5 Steps to Brand Building

Customers experience your brand in numerous ways: products, packaging, price, marketing, sales personnel, etc. Each of these contacts or touchpoints molds the customer's impression of the brand. Some of these touchpoints are obvious, like product performance, and one-on-one customer interactions. Other touchpoints, such as the product manual, monthly statements or post-sales support, may be subtler in their brand effects.

Your brand image creates expectations. It defines who you are, how you operate, and how you're different from your competitors. In essence, your brand image is a promise - a promise that must be kept.

If the brand is a promise you make, then the customer experience is the fulfillment of that promise. The customer experience can't be left to chance. It should be actively designed and controlled in a manner that enhances your brand image. It must consistently reinforce the brand promise across every customer touchpoint or the value of the brand itself is at risk.

Here are five easy steps to building a strong brand and an optimized customer experience:

1. Identify your reasons-to-believe.

Your brand promise is irrelevant if your customers do not believe it. Therefore, your promise must be supported by reasons-to-believe. This will automatically add substance to the promise and define specific expectations for the customer.

For example, an automobile manufacturer promises potential customers that Car XYZ is an "intelligent choice for serious drivers." What makes it an intelligent choice? Why should the customer believe this promise?

To address this question effectively, the manufacturer could frame its promise with two reasons-to-believe... sporty performance and safety. These two reasons in essence define "intelligent choice" and clearly set customer expectations. They also give the company specific direction for designing the customer experience through tangible customer touchpoints like vehicle design features, advertising campaigns, dealer sales approaches, and customer service activities.

2. Identify customer touchpoints.

Each individual step in your business process contains a number of touchpoints when the customer comes in contact with your brand. Your ultimate goal is to have each touchpoint reinforce and fulfill your marketplace promise.

Walk through your commercial processes. How do you generate customer demand? How are products sold? How do your customers use your products? How do you provide after-sales support?

This comprehensive trace of your marketing, selling, and servicing processes allows you to create a simple touchpoint map that defines your customers' experiences with your brand.

3. Determine the most influential touchpoints.

All touchpoints are not created equal. Some will naturally play a larger role in determining your company's overall customer experience. For example, if your product is ice cream, taste is typically more important than package design. Both are touchpoints, but each has a different effect on our customers’ experiences as a whole.

To determine the touchpoints driving your customers' overall experience, your organization can use a wide array of techniques ranging from quantitative research to institutional knowledge. The methods you use will depend on the complexity of your products, commercial processes, and your existing knowledge base.

4. Design the optimal experience.

Once you have completed the above three steps to building a brand, you should be able to design your optimal customer experience.

Here's how:

Determine how to express each reason-to-believe at each key touchpoint. For example, how can you reinforce sporty performance (a reason-to-believe) in product design, at the dealership, and in marketing campaigns (the influential touchpoints)?

5. Align the organization to consistently deliver the optimal experience.

A holistic approach to aligning your organization to consistently deliver the optimal experience is essential. Identify the people, processes, and tools that drive each key touchpoint.

Look beyond employees that have direct contact with your customers. The impacts of behind-the-scenes employees are less obvious but no less important. Similarly, the impact of workflow processes and tools (i.e. technology systems) on the customer experience may be less intuitive but crucial to consistent delivery.

Identify which activities don't align with your envisioned customer experience. Determine how to address them so that these components can be brought into alignment.

The Final Word

Every product or service you bring to market yields a customer experience. Is it the experience you intend? Does that experience fulfill the promise you've made to the marketplace?

By identifying the people, processes, and tools that drive your customer experience, you can actively design and control your own, unique, optimized experience. The brand promise you make to the marketplace will be kept day in and day out across every key customer touchpoint, building a strong brand.

Pioneering Marketing Strategist, Scott Glatstein, President of Imperatives, LLC can help you turn your market opportunities into record-breaking profits by optimizing your customer experience. Get a FREE Special Report that will help you match your customer experience to your brand promise.

Handwritten Notes: The Most Powerful Follow Up

Those that follow up can not only get the customers/clients that other less conscientious sales people have left behind, but beat competitors in attracting new business.

To reap the benefits of follow up, though, you have to do it, and have to do it right. It continually astounds me that so few businesses that I am personally aware of can’t seem to be bothered to follow up. My guess is that they are assuming that people will contact them if they’re interested - a faulty assumption that can cost you a lot of business. Customers and/or clients have busy lives and unless there's some special reason not to forget about you, they will.

What's the best way to follow up? The phone call? The text message? The email? No - none of these. The best way to follow up is still the handwritten note.

Now don't take that to mean that you should just dash off one handwritten note to a client or customer and your follow up is done. If you are trying to make a sale, chances are good you are going to follow up anywhere from two to seven times (I remember reading that 80 percent of new sales are made after the fifth contact.) And that doesn’t mean that you have to write a handwritten note each time. Phone calls, emails, and even text messages can certainly help keep you and your products and/or services in the forefront of your client or customer's brain.

But the handwritten note, because of its apparent personal nature, has a power that other follow up techniques lack, so it should be the fulcrum of your follow up efforts.

Properly done, the handwritten note is a real relationship builder because it says to your client or customer that you have taken the time to recognize them as an individual and that their business is important to you.

It's also a great way to differentiate yourself from the competition because so few people bother to follow up at all, let alone follow up in ways that will impress customers.

For instance, right now several financial investment firms are courting me. One of them dropped an obviously mass-produced flyer into my mailbox asking me for my business (and a poorly printed flyer at that). He never bothered to follow up.

Another dropped by the house, introduced himself, and we had a pleasant chat about what my financial investment needs might be. The next day I found a handwritten note in my mailbox thanking me for taking the time to talk to him and asking me to let him know if he could be of future service.

Guess which one of these firms I would choose to do business with? Who wouldn't? The first investment firm may be fine, but the representative of the second firm has impressed me; it's his name that is lodged in my mind.

Besides being a great way to get prospective new customers and/or clients to think of you favourably, handwritten notes are also a great way to thank people for their patronage. After we got new flooring installed in our house by a local firm, the owner of the business sent us a handwritten note thanking us for choosing their firm and hoping that we were enjoying the look of our new floors (which we are)! This sort of personalized attention is one reason that I recommend this firm to anyone local.

Don't be afraid of being old-fashioned; when it comes to follow up, sometimes the old ways are the best. Take the time to write handwritten notes thanking your customers and/or clients; the time you spend writing them will be well worth it in terms of return business and increased positive word-of-mouth.

10 Ways to Get Your Marketing Unstuck

Have you ever found yourself knowing exactly what you need to do about marketing your business... and then not doing it? You are not alone. Many self-employed professionals find that the hardest part of marketing isn't figuring out what to do. What's hard is actually doing it.

Marketing yourself can be a confronting process. Making phone calls to strangers, writing marketing letters, and talking about yourself and your accomplishments can bring up fear of rejection, harsh commentary from your inner critic, feelings of incompetence, and the discomfort of performing unfamiliar activities. If you let them, these inner saboteurs can stop you dead in your tracks.

The good news is that you don't have to completely eliminate these internal roadblocks in order to move forward in marketing. It is possible to feel afraid or uncomfortable and still take useful action despite the presence of these feelings. Here are ten ways to quickly break through internal barriers and get your marketing unstuck.

1. Recreate your vision.

When you're feeling blocked from moving forward, remember why you wanted to go there in the first place. What was your original vision of the business you are trying to build? Who will your work benefit? What fulfillment or satisfaction will it provide you? Write down your vision of a successful business, or if you've written it down before, pull it out and re-read it. Allow your own words to re-inspire you to do the necessary hard work.

2. Design a reward.

Sometimes your vision may seem a bit too far off, and you need some more immediate gratification. Choosing to reward yourself for a job well done can provide you with a positive near-term benefit for effort that might not pay off for a while. Promise yourself simple rewards for completing difficult marketing chores like making follow-up calls or writing Web site copy.

The prospect of a special dinner, a movie with your significant other, or a new gadget for your favorite hobby can help you to push past the blocks and get things done.

Rewards don't even have to cost money. Sometimes the promise of a bubble bath, walk in the park, or an hour reading a good book is all the incentive you need to take on a tough marketing challenge.

3. Tame the inner critic.

Often when you're feeling stuck, what's going on in your head is a conversation with your inner critic, who seems to have a lot to say about sales and marketing. It's difficult to work on promoting yourself when you are hearing a constant stream of comments like: "You're not good enough," "They won't like you," or "Who do you think you are?"

It can help to remember that the inner critic often says things that simply aren't true. One way to counter this negative dialogue is to respond with the objective truth. For example: "Clients tell me I'm good at what I do," "Many people say they like me quite a bit," or "I'm a competent professional, thank you very much." When you answer confidently with statements of fact, messages from the inner critic often begin to lose their power.

4. Face your fear.

One of the most common obstacles to being successful at marketing is fear. Marketing activities may evoke fears of rejection, disapproval, embarrassment, and a host of other catastrophes. Instead of pretending the fear isn't there, or attempting to ignore it, you may find it more effective to confront the fear directly.

Try to identify exactly what you are afraid of. What do you fear will happen if you make that call or go to that meeting? If you can identify the specific fear that is blocking you, it may be possible to soothe it by providing reassuring information or positive experience.

For example, fear of rejection can often be lessened by setting up practice selling sessions where a role-playing partner responds with "yes" to every suggestion you make.

5. Get a pep talk.

When you become discouraged, don't be afraid to ask for outside help to cheer up and start feeling positive again. Ask a friend, colleague, networking group member, or your coach to give you some words of encouragement. Sometimes all you need to hear is: "It was tough for me in the beginning too... Eventually my efforts paid off... You're doing all the right things... I know you can do it!"

There are five more things you can do to get motivated to get marketing on the next page...

Work Is Necessary: Struggle Is Optional

I hear from many entrepreneurs that marketing is a struggle. They just can't get enough clients to pay the bills, or they are spending more money to get each client than the sale is worth. So many of their efforts seem to fail. There must be an easier way, they tell me.

I think there is. But making the transition from the hard way to the easy way can be pretty difficult in itself. That's because it requires the toughest kind of change - a change in thinking.

First of all, you must accept that there's nothing noble about working too hard. Working too hard comes in many forms. You may be putting in too many hours, or spending too much to get clients, or trying a dozen different marketing strategies all at once, or simply sounding too desperate when asking for the business.

To leave struggle behind, you must be willing to give it up. This may sound odd, because of course you don't like struggling. But old habits die hard. If you're used to throwing more effort at problems, it's often challenging to instead stop, analyze what's not working, and ask if there is a smarter answer.

If you find that clients don't want to pay what you're asking, instead of trying harder to convince those clients of your worth, look for different clients who have more to spend. If the places you are networking don't seem to connect you with enough prospects, instead of networking there more often, look for new places to network.

You also have to give up magical thinking. No matter how wonderful your workshop is, you won't get 20 people there just by mailing 200 flyers. You can be the world's greatest consultant, but you can't expect to land a big contract just by placing one phone call to three companies.

Marketing, like much of business, is often a numbers game. If you want to stop struggling, you have to do the math. The average rate of return for a good direct mail piece is one to two percent. So to fill a 20-person workshop through direct mail alone, you would need to mail to 1000-2000 people.

The average consultant can make one sale from every 30 contacts he makes in his target market. (One out of ten contacts results in a presentation of some kind; one out of three presentations leads to an assignment. Ten times three equals thirty.) If you want to get two assignments this quarter, you should be making 60 contacts.

To move from struggle-based marketing to effortless marketing, you need to be able to trust. Trust that if you choose two or three solid marketing strategies and employ them diligently, clients will result. If you panic and keep changing your plan, or piling new activities on the plate, the result is more struggle.

Trust that if you spend some time and money on an attractive mailer and a targeted list with enough names on it, you will fill your workshop. And trust enough to spend that time and money up front instead of struggling by with an amateurish flyer and just asking your friends to spread it around.

Trust that building relationships really is the key to getting in the door with corporate clients, and be willing to go to meetings, make calls, and do lunch. If instead, you hide behind expensive directory ads, gate-fold color brochures, and trade show displays, you are dooming yourself to struggle with a high price tag.

Yes, there is work to be done if you want your marketing to be successful, but you need to work smarter, not harder. There is money to be spent, but you must spend it on the essentials first and save the bells and whistles for later. And there is magic to be had, but it's the magic that comes from making a plan and working it, instead of hoping that somehow you can beat the odds.

The path out of struggle really boils down to this. How many new clients do you need each month to earn a comfortable living? How many prospects should be in your marketing pipeline to result in that number of clients? How much time and money can you afford to spend to bring in each client? Now... which marketing strategies will bring in the number of prospects you need within your available budget of time and money?

If you're not sure, ask a successful colleague, read a book, take a class, hire a consultant or coach. But once you think you have the right answer, stick with it, no matter how tempting it is to buy an ad instead of making a call, or try a new idea instead of finishing what you started, or rely on wishful thinking instead of crunching some numbers.

To end the struggle, try letting the answer be easy. Ask the people who have gone before you what worked for them, and then do what they did.

Market Research

Market research is the collection and analysis of information about consumers, competitors and the effectiveness of marketing programs.

Small business owners use market research to determine the feasibility of a new business, test interest in new products or services, improve aspects of their businesses, such as customer service or distribution channels, and develop competitive strategies.

In other words, market research allows businesses to make decisions that make them more responsive to customers' needs and increase profits.

While market research is crucial for business start up, it's also essential for established businesses. It's accurate information about customers and competitors that allows the development of a successful marketing plan.

While it's common for businesses to hire market research companies to conduct market research for them, it is possible for small business owners to do their own. For an explanation of the basics of market research and tips on designing your own market research surveys and questionnaires, see Do-It-Yourself Market Research.

Also Known As: Marketing research

Common Misspellings: Market reserch, markit research.

Examples: Before putting her new product into production, Margot conducted market research to discover how consumers would react to the new flavour.

3 Keys to Successful Green Marketing

Show potential customers that you follow green business practices and you could reap more green on your bottom line. Green marketing isn't just a catchphrase; it's a marketing strategy that can help you get more customers and make more money. But only if you do it right.

For green marketing to be effective, you have to do three things; be genuine, educate your customers, and give them the opportunity to participate.

1) Being genuine means that
a) that you are actually doing what you claim to be doing in your green marketing campaign and
b) that the rest of your business policies are consistent with whatever you are doing that's environmentally friendly. Both these conditions have to be met for your business to establish the kind of environmental credentials that will allow a green marketing campaign to succeed.

2) Educating your customers isn't just a matter of letting people know you're doing whatever you're doing to protect the environment, but also a matter of letting them know why it matters. Otherwise, for a significant portion of your target market, it's a case of "So what?" and your green marketing campaign goes nowhere.

3) Giving your customers an opportunity to participate means personalizing the benefits of your environmentally friendly actions, normally through letting the customer take part in positive environmental action.

Let's put the three essential elements of a successful green marketing campaign together by looking at an example.

Suppose that you have decided that your business will no longer use plastic bags to wrap customer purchases. You know that the traditional plastic bag takes about one thousand years to decompose (cbc.ca) and want to do your part to stop the proliferation of plastic bags in landfills. You feel that this is the kind of environmental action that will be popular with potential customers and a good opportunity to do some green marketing.

To be genuine, you have to ensure that none of your business practices contradict your decision not to use plastic bags. What if customers who happen to walk behind your store see an overflowing trash bin filled with paper, cardboard and plastic bottles? Obviously, he or she will decide that you don't care as much about recycling as you say you do in your green marketing.

Not using plastic bags appears to be environmental no-brainer, but you will still need to educate your target market. Did you know that a single use plastic bag takes about one thousand years to decompose? I didn’t until I researched this article and probably a fair number of otherwise environmentally conscious people don't either. This one little factoid about plastic bags could be used as part of your green marketing campaign - all by itself it lets the public know why single use plastic bags are environmentally disastrous and that you and your business care about the environment.

And the third element? By shopping at your store, the customer is taking action to protect the environment by preventing at least one single use plastic bag from going into a landfill. It doesn't sound like much, but he or she gets the satisfaction of physically doing something that fulfills their beliefs. You can also reinforce your customers’ green decisions and increase their participation by offering them additional related actions, such as buying cloth bags to use for future purchases.

Sometimes the best thing to do with a bandwagon is jump on it. You have to walk the talk and actually implement green policies and act in environmentally friendly ways for green marketing to work, but if you do, you've got a powerful selling point with those who are environmentally conscious and want to act to make the world a greener place - a market that's growing exponentially right now.

Green Marketing

Definition:

What is green marketing? Green marketing refers to the process of selling products and/or services based on their environmental benefits. Such a product or service may be environmentally friendly in itself or produced and/or packaged in an environmentally friendly way.

The obvious assumption of green marketing is that potential consumers will view a product or service's "greenness" as a benefit and base their buying decision accordingly. The not-so-obvious assumption of green marketing is that consumers will be willing to pay more for green products than they would for a less-green comparable alternative product - an assumption that, in my opinion, has not been proven conclusively.

While green marketing is growing greatly as increasing numbers of consumers are willing to back their environmental consciousnesses with their dollars, it can be dangerous. The public tends to be skeptical of green claims to begin with and companies can seriously damage their brands and their sales if a green claim is discovered to be false or contradicted by a company's other products or practices. Presenting a product or service as green when it's not is called greenwashing.

Green marketing can be a very powerful marketing strategy though when it's done right. See Three Keys to Successful Green Marketing.

Also Known As: Environmental Marketing, Ecological Marketing, Eco-Marketing.

Common Misspellings: Geen marketing, gren marketing.

Examples: Chad’s green marketing campaign bombed because he made the mistake of packaging his environmentally friendly product in styrofoam.