The line between a quick sale and a sustainable business model runs right through the core of your business strategy. This choice is not just a marketing choice. It impacts your entire business and every integrator grapples with it. Are you focused on moving units, or deep loyalty that ensures your client calls you first?
This is the difference between product marketing and brand marketing. While both are necessary for a complete go-to-market strategy, integrators must understand their goals, time horizons, customer mix, innovation pipeline and metrics to achieve authentic, lasting growth.
Product Marketing: The Immediate Win
Product marketing is inherently short-term and focused on generating immediate sales and driving product adoption. It’s a hit of adrenaline that impacts sales and topline revenue. However, the danger lies in reliance on short-term wins as the revenue highs soon vanish as competition launches its next, new product.
For an integrator, product marketing is centered on the specific equipment and the urgency of that purchase cycle. Success is measured by immediate metrics like sales volume, conversion rates and customer acquisition cost. It’s effective for clearing inventory and meeting quarterly quotas, but it’s transactional and narrow in scope. It may cannibalize existing sales and not impact market share. And, it doesn’t serve you well in tumultuous economic downturns or disruptions.
Brand Marketing: Building Long-Term Trust
Brand marketing is about selling a relationship and garnering referrals. Here, the focus is on building a strong and positive perception of your overall business, encompassing everything from your team’s professionalism to your post-installation support. The goal is ambitious: it seeks to foster long-term customer loyalty, trust and an emotional connection. This is the strategic, long-game work that ultimately protects your margins and sustains your business through market fluctuations.
For an integrator, a strong brand makes the sales process easier because the prospect already trusts your expertise before the proposal is even delivered. I always say that “Marketing is the scout for sales,” and this rings true for brand marketing. It’s about a bigger idea.
The Key: Blend Product and Brand Marketing To the Optimal Mix
Create a unified message: Ensure your product’s unique features are always framed by your company’s core values and vision. This unified messaging reinforces your identity with every promotion, turning transactional marketing into a relationship-building exercise.
Develop a single, cohesive story where the product’s benefits are the tangible proof that your brand’s promise is being kept. And repeat that.
Establish Alignment
Ensure that your leadership team including product/manufacturer, Sales and marketing are aligned and communicating. Jointly define buyer personas (who the product is for) and your positioning (how the product is differentiated).
Mandate early and consistent collaboration to co-create foundational strategic assets that impact the marketplace.
Implement Integrated Metrics
Measure how specific product launches or campaigns affect your business with a few simple measures.
- Net Promoter Score (NPS) defines satisfaction and potential for referrals.
- Categorize responses: Promoters (9-10), Passives (7-8), Detractors (0-6).
- Formula: NPS = % of Promoters − % of Detractors
- Target: A positive NPS (above 50) indicates profitability while a negative score shows sales resistance
- Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) defines your spend for a new customer.
- Define a time period, sum all acquisition costs (sales and marketing), count new customers
- CAC = Number of New Customers Acquired / Total Sales & Marketing (S&M) Costs
- Example: In Q1, you spent $50,000 on all acquisition efforts and secured 20 new clients. CAC = $50,000/20 = $2,500 per customer. Trend this against your spend.
- Brand Sentiment Score (BSS) measures the health of your brand.
- Track quarterly 5 key places where your brand is mentioned like search engines, trade publications (like Commercial Integrator) and social media.
- Score = +1 for praise, 0 for general mention, -1 for complaint or criticism.
- Sentiment Score = 70 – 20 = 50
Ensure Consistent Experience Across All Touchpoints
Many leaders miss this critical component. Every customer interaction is a moment for both product and brand to shine. The customer should experience a unified brand, whether they are viewing a paid ad or using the product itself.
Oversee your brand’s tone of voice and communication style for all channels, including social media, website, sales materials and even customer support messages. Don’t let the renegades on your team dilute your company’s relational equity.
Use Storytelling to Emotionalize Features
When promoting a feature (product marketing), use an engaging narrative to explain how that feature solves a customer’s specific pain point and why that solution aligns with the brand’s purpose.
Blending short-term and long-term messaging is the key. Move the conversation from “This remote has a 10-hour battery life” to “Freedom and flexibility are why we engineered this remote to deliver unified home control for 10 hours.”
Final Thoughts
In a crowded marketplace, integrator success balances the ability of consistent brand marketing with short-term product adrenaline. A strong brand turns a high-cost AV system into a valuable, proprietary solution, securing your business’s future far beyond the lifespan of any single product.
Watch for the next article in the Business Builder for Integrator series, which focuses on promoting your vision and legacy over ego and need for control.
Ron Pence is an accomplished business executive with CI industry experience.
