Arty's World

10 Tips to Build a Better Brand

Cindy Stranad — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 18:04:00 GMT

Powerful brands are developed through careful planning and extensive work. Brands are not only memorable names, but a set of differentiating promises that link a product or service to its customers. The brand owns itself and communicates consistently, whether through advertising and packaging or pricing and customer-service policies. A successful brand generates consumer loyalty and long-term financial return. Think John Deere, Starbucks, or Nordstroms.

Branding is the process of determining your competitive advantages, building a culture and business strategy around those advantages, and then communicating the brand effectively and consistently to the target audience. Here are ten tips to build a better brand:

1. Analyze the Competition: In order to be different from your competitors, study them closely. Understanding the strategy and dynamics behind competing brands will provide the backdrop against which to craft a distinct brand with long-term competitive advantages. Find out how consumers perceive your competition, as well as the competition’s strengths and weaknesses.

2. Identify Your Strengths: Uncover potential sources of competitive advantage through internal research and target market analysis. Determine which key benefits provide maximum relevance and differentiation for your product or service.

3. Validate Your Advantages: Strengths are important to the market or a segment of the market. Do some research to find what services your company provides that others do not. What do your employees take great pride in?

4. Know Your Customers and Their Value: To establish customer value, evaluate metrics such as:

How much money is a customer currently spending on your product/service?
How much money will the customer spend in the future?
How often does the customer buy the product/service?
Is the customer a loyal buyer or does the customer switch brands often? Does the customer pay full price or a promotional/discounted price?

5. Brand compatibility: Compatibility is best described as how good the match is between a brand's unique value proposition, and the customer's attitudes and behaviors. Mindset (attitudes and/or lifestyle) and environment (media behavior, purchase behavior, geo-demographic descriptions) are required to achieve brand compatibility with the customer. Brand compatibility helps determine how to speak with the customer in a relevant way.

6. Align Your Value Proposition and Business Processes: A name, logo, ad and packaging can all trigger the positive associations that position your product on a customer's "short list." Ultimately, it is the customer’s experience that validates and sustains your brand. Because of this, everyone involved in customer relations must present a good attitude for valued brand positioning.

7. Develop Your Brand Positioning: Brand Positioning is based on detailed market research and planning. A good positioning statement describes your product or service uniquely and defines your relationship with your customer. The positioning statement needs to be clear and concise, in order to articulate how you want users to think, feel and act toward your brand.

8. Send a Consistent, Integrated Message: A brand must consistently provide quality and satisfaction to be successful. The brand must meaningfully distinguish itself from the competition and create customer preference. It is important for the brand to be relevant, convenient and easily accessible to its target audience. Be consistent and cohesive with the use of your name, logo and message points; it will present your organization in the same fashion to everyone.

9. Measure the Results of Your Branding: Branding strategies can be linked to brand attitudes, purchasing habits and brand loyalty. This feedback/modification cycle is a loop in which quality improvements are continual.

10. Deliver on the Brand Promise. Keeping brand promises is more important than just having good intentions. The claims must link back to the brand promise and must be fulfilled. The top-ranking brands consistently reflect a top-down commitment to investing in the corporate brand as a long-term strategic asset.

Maximizing Marketing ROI

Cindy Stranad — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 14:04:00 GMT

We all talk about ROI and the need to make advertising more accountable, more measurable. Today, working with business owners of small- to mid-sized companies, I’ve witnessed, time and again, the voice of anguish: ‘We’re doing some radio on WXXX 99.9, and nothing is happening.’ Or, the ever popular, ‘We ran a couple months in a business magazine, but haven’t received any calls.’ Cliché as it seems, there are many reasons why putting all your advertising eggs in one basket will not achieve maximum results.

Our media landscape is ever changing. There are a zillion cable and network television options dedicated to every sports enthusiast, sitcom lover and news junkie; broadband Internet has opened up a whole slew of online, rich media choices; countless radio stations with varying formats are fighting for every listener; and we’re targeting the most fickle consumer audience, I argue, that we’ve ever encountered.

Two elements to remember, even if you have a small budget: 1.) Diversify your media plan, and 2.) Content is king. Understand this is an investment to grow your business, and increase brand awareness.

Mix Media
Demonstrated countless times, experienced application of insight, strategy and resources delivers results. One medium doesn’t fit all.

Reach and frequency estimates are important media buzzwords and the base for all media plans. Reach refers to how many people will hear or see your message, while frequency explains the number of times that message will be heard by that audience. As you can see this is why a radio-only campaign on one station, for a two-week blitz, for example, isn’t recommended. Or why, generally, a one-time four-color print ad is not a good investment.
Are you trying to reach clients whose businesses are highly specific -- whether business-to-consumer (B2C), business-to-business (B2 – or a group of people whom are relatively obscure? Think about your customers’ demographics and how to best communicate with them.
Choose efficient mediums. Quite simply, efficiency can be measured by asking: What’s the most cost effective way to reach 1,000 people in my target audience, multiple times with a consistent message that initiates a call to action? Combining qualitative factors such as income, education, occupation, lifestyle and consumption patterns with other data will yield a more targeted buy. Broadcast planners will combine these factors with Arbitron or Nielsen data (research services that have divided into TV broadcast areas for purposes of measuring audience size) to optimize a buy. Experts can evaluate various measurements -- GRPs (gross rating points), CPP (cost per point), and CPM (cost per thousand).
Do research. Traditional media (newspaper, magazine, radio, TV) can be complimented with outdoor, cable, on-line, direct mail, e-marketing or event sponsorships. Work with professionals that look beyond the ordinary to design innovative solutions.

Show-stopping creative
We’ve all heard the phase, ‘cash is king.’ Well, in marketing land, content is king! Points to consider:

Content is what drives the consumer, the creative management of this content will continue to be of increasing importance to establishing a brand and ultimately building your business.
Focus on a single selling proposition and, for heaven’s sake, keep it simple. Define what you are selling – one product, one brand, one set of benefits.
Make sure all components of a campaign follow a consistent direction.

Needless to say, audience habits have dramatically changed the way we, as consumers, receive messages. Therefore, in a world where the average attention span is shrinking at the speed of a mouse click or zap of a remote control, no business, regardless of its size or budget, can afford not to give their media plan priority status.

Advertising works, but to what degree depends largely on your marketing and media partnerships and your message. You want demonstrable results and positive return on investment. Above all, the objective remains: deliver your message to the right people, at the right time, through the right media. With imaginative planning and savvy use of media tools and professional execution, even the biggest advertising skeptics can become true believers.

Marketing on a Shoe String

Cindy Stranad — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 13:24:00 GMT

Think you can’t afford to implement any effective marketing tactics? Think again. Here are five ways to make a splash on a shoestring budget.

Eager to expand your client base and spread the word about your products and services? Wondering if you should even bother with marketing programs if you don’t have thousands of dollars to spend? The answer, of course, is yes!

It’s financially riskier for a business not to market. And there are literally hundreds of cost-effective ideas you can use to increase your revenue. Here are five high-impact marketing approaches that don’t cost a bundle and can work for virtually every business.

1. Talk to your current clients
It’s amazing how much money businesses spend to gather market information and attract new clients when they have a wealth of opportunity and information in their existing client base. One of the best ways to increase revenue is to talk to existing customers. Ideally, someone outside your company should serve as a facilitator, so clients are willing to be honest and open.

When you assess perceptions, you don’t need to talk to every person who has ever done business with your company – five to 10 clients will suffice. When compiling your contact list, it is important to diversify clients.

Information obtained from clients that have similar needs and employ similar people will not be as useful as information from a variety of contacts.

All you have to do is contact them to ask if they’d participate in a phone interview. Here’s how it works:

Send a letter or make a phone call asking permission to have an outside party contact the company in order to ask several questions about the services and/or products you provide to them.
Have the interviewer call and ask value-based questions such as:
- What problems were you trying to solve or what challenges were you facing when you considered the services of Company ABC?
- How important were Company ABC’s services in solving your problems or addressing your challenges?
- What did you value most about this company’s work?
- What other products or services do you wish they offered that could help you with other business challenges?
- Are there any suggestions that you would give the company so they may provide a more valuable service to future clients?
After all the interviews have been conducted, compile the information in a manner that will allow you to easily discover trends and themes.
Send a thank-you letter to every client who participated. Include key lessons from the interviews and explain the specific changes you plan to make to your business based on this information.
Use the information that you learn! If you don’t make changes to your business, those who have participated in these interviews will notice! Taking action that reflects the outside suggestions will be appreciated, but if these suggestions are ignored, it may have a negative effect on your company’s brand.

To ensure effective results, make sure that your clients feel comfortable discussing your business. The conversation with your customers is just that, a conversation. Don’t make your clients feel pressured to give the answers you want to hear, have the interviewer engage in a casual conversation and gather as much valuable data as they can.

Remember, it’s not about how satisfied they are – it’s about how much they valued your product or service.

2. Creatively package your marketing campaigns
A postcard is one way to market your business, but it might be easily discarded as junk mail. How about putting a small handful of flower seeds into a small box along with a note that states, “We can help you grow”? Think outside the box and your marketing campaigns will have more impact.

Don’t be afraid to see what other people in other industries are doing and adapt ideas to fit your business. If you are worried that companies in the surrounding area are employing the same tactics, perhaps research what companies in faraway states are doing.

Also, think about the little things that will get attention. Small details such as changing the color or size of an envelope may grab your constituent’s eye.

Perhaps the most important steps of this tactic come before and after the marketing campaign. Make sure that you set a clear objective for the campaign and that everyone involved is on the same page. If all parties are clear on objectives, it is less likely that you will encounter problems during execution. Also, it is important to plan how you will identify and measure its success. Will you conduct follow-up phone calls, send out surveys or simply compare and contrast numbers?

In addition to letting you know if this campaign is successful, it will allow you to evaluate how to change the campaign for the future.

3. Get the word out with publicity
Although hiring a public relations or publicity firm has many advantages, such as tremendous contacts and experience, most small companies can do enough PR on their own to spark the public’s interest. Just sending an announcement to the local newspaper about new hires and business deals can be enough to have your name published and ultimately recognized in the community.

Make sure that your goals are realistic. Though it does happen, don’t expect one story in a daily newspaper to generate thousands of dollars in revenue. Take action once your name hits the press. If the publication prints articles online, forward the link to your clients, friends and family. Also, feature a blurb in your company newsletter, including the title of the publication that highlighted your recognition.

Even if a publication doesn’t pick up a press release, there are still other ways to get your news noticed. Put all company news on your Web site by creating a “News” page that can be accessed directly from your homepage. This way, anytime someone lands on your page, they have a quick recap of the happenings of your company.

Remember: PR can be virtually cost free and is more credible than advertising since it comes from a source outside of your company!

4. Leverage existing relationships
Most people know at least 200 people. Do the math: If you know 200 people and they each know 200 people, that’s 40,000 potential contacts! Spend time developing relationships with the people you already know –clients, colleagues, people you meet through professional networking organizations, friends and even family.

Start by making a list of all the people you know. Those who you feel are already advocates for your company are most likely already referring business to you. While you don’t have to put a lot of effort into building those relationships, you still must work to maintain the confidence they hold in your company. During conversation listen to these counterparts and do your best to show them that supporting your business is truly recognized and appreciated.

Next, are the people who you believe would refer you to new business, if they knew more about you. It is very important that you provide these contacts with new knowledge concerning your company. Whether you sit down and have a business lunch, send a brochure through the mail or add them as a newsletter recipient, these small gestures may go a long way.

While communicating with these colleagues, make sure that the message is to educate, not to sell your business. The key here is to build relationships. If you come across like a door-to-door salesman trying to sell your services like a used vacuum, you compromise your brand. Relationships take time to develop as credibility and trust are established. To be truly effective, you must always be on the lookout for ways you can help your network. Start from the perspective of giving more than you ask for, and your network will become your most valuable marketing tool.

5. Commit to e-mail marketing
It is important not to forget to use resources that you already have in place. Marketing through e-mail is flexible, cost-effective and high impact. It allows you to easily drive traffic to your Web site, reach a broad geographic audience and stay in frequent contact with your customers and prospects. E-mail marketing allows you to market your services and establish your expertise with your audience.

Use it for newsletters, new product announcements or to share your publicity success – the ideas are endless. But be careful and know that this flexibility and ease-of-use can cause problems. Remember, this is a marketing campaign. Be sure to think it through, develop an appropriate message, create a piece that reflects your brand, know your objectives and make sure the information is valuable for your market, or people will quickly unsubscribe.

Most importantly, don’t let your e-mails become spam! Don’t send e-mails every day to everyone you know. Send e-mail only to those people who have given permission. When someone asks to be removed, respond immediately. These five tactics, when implemented correctly, can bring a whole new life to your business. Within months of carrying out your marketing campaign, you should be seeing changes. New constituents, higher revenues and increased client satisfaction are results of a successful campaign.

Remember to be patient – marketing takes time. Research, schedule and test your ideas before jumping into a campaign. Take time to adapt to the responses that you receive. When the campaign is complete, organize and evaluate its effectiveness. If you do not reflect on the good/bad elements of your marketing, it is impossible to know the most or least successful aspects.

4 R's of Direct Marketing

Bob Morrow — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 20:06:00 GMT

Remember the 4 R's… Reach + Repetition = Retention + Response = ROI

Reach. Many a direct campaign has faltered due to not having a qualified list. The foundation of a direct campaign relies heavily on this list being resourced. I know of one investment company that thought they had a qualified list that found out 12% of the list went to minors as another 2% were undeliverable because the recipient was deceased.

There are a myriad of ways to obtain a qualified list and target a potential customer.
The majority of publications are BMA certified, meaning that their list is audited for accuracy.

For a European automotive client whose sales were sinking fast I needed to develop a finely tuned list. I targeted affluent early adapters with interest in performance driving. Sifting the list of multiple publications supplied by one publishing company yielded a finely honed target list with outstanding results.

Another method is using the various data bases your client may have acquired from customers such as online opt-in, business reply cards, coupons, or telemarketing to name a few.

An example of developing a list from inconsistent resources is a healthcare system in the deep south. Each service line used different methods of capturing information from their customers and the customers had a variety of health plans and methods of payment. One constant throughout all the databases was the patients social security number. With this piece of information I was able to clean up the list for launching a successful CRM program. As an additional precaution, being that this is a healthcare institution, I filtered the list through public information to be sure I reach a live audience.

Repetition. Without repetition you will never gain retention. to send one postcard to a prospect is a drop in the bucket. Now, you don't have to fill the bucket, but you do need to make sure someone notices that the bucket has ripples.

Multiple contacts during a program with a prospective customer will increase retention. An average of six hits is recommended for best results.

Retention. Make it memorable. As mentioned above multiple methods of contact will increase your customers awareness of your service or product. Be sure to incorporate other marketing tools at your disposal. Earned media, public relations, will reinforce name recognition as well as enhance your company's image.

Standard size postcards and envelopes get lot in the clutter. Dimensional mail by nature stands out of the crowd. Oversized and interactive pieces scream to be handled and viewed. There are many dimensional and interactive solutions, some being a pop-up, slide rule, lenticular, hologram, or clever folding techniques. But interactive goes beyond dimensional products. It is how you manage what the customer will do and the value they perceive. What they view first and what action will they take next. The physically simplest yet intellectually deep are the mailings from Publisher's Clearing House and Readers Digest. Read the letter, find the sticker, move the sticker to the response form, drop it in the mail and you could win big.

Dimensional direct mail posts an overall response rate of 3.67%, compared to 2.77% for flat mail. Source: The Direct Marketing Association, The DMA 2005 Response Rate Report.

Response. Give the customer a choice. Having multiple methods of contact allows your customer to choose how and when they will respond. Make it easy. Have the response, if by mail, postage paid and pre-addressed. In this way all your customer needs to do is check the appropriate box and drop it in the mail.