.

Header photo on Pexels by Kim Stiver.