Archive for the ‘Marketing Practice’ Category

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Managing a Successful Consultant Engagement

Monday, January 21st, 2013

Selecting the consultant that’s right for your project is just the first step in creating a value-adding consulting engagement.  To assure success, you and your consultant will need to write an unambiguous description of the expectations, deliverables, and project scope-of-work, and you will need to follow a solid project management plan.  Here’s how …

1. Write down clear, concise, yet detailed, project specifications – overall objectives, the subjects and questions to include, an outline of the methodology and level of effort, geographic or other limitations, the expected depth and detail of the analyses, deliverable, timing, etc.  Do it carefully – you should consider this document to be your contract with the consultant.

Building a good scope of work is an iterative process.  Use the first draft as the framework for discussions with consultant candidates.  Then, collaborate with the selected consultant to refine and focus your objectives and plan.

For expensive or complex projects, you might use your initial draft to solicit competitive bids.  This is a great way to identify alternative methods and to judge the candidates’ experience and insights.  Just be careful not to place too much weight on quoted price.  The value to be gained from an especially insightful consultant or innovative approach can easily outweigh the few Dollars you might save on the front end price.

2. Good communications between the consultant and your designated project manager will keep your project on track.  The trick is to decide how much communication is ‘just right’.  Too little, and the project risks wandering off on rabbit trails; too much, and you’re likely to bog down in minutia.  The main aims of your communications plan should be to 1.) demonstrate the consultant’s continuing progress, 2.) identify and resolve any unexpected difficulties or surprises and 3.) discuss and agree upon any changes to the scope of work, timing or budget (to be subsequently confirmed in writing).

You should carefully and fully document changes that you and your consultant agree to.  Some of the worst consultant project fiascos that I’ve witnessed were the result a failure to clearly describe and document changes.

3. Document the results.  Your project will generate a mass of information, call reports, data tables, charts and graphs – the WHAT of the consultant’s analysis.  Insist that your consultant go beyond the data to dig into the SO WHAT? – the implications of the findings and what they mean to your business.

Remember to keep an open mind.  The reality that the consultant discovers may not look much like your preconceptions

Add more value by collaborating in this SO WHAT? analysis.  Meld the consultant’s intimate and detailed knowledge with the company and market-specific context that you can bring.

Despite all the care you put into writing the project plan, and the conscientiousness of your communications and project management, you’re likely to run into a few bumps over the course of your consulting project.  Insist that you get what the consultant contracted to deliver, but be fair, too, and don’t ask for more than you originally agree to pay for.

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Practical Advice for Selecting the Ideal Consultant

Tuesday, January 15th, 2013

Okay – You’ve decided that engaging a consultant is right for you (Should I Use a Business Consultant? )and now you want to make sure you get the most from your investment  (Maximize the Return on Your Business Consultant Investment ).

There’s a broad range of perfectly competent consultants out there – from loose networks of individual experts, to small ‘boutique’ companies, to large highly mechanized consumer survey houses, to the management consulting giants.  Here are practical guides to selecting the ideal consultant for your unique situation.

1. No single consultant is best for every situation.  Determine what sort of insights you need to address your business problem or opportunity:

– If you need to understand the desires and motivations of your customers or the strategic thinking of your competitors, you’ll need the experience, professionalism and high level contacts of individual experts or boutique agencies.

– Candid, off the cuff comments and opinions of potential customers?  Boutiques that specialize in group interview techniques (eg focus groups and their on-line analogs) or on-site surveys (mall or in-store intercepts, for instance) can efficiently orchestrate the complicated logistics of execution and documentation.

– If you need deep statistical analyses across thousands of potential customers, then you need the survey construction and administration infrastructure, and analysis expertise of the specialized survey houses.  In addition to the Big Name consumer and political survey houses, there are lots of perfectly competent boutique agencies who can execute statistical surveys (often at significantly lower cost).

– Need the horsepower (and the aura of credibility) to work with Top Management on major acquisitions, restructuring, or high risk, high Dollar initiatives?  The well known Big Names in management consulting provide the breadth of resources and experience, and the high level name recognition, that are often required to successfully sell and execute game-change initiatives.

Industry insider or consulting generalist?  In many cases, the breadth of experience and perspective of a talented and experienced generalist consultant – and their lack of industry specific preconceptions – will provide superior results.   Sometimes, however, there’s no substitute for an industry insider, someone intimate with the technical nature of your project and the idiosyncracies of the people they must interview.

2. Locating and screening candidates and selecting the right one – Get suggestions and refs from people you respect, within yours and other companies; search business networking sites like Linked-In; look for guest authors of interesting articles in business magazines, scientific or trade journals, on-line blogs, etc; search the web for ‘market research consultants’ and the like.  Armed, thus, with a list of potential consultants, it’s your responsibility to dig deeply enough to confidently answer two questions:

– Does this consultant clearly understand what I need, have the skills and experience to accomplish the necessary tasks, and the business acumen to interpret the results in terms that a useful to me?

– Can I develop a productive working relationship with this consultant, and will the candidate’s personality and ‘style’ engender a sense of confidence within my company?

Here, there’s no substitute for talking with the candidates – probably more than one extended, searching conversation.  You’ll pose open-ended questions – to describe how the candidate has approached similar projects, to suggest alternative approaches to your situation, to outline their range of experience across companies, products and markets.  When you’ve narrowed your list, you may want to talk with one or two of their former clients, to confirm your good impressions.

Next step – and next blog post – planning and managing the consulting engagement.

Posted in Marketing Practice, Marketing Research Practices | No Comments »

Maximize the Return on Your Business Consultant Investment

Friday, January 4th, 2013

In my last post we talked about when you should consider engaging an independent consultant:

> to accomplish things you can’t accomplish with your own resources, skills, and marketplace connections

> to ‘test the waters’ without ‘tipping your hand’ to your competitors or future customers

> to provide an independent and unbiased assessment of tough, contentious issues

If you haven’t engaged a consultant before – or have been less than satisfied with the experience – here’s a practical recipe for earning the best return on your consulting investment.

1. Select a consultant that fits your need – There’s a broad range of perfectly competent consultants out there, from loose networks of individual experts, to small ‘boutique’ companies, to large highly mechanized consumer survey houses (think Gallup and Harris), to the management consulting giants (Boston Consulting Group, McKinsey, and the like).  Selecting the right one for your unique needs will depend on issues like the nature of the business problem or opportunity you face, the particular industries and customer groups relevant to you, and your budget and time constraints.

2. Manage the relationship with your consultant – Your consultant is the expert, but you’re the boss.  You are ultimately responsible for the success of the consulting engagement – by setting clear expectations and deliverables up front, by monitoring and facilitating timely progress, and by sticking to agreed upon project goals and resisting the natural urge to pursue ‘rabbit trails’ and ‘scope creep’.

3. Monetize the results – No matter how insightful the results and recommendations of your consulting project, they’re essentially valueless until you use them to change your operations and the role your business plays in the marketplace.  Identify up front the problems you need to solve and how to use project results to solve them, make sure the rest of your organization is on-board with your goals, and follow through with a plan to change your product line, your marketing and business plan, or the way you operate.

Coming up … Posts with practical advice on how to select the proper consultant, how to plan and manage an effective consulting engagement, and how to transform insights from your consultant project into fatter profits.

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Problems and Opportunities

Tuesday, June 19th, 2012

Where to spend my never-quite-enough time and money?

That question constantly confronts every consumer, every entrepreneur trying to bootstrap her passion and her good idea into a thriving business, every small business owner juggling one-too-many flaming torches, every corporate manager faced with conflicting deadlines, quarterly objectives, and a limited budget.

Whether you’re a start-up entrepreneur or a corporate marketing manager, catching the attention of potential customers is one of the toughest hurdles on your path to business success.

1. Understand the Problems and Opportunities that motivate your potential customers, and focus on the factors that bring them satisfaction and success.  Customers don’t much care whether you prosper or fail, but they’ll reward you handsomely if you can help make them rich.

2. Identify how your product or service affects the things your customers care about most.  Then concentrate on how you can help solve their problems and realize their opportunities.  No matter how cool and innovative you think your product is, it doesn’t matter a bit if your customers can’t see how it builds their own success and satisfaction.

3. Talk about your offering in words and images that resonate with your customers, in venues (electronic, print, or person to person) where your customers are most likely to see your message.  Educating your potential customers, and influencing their behavior, is expensive.  Make sure you’re investing your time, money, and effort in communications that potential customers will actually see, in language and images they’ll embrace.

4. Differentiate yourself.  Your competitors are trying hard to monopolize your customers’ attention.  Make yourself stand out by making yourself more relevant to your customers’ most pressing problems and opportunities.

Getting started?  Set aside a good block of time so that you and your colleagues can step away from the daily press of business.  Then, force yourself to look at the world through the eyes of your potential customer: What are the keys to their success?  What are their most urgent problems, and what opportunities are most important to their future?  What threats do their competitors pose?

If you don’t have the time and resources, or if you just need some help in developing another perspective, consider engaging an independent consultant like Marketing Intelligence & Strategy Assoc.

Posted in Marketing Practice, Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

Vampire Marketing – Part I

Thursday, June 14th, 2012

‘Vampire’ marketers are sucking the lifeblood out of more and more traditional businesses. Is your brick-and-mortar business in danger of becoming just another showroom for aggressive on-line marketers?

Earlier this year, Best Buy announced plans to close about 50 of its brick and mortar stores and concentrate on building its wireless and mobile services businesses. The reason?

“Consumers have been using its locations as a testing ground for products before making final purchases at competitors like Amazon and Walmart.com .…”.

First it happened to the music industry, newspapers and magazines – industries whose major product is content, and whose physical form is merely the vehicle which carries the entertainment or informational value.  Then Amazon and a host of on-line book sellers pulled the rug from beneath local bookstores and chains.  Now, brick and mortar retailers – from consumer electronics stores to women’s fashion to toys, Christmas gifts and specialty foods – are seeing more and more of their in-store ‘lookers’ completing their purchases with on-line competitors.

Consumers and B-2-B shoppers are succumbing to the lure of buying on-line:  lower prices, access to lots of purchase options and information, and the convenience of shopping from your office or home.

To judge just how vulnerable your business might be to ‘vampire marketers’ – to having your customers captured by on-line competitors – think for a moment about how your customers interact with you, and with potential on-line competitors.

– Do you rely on someone else’s brand to bring customers through your door? Companies like Best Buy can prosper because we all crave products by HP and Panasonic, Samsung, Philips and Toshiba, BUT Best Buy is also vulnerable because those great brands are available almost everywhere – including no frills on-line discounters.

– Can on-line competitors readily duplicate what you offer, or do you provide a one-of-a-kind product or service?  I can save a lot of money buying a suit on-line, but the excellent fit of custom alterations only comes from in-person service.  Conversely, use of personal computers, cell phones and other consumer electronics has become so common, and their operation so familiar, that hands-on shopping is unnecessary for many of us.

– Do customers buy your product or service on impulse or a spur of the moment decision? Is it an ‘instant gratification’ sale?  Or can your prospective customer’s buying enthusiasm survive the time required to order on-line and wait for delivery?

– Do your customers buy to a standardized set of specifications? is your offering ready to go just out of the box?   Or does your product or service require significant customization or instruction before the customer can use it?

No business, of course, is immune to an agile competitor, but your business is especially at risk if a computer can provide as much satisfaction as dealing directly with you.  Conversely, by making yourself indispensable to your customers, you can hold the vampires at bay.

Look for Vampire Marketing – Part II, coming up soon, for some practical steps you can take.

Posted in Marketing Practice | 2 Comments »

Assuring Your New Venture’s Success

Sunday, June 3rd, 2012

Most corporate new business development teams, most inventors, and most start-up entrepreneurs – whether they’re building the newest medical device, 3-D imaging software, or a neighborhood cupcake and cookie business – are stretched just too thin.  Under-resourced, under staffed and under-funded, the typical new venture is forced to prioritize and sacrifice.

Perfecting your product design and development and attending to the financing are vital – but just getting them right isn’t nearly enough to assure the success of your new venture.

Here are 8 often neglected areas that every new venture should be addressing – from your individual small business start-up to corporate new business teams – to assure that the customers will be there, $$$ in hand, when you open for business:

1. Early, Early, EARLY in the life of your new venture, map out the landscape of potential customers, and figure out who will be the most attractive segments of customers for your new business to target.  Who is most frustrated with the status quo?   Who has the $$$ – and the enthusiasm – to buy a new product or service like yours?  Where are you likely to find them?  And even more important, where are they mostly likely to go – on the street or on the internet – to discover a product like yours?

2. Understand what your potential customers love – and what frustrates them – about products or services like yours.  Then, build your offering to provide a solution to the things they hate about the status quo and to emphasize the things they like.  Don’t waste your time and resources on things customers don’t care about (no matter how exciting or ‘sexy’ they seem to you).

3. Test your concept, early and often, and adapt you offering to what you learn.  Ideas that seem obvious on paper or in your discussions around the company coffee pot are often far less than obvious to outsiders – to your potential customers, investors, suppliers, or distribution partners.  Entrepreneurs sometimes fear that competitors will ‘steal’ their ideas or derail their new venture.  Perhaps that happens, but for most start-ups, the much bigger danger is sinking all your hard work and $$$ into a venture that customers just don’t care about.

4.  Your new business will not be operating in a vacuum.  You’ll be relying upon a host of people and tools outside your organization to help connect your creation to the rest of the world – suppliers, existing computer systems or software platforms to link in to, distribution channel partners, formal and informal publicity and promotional voices …. Understand which external tools and partners will be critical to your success – especially the linkages between you and your potential customers – and begin building those relationships long before you launch.

5.  Nothing jump-starts a new venture better than an early success, so focus, Focus, FOCUS! That dazzling set of opportunities that you envision is seductive, but the temptation to pursue them all is an invitation to doing none of them well enough.  Pick a particular offering, a customer segment, and channel to market that is an especially good fit with what you do well.  Then, invest all your effort in making it work.  The credibility, confidence, publicity, and knowledge – not to mention cash flow – that comes from your first success will make it that much easier to pick off the next and the next and the next opportunity.

6.  Remove the hurdles that make it inconvenient for your customers to do business with you. Look at your business through the eyes of a customer:  Is it easy to find and get into your store – on the street or on the internet?  Does your website and your storefront signage clearly and succinctly explain your business?  How can potential buyers learn more about you, your product, your business?  Once potential customers have come through your physical or electronic door, is it easy for them to make their selection and purchase?  Do you offer a convenient assortment of payment options and customer-conscious quality assurance, return and refund policies?

7.  Get to know, understand and appreciate your customers.  Organize your business so that it’s a positive, rewarding and hassle-free experience every time a potential customer touches your business – beginning with their first phone call, email, or their first step inside your digital or brick-and-mortar store.  Reach out to your customers – and especially to those who decided not to buy from you – to learn what you’re doing right and what you could do better.

8  Share your success.  You deserve to be amply rewarded for your creativity, hard work, and persistence that transformed your idea into a business success.  Don’t, however, forget the ones whose help was vital to getting you there.  It’s the right thing to do – and it’s darned good business.  The more closely that your partners’ success is linked to yours, the harder your employees, your suppliers and your distribution partners will work to preserve and expand your success.

Remember – Your business exists in a complicated marketplace, where customers have lots of distractions and plenty of alternatives for spending their attention and their $$$.  What you think about your business is ultimately a lot less important than what your customers, distribution partners and suppliers think, and their experiences with you.

Posted in Brand, Business Policy, Marketing Practice | 1 Comment »

Marketing Is More Effective When Targeted to Personality Profiles

Tuesday, May 29th, 2012

A study recently reviewed in Science Daily (May 21, 2012) offers some critical insights to the marketing community …

“Advertisers spend enormous amounts … to tailor their advertising campaigns to different demographic groups…. Even within a given demographic, many individual differences, such as personality, shape consumer behavior.  A new study … suggests that advertisements can be more effective when they are tailored to the unique personality profiles of potential consumers.”

Corporations have made good use of personality and work style tools – Meyers Briggs Type Index and StrengthFinders, for example – for internal personnel development, and as team effectiveness tools.  At the same time, it’s no secret to experienced marketers that customers’ personality quirks and decision making styles can have a profound impact on the negotiation and buying process.

Business intelligence professionals, such as Marketing Intelligence & Strategy Assoc, can help you uncover the motivations and influences that shape your customers’ buying decisions.  Using this understanding, MI&SA can then help you build a customer segmentation scheme and a marketing and communications strategy which uniquely appeals to the motivations and hot buttons of your preferred customer base.

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The Essence of Marketing Research

Wednesday, May 4th, 2011

The essence of marketing research is ‘reducing business uncertainties by learning more about the markets you participate in’.  It’s about improving your odds when you’re trying to predict the future:  “How will customers respond to my new ad message?  What message would be more effective?”  “Which features of a potential new product are valuable and attractive to customers.  How much are they worth, in the price of the new product?” “Who has most / least influence on buying decisions at Company ABC?”  “If we do X, how will competitors respond?”

There are 4 essential steps to any successful marketing research project:

1. Collaborate with business leaders to define a significant business problem or opportunity, and describe the information, insights and understanding which will be needed to solve it.

2. Identify the most likely sources of the necessary information, and design a methodology to gather, analyze and interpret the information.

3. Execute the methodology.

4. Use the resulting information, insights and understanding to help decision makers solve the original problem.

 The sources and techniques selected in step 2 depend strongly upon the nature of the problem you define in step 1, so there’s no single answer to your question about “…what types of questions they ask and what type of an expert do they seek when performing primary research.”  Most projects tap into the experience and opinions of multiple important groups, including:

– Direct customers and non-buying potential customers, always including a spectrum of job functions – R&D, brand management, operations, logistics, purchasing – and management levels.

– The customers of our direct customer, and other companies that operate in the chain of turning raw materials into end products – other guys who play a big part in determining our customer’s success or failure.

– Suppliers of other materials or equipment to our customer

– Competitors (This can be tricky.  Hiring a consultant to get information or use techniques that would be illegal for you directly is no protection for you (or the consultant) under US anti-trust, trade and espionage laws.)

– Government employees and academia.  For example, people in the Department of Commerce and regulatory agencies are nearly always knowledgeable and helpful, and US government libraries, publications and databases are generally excellent.

The optimum techniques to use and the most productive questions to ask are dictated by the business problem you’re trying to solve and the nature of the groups whose opinions and experience you focus on.  Large groups (owners of single family homes, consumers of laundry products, independent auto repair shop owners, for example) might be sampled with statistical survey techniques, while individual in-depth interviews might be more appropriate for smaller groups (for example, makers of kidney dialysis machines, designers of office furniture, or paint chemists).  Group techniques (like focus groups) may be great for gathering initial impressions, but are less useful sources for detail and reliability.  

In almost all cases, the real value-adding capacity of marketing research comes from its ability to answer questions that impact the future – questions like “What if …?” and “Why?” – NOT  from its ability to execute a methodology and answer the more simplistic “How many?” and “Who?”.

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Posted in Marketing Practice, Marketing Research Practices, Marketing Theory | No Comments »

Market Research: DIY or Hire an Expert?

Thursday, February 10th, 2011

 It’s a fair question that doesn’t have an easy answer ….

– Some say that engaging a consultant is simply too expensive, an exercise in paying someone else to do what we can and should be doing ourselves.

– Others argue that consultants more than pay for themselves by bring to bear a world of experience, a breadth of expertise, and an analytical objectivity that stretches beyond the capabilities of any company.

Having sat on both sides of the desk – as a buyer and as a provider of marketing research consulting services – my perspective may add some real-world wisdom to your “DIY or outsource” discussions.

Managers sometimes shy away from engaging a consultant because of the expense (or the worry that calling in an outsider may hint at some hidden inadequacy).  In many cases, however, hiring an expert is the smart business decision. 

Here are six situations in which the value that a consultant creates can justify the expense, many times over:

1. When your capacity is limited.

2. When a consultant brings specialized industry knowledge or contacts that you can’t easily duplicate

3. When anonymity is important – when your identity as the study sponsor would reveal too much about your plans, or where your name could influence the answers you hear

4. When you really need a dispassionate objective assessment, free from internal biases, preconceptions and office politics.

5. When a consultant can provide specialized techniques or methodologies that you don’t have – conjoint analysis or focus groups, for example

6. When a consultant can perform tasks more cheaply and efficiently, as is often the case with telephone surveys and data crunching, in-store interviews and mall intercepts, etc

In addition – unfortunate but too often true – an external consultant often brings an aura of credibility, authority and influence with upper management that an internal employee may not carry.

On the other hand, the out-of-pocket costs for consultant fees and expenses is a legitimate reason to consider doing market research projects with in-house resources.  More important, by outsourcing information gathering and analysis, you could pass up a chance to know your marketplace more intimately:

– The party that conducts the marketing research interviews naturally ‘owns’ the resulting relationship with the key players in the value chain.  These relationships may soon become the foundation for expanding your customer base, entering new markets, or introducing product innovations. 

– It is much easier to understand the context of your interviewees’ comments, and to internalize and ‘own’ the insights, conclusions and recommendations when you actually execute the study.

In an ideal world, then, the ideal answer is often “DIY.”  Few of us, however, live in an ideal world, and hiring a competent marketing research consultant is often the most practical, economical and timely alternative.

Coming soon:  “Successful Consulting Engagements:  How to Select a Consultant, Plan a Consulting Engagement, and Manage the Consulting Relationship”

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Posted in Marketing Practice, Marketing Research Practices | 1 Comment »

The Five Things You Must Know about Branding

Saturday, January 29th, 2011

BOB BROTHERS provides business insight, intelligence, and creative marketing strategies to entrepreneurs, business owners and corporate marketing leaders, at www.market-intel.com.

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Your “brand” is the sum of everything that people think, feel, believe and ‘know’ about you, your product and your company

Your logos, trademarks and advertising slogans symbolize the performance, quality and service you promise to deliver

Successful brands can earn Million$ or Billion$ for their owners

Communicate … Then deliver what you promise

You are unique – Your brand building strategy should be, too 

“Branding” is a concept, a strategy, an exercise dear to the hearts of business owners and marketing leaders.  Unfortunately, “brand” and “branding” are subjects as likely to sow confusion and wasted resources as they are to drive business and marketing excellence. 

The foundation of successful branding – whether you’re a start-up entrepreneur, a lone professional or a corporate marketing leader – is a solid business strategy, solidly executed:

– An offering that promises to satisfy the needs and expectations of your customers

– Execution that consistently delivers the values and experiences you promise 

Here are 5 things that every start-up entrepreneur, every corporate marketing manager, and every business owner should know about building your brand and the value it represents.

1.  Your Reputation is Your Brand

Close your eyes (It’s OK, you’re working!) and think about a familiar brand – Apple or Mercedes Benz, for example.  You’ll surely have some clear and distinct images – of the sort of person who is likely to own one, what owning one would be like for you, what to expect of the product and the company that stands behind it.  

Those images, and the reputations they represent, are Mercedes’ and Apple’s true brand, much more than the familiarity of their 3-point star or once-bitten fruit.  To build a valuable brand, you must:

– Clearly and consistently communicate your promise to deliver products, performance and service that bring value and satisfaction to your customers

– Build and nurture your reputation for delivering all that you promise

Your brand’s hard earned reputation – and the value it represents – can be easily tarnished through misuse or neglect.  Consistency, diligence and attention – year in and year out – are key ingredients in every successful brand.

2.  Symbolism:  Logos, Names and Tag Lines

Your brand – all that customer know, believe and feel about you – is a tremendous asset.  But how can you constantly remind customers of the value you bring to them, and to assure that you remain visible in a noisy and crowded marketplace?

Logos, trademarks and product names are the symbols of your brand, shorthand ways of calling up all the images and feelings that you have created in your customers’ minds. 

– Create easily recognized branding symbols – logos, trademarks, advertising tag lines and such – that are memorable and consistent with the image you wish to convey.    

– Use those symbols widely and consistently, in ways that reinforce the value of your products bring and that emphasize the image you wish to project.     

3.  Successful Branding Puts $$$ in the Bank

LYCRA brand elastane fibers (originally DuPont’s, now owned by Invista) dominate large segments of the apparel marketplace – swim and athletic wear, lingerie, women’s fashions.  Despite technical performance that is often surpassed by competing textile fibers, LYCRA has enjoyed huge market share, pricing and new product introduction advantages, simply because of the magic surrounding the LYCRA name.

The success that comes with that magic isn’t free.  DuPont, and now Invista, have invested heavily in building and maintaining the LYCRA brand – advertising, support for innovative fashion designers and marketers, R&D in sports science and performance, leadership in market and technology innovation.

The visibility and respect that result from successful branding creates real, tangible value – in market share points and opportunities for premium pricing, by opening the doors to new markets, and by reducing the costs and the risks of introducing new products.

– Monetize your success: You’ve invested in your brand’s growing recognition and reputation.  Now use that power (wisely and judiciously) to strengthen and extend your business   

4.  In the Beginning – Communicate

Your first brand building task is communication – to establish your visibility, credibility and recognition in a noisy, crowded marketplace, and to stimulate customers to actually ‘try and buy’ your new product.

– Understand your Audience:  Which people are most likely to buy your product?  What product and service characteristics would most appeal to them?  Where are they most likely to learn about products like yours? 

– Tailor the content and the look-and-feel of your message to the needs, expectations and sensibilities of your target audience.  What information (and what emotional appeals) will motivate them to buy?  What must they know to find you and complete their purchase?  How does your message reinforce the brand image you wish to project?

– Select the mix of communications vehicles (website and SEO, TV ads, face-to-face promotion, social media, etc) most likely to capture the ‘eyeballs’ of the people you need to influence      

5.  Build a Branding Strategy That’s Right for YOU

The right brand building strategy for you depends on creatively assessing the unique nature of your business vision, your product, and the customers you aim to serve.

– Who do you want your company to be?  Low price leader or luxury brand?  Mass market or artistic and avant garde?  Technology leader or plain vanilla?

– Design you products and your actions to deliver the performance and experiences your customers value and expect

– Tailor your communications to suit your intended audience and to project the image you aspire to

– Manage your performances to faithfully and consistently deliver the products, service and experience that your brand promises.   

Successful branding is an investment in hard work, consistent attention, and patience, but the pay-off can add Million$ or Billion$ to the value of your company.

Posted in Brand, Marketing Practice | No Comments »

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