Brand Management for Rapid Growth
Situation
Salesforce, one of the first companies to be born in the cloud, has quickly become one of the world’s largest technology companies, and something of a cult brand. Beginning with its cloud-based CRM solution, Salesforce makes it easier for companies to become customer-focused through better information and connections, more efficient operations, and more personalized services. As it has grown, the company has both acquired and built multiple capabilities onto its Customer Success Platform, resulting in a complex set of offerings. This growth has produced a major opportunity: the vast majority of Salesforce customers use only one of its products. To manage continued growth, Salesforce must expand customers’ understanding of its capabilities, and loyalty to its brand.
Solution
Marshall Strategy has worked with Salesforce over several years to help the company effectively manage its brand during these times of rapid growth. Our initiatives have included:
Salesforce University
We inventoried all of Salesforce’s training courses and developed a naming strategy that would make it easier for customers not only to find the course most relevant to them, but to plan their next steps forward. We also produced the brand and naming strategy for all Salesforce Certifications.
Cloud Services
Salesforce’s professional services group is a billion-dollar business with tremendous growth opportunity. We helped the group develop an overarching value proposition and narrative, orchestrated a clearer view of its services portfolio, and developed a systemic naming strategy for the services themselves.
Salesforce Products
We developed product and feature naming strategies for Sales Cloud, Salesforce Analytics, and its AI capabilities to make it easier for product teams to take their new developments to market, and for customers to make sense of them.
Acquisition Brand Management
As Salesforce acquired multiple companies, from data-focused to AI technology and professional services such as digital strategy and development, we helped recommend transition plans from the acquired brands to a home within the Salesforce family.
Results
Salesforce continues to grow at more than 25% year over year, and the power of its brand continues to rise. Internally, teams have been able to focus on growth, without concern over losing control of the brand.
