Apr 25

Branding Your Business

If you think only big corporate names need to think about things like brand names, think again. Your brand says a lot about you and your business, and that’s as true for a one person home-based operation as it is for a multinational conglomerate. In this article we look at how creating a strong brand for your business can help you set yourself apart from the pack and lay the right foundation for the future growth of your business.

WHAT IS A BRAND?

Your brand is more than just the logo on your letterhead and business cards or your business name. It is your corporate identity. An effective brand tells the world who you are, what you do and how you do it, while at the same time establishing your relevance to and credibility with your prospective customers.

Your brand is also something more ethereal. It is how your business is perceived by its customers. If your brand has a high perceived value, you enjoy many advantages over your competition, especially when it comes to pricing. Why do you think people are prepared to pay stupid money for items of clothing with the initials “CK” on them? Perceived value. Perceived value as a result of very effective brand promotion resulting in very high brand awareness.

Now, I’m not saying we all need to rush out and start creating brands that are going to be recognized the world over. Most of us simply don’t have the time or other resources necessary. What I am suggesting, however, is that it is possible for your brand to dominate your niche.

WHY DO I NEED TO CREATE MY OWN BRAND?

=> Differentiation

We touched on this in the previous section when we looked at what a brand is and how it can be used to increase the perceived value of your products and services. The main reason for creating your own brand is to differentiate yourself from your competition. New websites are a dime a dozen. So are home-based businesses. You need to constantly be looking for ways to set yourself apart from your competition. Your brand can do that for you.

=> More Effective, Efficient Marketing

Another good reason for creating your own brand is to make your sales force (even if that’s a sales force of one – you) more effective and efficient.

Imagine if you didn’t have to spend the first 50% of your time with a new prospect explaining who you are, what you do and how you do it. What if your brand had already communicated that for you? You can spend 100% of your time focusing on sales rather than educating your prospects about your business

Another benefit of branding is that the efforts you expend increasing your brand awareness through promoting and marketing your brand to your target market automatically transfers to your products and services. So, even when you’re advertising your brand, you’re indirectly also marketing your products and services.

HOW DO I CREATE MY OWN BRAND?

OK, so you’re convinced you need to create your own brand. Where on earth do you start?

We saw earlier that your brand needs to say who you are, what you do and how you do it. It needs to do all these things at the same time as establishing your relevance to and building credibilty with your prospective customers. Needless to say, it is absolutely essential, if you are to build your own brand, that *you yourself* have a firm grasp of who you are, what you do and how you do it. If not, you’re going to have the devil’s own time getting that message across to anyone else, let alone establishing your relevance and credibility.

=> Write A Mission Statement

So, let’s start by creating a mission statement. What is the mission of your business? Obviously you’re in business to make a profit. But making a profit is a byproduct of a successful business. Focus instead on how you choose to achieve that profit. What are your core values?

A good place to begin thinking about your mission is to put yourself in the shoes of your customers. Put yourself in their target market. Let’s say your business is web hosting. If you’re in the market for a web host, what things are important to you? Different people will be looking for different benefits but you can bet that they want their website to be accessible to site visitors so reliability will be high on their list. Price is also likely to be high on the list as is 24/7 technical support. What about add-on features such as unlimited email aliases, cgi support and what-not? These things will be highly important to some and less important to others. So focus on the benefits that are likely to be highly relevant to the majority of your target market. Let’s settle for our purposes on reliability, price and technical support.

Your mission statement might read something like this: “I strive to earn a fair return on my investment of time and money by providing affordable webhosting with guaranteed 99% uptime and 24/7 telephone technical support”. That’s a pretty general statement and if you decide to focus on a particular niche of the webhosting market, such as small business, you may want to more narrowly focus on that group in your mission statement.Now that you’ve written your mission statement, you can begin thinking about creating a brand that reinforces and supports your mission. So, getting back to the fundamental questions of who you are, what you do and how you do it, you can now begin to think of your business in these terms. You’re a webhosting provider, you host websites of small businesses and you do that by offering cost-effective webhosting solutions, guaranteed 99% uptime and 24/7 telephone technical support.

When you create your brand, you need to keep the who, what and how firmly in mind but also use the brand to establish your relevance to your target market and build credibility with that market.

Let’s turn now to the nuts and bolts of creating your brand.

=> Describe What You Are Branding

List out your business’s key features and characteristics, your competitive advantages and anything else that sets you apart from your competition.

Using our webhosting example, you’ll focus primarily on the objectives from your mission statement namely, reliable, cost-effective webhosting solutions supported by 24/7 technical support.

=> Identify and Describe Your Target Market

Decide whether you want to target lthe entire webhosting community or only a segment of it such as small business websites. Describe your market.

=> List Names that Suggest the Key Elements from Your Mission Statement

The key elements from your mission statement were reliability, cost-effectiveness and customer service. List names that are suggestive of these elements. Let’s use Reliable Webhosting for our example. (I don’t claim to be a creative genius.)

Don’t limit yourself to real words, though. A coined name with no obvious meaning is a perfectly legitimate name provided it conveys something about your business. You will find coined names easier to trademark and secure domain names for too – a definite plus!

=> List Tag Lines that Reinforce Your Mission Statement

We’ll use: “Outstanding reliability and technical support at a price your small business can afford”. I know, I know. You can do much better, I’m sure.

HOW SHOULD I USE MY BRAND?

=> Create a Logo for Your Brand

Your logo is NOT your brand but your logo should allow your brand to be instantly recognized by those familiar with it. To this extent, your logo helps create and reinforce brand awareness.

The logo you create should be able to be used consistently in a variety of different media. It should be suitable for corporate letterhead and business cards, as well as for your website and corporate signage (if any). You do NOT want a confusing mishmash of logos and banners and heaven knows what else. Everything you produce needs to use the same, consistent style of logo so that, over time, your logo becomes synonymous with your brand. Instant recognition is what you’re going for here, so don’t dilute it by using several different logos for different purposes.

=> Consistent Usage of Company Name, Logo and Tag Line

Going back to our webhosting example, putting the brand name and tagline together, the physical manifestation of your brand will be:

RELIABLE WEBHOSTING Outstanding reliability and technical support at a price your small business can afford.

To establish brand awareness, this branding needs to be used consistently and frequently in everything your produce, whether that be letters to clients, business cards, brochures, quotations, invoices, advertising, promotion, on your website, on the front door of your principal place of business and on your products. And don’t forget to be consistent in your use of color schemes. These can be powerful brand reinforcers.

=> Marketing and Promotion of Your Brand

Once you’ve created your brand, you need to market and promote it, in addition to your products and services. This is how you establish your credibility and relevance to your target market. You can hopefully see why your brand needs to be suggestive of your mission statement. If, at the same time as you’re selling your products and services you also push your brand, your brand becomes synonymous with your products and services. And vice versa.

A properly descriptive brand and high brand awareness amongst your target market will allow you to more easily introduce a wider range of products and services when they’re developed without having to start by again selling who you are, what you do and how you do it first. Your brand has already presold YOU. Your job then is to sell your products and services.

By: Jose Carocho

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Apr 24

Chinese Auto Brands Analysis

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China’s such a big country, the current economic status is to enter the world as early as seven. China’s auto industry produced 4.4 million motor vehicles in 2003, who has become the world’s fourth largest car producer. But China has not a world-renowned automotive brand at all, which is not match the economic status today. None of our car brands is a worldwide brand, even the worst of our brands in the domestic influence is so limited, the current domestic auto market is further being swallowed by foreign car manufacturers. Here, mainly analysis the current status of the own brand and how to create a big global brands.

Some scholars believe that the brand can be sustained much longer than the company’s specific products, they recognized that brand is a more long-term company’s principal assets. Therefore, when our country is making famous in the automotive brand, we should look at the world, and we should have the global automotive brand Daizo strategic vision and courage.

20 years ago, the idea that was to use the domestic market to exchange for advanced technology, so that China’s national automotive industry to catch up with international advanced level. After 20 years, China has finally produced the world’s third largest automobile market, the number of National Automobile self-made business has grown up from more than 10 to over 120, auto industry become one of the important industry for stimulating national economic development. China’s own brand car did not move toward the world only, but also lost most of the domestic market. China Steam brand has fallen into a “marginalized”, “de-China” dilemma!.

Look from the latest Chinese automobile and world-renowned automobile brand value rankings In 2004, the top three of Chinese automobile brand value is: monoxide (28.978 billion yuan), SAIC (18.389 billion yuan), Dongfeng (8,945,000,000 yuan ). the top three of World-renowned automobile brand value: Toyota (22.67 billion U.S. dollars), Mercedes (21.33 billion U.S. dollars), BMW (15.886 billion U.S. dollars). We can see that the Chinese auto brand value is far below the world-renowned brand through the comparison above, there’s a difference of disparity. Therefore, there is still a long way to go for creating China’s own brand car world.

The disadvantaged of own brand has attracted wide attention, but most concern is the intellectual property rights with Chinese trademarks, not the concerns and thinking for brand value. this is an important reason for China’s auto enterprises to ignored or even give up their own brands. At present, the introduction of CIS corporate identity system is not few, but the introduction of BIS brand identity Strategy is extremely scarce.

But unfortunately, like Chery, Geely, Great Wall these emerging domestic car companies,while they are creating their own brands, they profoundly awareness the importance of brand strategy. Because it is original, they can create a new brand freely, which is favorable conditions that state-owned conglomerates and joint ventures do not have. However, they also face their own problems, the product is too new, yet to be market and customer testing. If people quickly forgotten as yolio and qiyun such products, don’t they understand the brand? If the product does not exist for a long time value, it is not brand strategy.

But now, many manufacturers are also feeling somewhat helpless when they insist on support of self-developed own-brand. Self-development is currently facing some of the biggest problem: First, there are not much support from state’s policies; the second: It is now many companies did not dare to talk about self-development, but not a lack of sense of responsibility, the reasons also due to appraisal system and accounting system. Third, at present, China’s consumer culture, consumer psychology and consumer concept have malformations, for example, many consumers do not want to see Chinese characters on cars, it is necessary to know that the characters in the land of China is not a shame.

In short, it should not be so anxious in the development of own national brand of motor vehicles. This requires the generation or even the next generation efforts. Although own well-known brands still has a long way to go, I believe China will have an even number of world-class well-known car brands in the near future.

By: yy

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There are dreams in order to go further:http://www.chrome168.com

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Apr 20

Building Brand Loyalty Amongst Your Customers

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A product is a blend of multiple features which is positioned and distinguished by way of some special offering to establish it as a brand. And, if a customer is loyal towards a particular brand, it means a product has fulfilled all the requirements of a customer and satisfying a customer translates the brand into a pivotal product to lend the organization the leading edge over its competitors. The brand loyalists have the power to make or break the image of a brand by word of mouth publicity.

Any brand in the market thrives or survives based on its effective usage by the customer. Since the advertising for a brand has taken off new dimensions with online advertising tools as one of the potent mediums, the end user has evolved with time immemorial and hence it has become rather difficult to prevent the customer from brand switching.

The brands that have been continuously nurtured and innovated over a period of time has been the insistent choice of a consumer. And, so apart from this what other constituents hold the customer’s loyalty towards a brand is an important question? How to retain the existing customer is the key concern of every organization? What mechanism should be used for each customer?

In Toto, there are 4 types of brand users who reflect the following tendencies which has been highlighted by the marketing legend, Philip Kotler.

The Hard Core loyalists: Who is keen to buy one single brand every time.

Soft Core loyalists: A consumer is loyal to 2-4 brands at a time.

Shifting loyalists: Although a consumer is loyal towards a brand, but may keep shifting from one brand to another and keep coming back to the first brand towards which he was loyal.

Switchers: Who always are on the lookout for a new brand. Perhaps here the consumer tries to experiment with new brands each time and also he may switch over because of pricing or some other reasons.

Here are the main Key constituents on the Brand Loyalty:

Customer’s set of logical and emotional conditioning: Even though a brand may not be doing well in the market and might be having few customers, a brand occupies a place in the customer’s mind by continuous advertising using all the available mediums existing today. Today, a lot of viral marketing techniques have been utilized in order to create brand awareness and maintain brand loyalty.

Good Relationship with the customer: Once the brand has been used by the customer, the organization focuses on establishing and maintaining a cordial relationship with the customer by the use of emails, direct mails or telephone. And the essence of this relationship is brand loyalty.

Leveraging a brand by offering brand extensions : Either the brand extensions or the line extensions are introduced in order to keep up with the customer loyalty. For example, a detergent like Rin was expanded by extensions to its brand name, like Rin Advanced and Rin washing powder.

Rebranding by offering a different marketing mix: The brand may often be delivered into a new packaging form. For example, under the category of fast food, Maggi was offered in a new packaging form. Earlier it was available in a single packing form, later was reintroduced in the market in a double packing form. Often the price may be reduced by offering the brand through a scheme which would entail the brand being packaged in a set of 3-4 and deducting the overall price. For e.g. most of the soaps are today being offered in a pack of 2-3 or 4.

Brands supporting a good cause: There are consumers who would like to remain attached to a brand which supports social cause or any other good cause for the betterment of the general public. For example, the Kingfisher Airlines floated by Vijay Mallya swayed the Indians by sponsoring the cricket T20 match.

Now, the important thing to note is in what situations, a customer is not brand loyal.

Here are some of the vicarious situations under which a customer is unlikely to purchase one single brand all the time:

Non-availability of a product: At times, a customer may switch over to a different brand because of locational constraints like the non-availability of a product in certain locations due to which a customer may buy another brand.

Non-conformity with the latest fad/trend: Apple has launched 3G iphones to budge or transform the customer from the earlier mobile phone applications to the latest introduction which is sure to appeal the customer. So, the companies which innovate ad infinitum are sure to remain there is the market for a long time as well as retain their existing customers. At the same time also build up new customers.

The congregation of options available to a consumer: The customer may be price conscious and whenever he is offered the least priced brand, he is lured towards it. A customer may get a host of benefits from the new brand launched in the market as much as the brand which he was using so may try to experiment with the new one.

No doubt that, a brand always faces a tiff competition from the other brands in the market and suffers from the perils of downslide, so a marketer should keep an eye on his competitors’ brands. And, a marketer should capitalize on his brand by offering a unique set of propositions to maintain his brand loyalists.

By: jaya sinha

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Apr 17

Become a Passion Brand

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By Bradly Montague President & CEO NOMAMONT, Inc.

Branding is all the rage; therefore, people are tempted to think that it is a new idea. A commonly used term in marketing, branding is often the subliminal process by which a business employs marketing strategies to guide people to easily remember their products and services over a competitor’s. Essentially, it’s applied psychology. Branding is also a method to leverage success, expand market share, and fend off competition. The problem is, companies are turning to branding as a panacea and the cold, hard fact is branding will not create a spike in cash flow or market share. Therefore, it makes sense to understand that the purpose of branding is not to make your target market choose you over the competition, but rather to urge your prospects to see you as the only solution to their problem.

A strong brand is invaluable, as the battle for customers intensifies day by day. Brands of the future will be those able to surround their products and services with ardent advocates and loyalists: passion brands. All other brands will be left to compete in the price wars. It is important that the online and offline images of your business be harmonious and that time is invested in researching, defining, and building your brand. After all, your brand is your promise to your consumer. Your brand resides within the hearts and minds of customers, clients and prospects. It is the sum total of their experiences and perceptions regarding your company, some of which you can influence, and some that you cannot.

How do you connect with the consumer when they’re calling all the shots? View your consumers as both customer and collaborator and employ game-changing thinking. In order to change the game, you need to audit how you think, comparing rational versus intuitive decision-making strategies and identifying common mistakes made by even the most experienced professionals. The process is based on the premise that the answers to your company’s brand strategy reside in the heads of the CEO and the key management group. Your company’s brand strategy must be owned by every employee from the top down. Eleven key attributes necessary to become a passion brand include:

1.       You must recognize that your brand is a key asset in delivering strategic targets at a level that is higher than the industry standard.

2.       Do not consider the brand as merely a communications issue—your brand must be recognized as the key platform to link the company strategy with customers and employees.

3.       Make sure your brand management processes are integrated seamlessly into the company’s processes—i.e., “branding” is not a separate activity.

4.       Your senior management is accountable for the brand’s continued health—brand responsibility resides at C-level.

5.       All of your employees need to share a belief in the brand as well as a common understanding of the brand. With this mindset in place, the power of the brand will act as an incentive to employees.

6.       Ensure your employees’ activities are aligned with the brand values and contribute to the building and strengthening of the brand.

7.       Your employees should be measured and rewarded by the success of these brand-guided activities.

8.       Your marketing department must be able to talk in terms of expected return on their investments and marketers must be able to leverage customer insights to make the most effective marketing decisions. Future strategy should be built based on knowledge of the customer, product and practices.

9.       All marketing activities should be closely aligned with the core brand values.

10.   It is necessary to invest in sufficient IT capability to capture data on customers, segment customers in order to efficiently respond to their needs, and implement marketing techniques to deliver increased ROI.

11.   You must identify your company’s brand equity (the financial value of your brand) by understanding the brand’s value drivers and the levers required to influence these drivers. This action leads to success.

By: Bradly Montague President & CEO NOMAMONT, Inc.

About the Author:

Bradly C. Montague is a noted pioneer in marketing & corporate communications, Montague has over 15 years experience in traditional and digital marketing, advertising, public relations and global sales consulting. Since founding NOMAMONT (www.nomamont.com) in 2006, he has worked in every capacity to design and optimize the company’s innovative, marketing, pr, event and trade show solutions. Montague serves as Chairman and President & CEO NOMAMONT, Inc.
Prior to NOMAMONT, Montague was the Head of Marketing for Hilex Poly, an industry-leading manufacturer of plastic bag and film products. Focusing primarily on high-density polyethylene (HDPE) film products and related services, the company has over $650 million in revenue and serves many of the leading retail and grocery providers in North America. As a department head, he was the architect of marketing programs for a number of key products including Bag2Bag, Rhino and QuickStar.
Bradly has held a variety of leadership roles throughout his career, including Campaign Strategic Director at DEVON DIGITAL EURO RSCG, Streaming Media Consultant at AKAMAI TECHNOLOGIES and President at Jupiter Sun Productions. He is also a member of the Board of Directors for The Islands Group.
Montague received his bachelor’s degree from The New School University with a major in Liberal Arts and a special focus on Communication studies.
bradly.montague@nomamont.com

How to brand

Apr 12

Soccer Uniforms and Famous Brands

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webmaster socceruniform asked:

Aaaaaaaaaaah! Soccer uniform always charms to every soccer fan of its favorite team. Inspiring with their favorite teams fans wants to wear the same kit as their teams have and most fans decorate their room with the flags, bed sheets and towels of their favorite club team. There are too many Brands world wide which are making the soccer uniforms and other soccer gear. Fans who would not afford those costly wears, are buying cheep replica soccer uniforms.

If we talk about the popular brands who are making soccer uniforms, Nike, Augusta, Adidas, Dynamic and high five are the leading brands. These brands are also the primary sponsors of some soccer club teams and have the contract with the clubs for supply of soccer uniforms, soccer warm-ups, soccer shoes, soccer socks, coach soccer jerseys, coach jackets and player’s jackets.

Nike called as a top brand which is making soccer uniforms for the Top soccer club teams. There team are Manchester United, Barcelona, Liverpool and Chelsea. Nike is making Shits, shorts, socks, Under Armor cold Gear Mock, paramount beanie, jersey, long sleeve, soccer shoes, soccer balls and so many more. MERCURIAL VAPOR IV is a boot made by Nike which is worn by the deadliest players including Ronaldo and Didier Drogba, the mercurial vapor IV is one the lightest boots ever made. With maximum strength, comfort and movement, it’s a revolutionary boot designed to strike fear into opponents and leave rivals in its wake. MERCURIAL GRIP 3 a famous product of Nike used by Goal Keepers. Nike said “You’re in complete control. Extended 4mm contact foam combines full protection with subtle feel for handling. Grip 3 technology wraps contact foam around the critical pitside fingers for improved touch and new one-piece caps add stability to the two middle fingers.”

Nike is not only customizing soccer uniforms but its also making the shirts and shorts for the famous tennis players and football players. Beside all these famous brands there are so many Small businesses which are making the soccer uniform but not for the players rather it’s for their fans. Internet is full of shopping sites which are selling the best replica soccer uniforms in very cheap prices. Look around you, seems like every one talking about soccer. Soon the English Premier League will start. This will be an extra extravaganza for all the soccer fans. Fans start to buy their favorite teams soccer uniforms and soccer jerseys.

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Apr 11

23 Marketing and Branding Tips

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Intrigue Design asked:

Marketing 101: Develop a powerful and compelling core message.

“Say something, say it well, say it often.”? Why should customers buy from you? Why should they even take a second glance? You need to build a powerful message that gets key points across without clutter … because clutter is what leads to abandonment. Although this is the essence of a successful branding and marketing campaign, you’d be surprised how many companies fail to grasp this concept.

Make sure your core message is “benefit oriented.”?

People don’t buy services or products, they buy the benefits of those services or products. In all your communications, make sure your message translates into specific benefits.

Make sure your initial message directs prospects toward a specific action.

Your customers want to be told where to go to find the solutions they seek. This should be abundantly clear to all four major personality groups (Amiables, Drivers, Expressives, and Analyticals). When you invite customers to go somewhere to learn how to interact with your site and find out more about your company, you can greatly increase your potential for conversions.

Develop imagery that enhances your message and intrigues your target audience.

The images on your site should enhance your message by being visually stimulating. Sometimes this may only be an aesthetic; other times it may involve “timelining”? imagery and content together to use space more effectively and get across a message in a more distinctive fashion.

Develop a unique value proposition (UVP).

Sit down with a branding or marketing expert and define a UVP for your company as a reminder of your competitive advantages. Make sure these advantages are customer-centric, not business-centric.

Incorporate your UVP into all online and off-line media for brand consistency and saturation.

Make sure your message constantly reiterates your competitive benefits and your UVP. You never know which aspect of your brand a prospect might respond to, so make sure the message is consistently broadcast in whatever media you use.

Tell customers what they want to hear, not what you want to tell them.

We call this inside-out marketing. Too often, companies unknowingly focus on what they want to say, rather than what customers want to hear. An outside-in perspective with a true 360° view of your company from the customer’s viewpoint is best accomplished with the help of a qualified branding and marketing firm that can determine customers’ attitudes, expectations, and requirements.

Build value … not boredom.

I leave this one to Napoleon Hill: “It is as useless to try to sell a man something until you have first made him want to listen as it would be to command the earth to stop rotating”? (Think and Grow Rich

Lead with a header and close with a call to action.

Readers are much more likely to read your message, white papers, case studies, etc., if you pique their interest or curiosity through well-written headers, transition headers, body content, and calls to action that lead to the next step in a sales cycle.

“SCAN I AM.”?

Today’s readers don’t read, they scan. They scan for areas of interest, offers, links to relevant information, etc. So it is important to set up your text so that it can be quickly scanned. Online text is not linear like a book; it’s interactive to follow users’ nonlinear demands.

Develop a branding “blueprint”? that …

shows clearly how you expect prospects to interact with your messages. This blueprint should start with an outline and show all paths from all forms of communication and how they lead to firm sales. Again, marketing and branding professionals can help develop a plan.

Evaluate your plan. Have others evaluate your plan. Re-evaluate and adjust.

No plan is perfect, and any plan should be constantly adjusted to maximize its effectiveness. It is critical to continually audit your branding plan and all your marketing media.

Re-evaluate again.

Adjust your blueprint …

to adapt to the market, trends, technologies, customer demands, etc. Review quarterly. Every successful brand in the world is optimized regularly. Branding is an ongoing effort, not a one-time occurrence.

Use measurable tools to track prospect response.

Use online forms and phone logs to track responses from prospects. Capturing information via legitimate means allows you to re-market to this customer base and to see which forms, programs, tools, and salespeople are getting the best results.

Build a list.

Use online forms and phone logs to build an opt-in prospect list to serve as a powerful conversion tool. (See below.)

Re-market, re-market, re-market.

A customer may need to see a message more than five times to even notice it once! Keep your marketing efforts going … and going …

Don’t forget referrals!

Build a specific program to track, manage, and solicit referral business. We like e-mail campaigns and direct mail for this.

Up-selling!

Your existing customer base is your best source of more business. Develop a formidable plan to make sure your customers know what services you provide and that you keep your core and other related messages in front of your customers as often as possible. (It may take up to 10 forms of contact for a customer to identify with your brand) Remember, sell the benefits…not the service!

Use programs and tools to generate interest.

People like simplicity and packages, offers, and deals that are easy to understand and evaluate. By creating various packages or free tools for prospects to interact with, you can stimulate interest that may have waned otherwise.

Hit them from all angles!

It’s called shotgun marketing. A shotgun shell contains hundreds of tiny lead balls, increasing your chance of hitting a target. Marketing is much the same … the more media you use effectively, the better the chance that your message will be seen and remembered. There is no secret solution to marketing; it’s all about creating a total user experience across all platforms that projects your brand.

Use technologies and trends; they are your friends!

Using various technologies such as online bookings, reservations, response forms, PDF downloads, Blogging, Wikis, internal search engines, and newsfeeds can have a dramatic effect on your overall brand identity and on your marketing strategy in general.

Calls to action.

Calls to action are perhaps the most important aspect of marketing and advertising. After all, what good is any message or image if it doesn’t initiate an action that leads to a conversion? When developing a call to action, remember the four personality types and make use of available technologies to make compelling, interactive offers. You should have a unique call to action for each type of person who represents your customer base. For example … Visit www.intrigue-design.com to learn more about successful branding and to request a free evaluation of the effectiveness of your home pages.

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Apr 08

The Online Brand Experience: Nature And Dimensions

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With the advent of Internet the marketing communications environment has changed profoundly and there is a recognised need of continuous conceptual addition to the existing branding theory. Some authors pronounced the advent of the “experience economy” and the “experience marketing”, while others have taken more extreme postmodern stance and have denied the validity of the traditional branding inferences. Encompassing all these perspectives and drawing on the traditional branding concepts from customer- based perspective this paper will concentrate on the construct of the online brand experience (OBE) as a central part of the contemporary branding strategy. In particular, building on the existing ideas, gathering insights from observation of contemporary online branding campaigns and conducting qualitative study among consumers, I am intending to explore the phenomenon of OBE. Central points in a future theoretical framework will be the notion of the brand as experience, the dimensions around which brand experiences are built online and the very

technology of OBE process.

The central theme of a future research is the challenges faced by companies in their decision-making about branding in online environment. The focal point of the research would be the creation of brand experience as the most important element of the firm’s online branding strategy. The first sub-question evolves around the definition of brand experience; to what extent is the notion of brand identical to experience and are there any grounds to believe that we are entering experience economy? The second sub-question refers to the main dimensions of the online brand experience. The last objective of the paper could be to create a theoretical model of the online brand experience in accordance with the above findings. The paper’s focus on the notion of online brand experience would be based on the view of the brand as “a cluster of functional and emotional values which promise a particular experience” (de Chernatony and Segal-Horn, 2003). The importance of the issue is underscored by the view of the brand not as an identifier, but as an experience (Schmitt, 1999). Since this shift of definition and focus of branding is triggered namely by the incessant technological and communication change, the importance of building a theoretical reference to brands as online experiences is exigent.

In view of the new communications environment there is a need of rebranding and more

importantly rethinking of the traditional branding concepts. A number of authors (Ibeh et al., 2005; Christodoulides and de Chernatony, 2004; Bergstrom, 2000) propose addition to the existing branding theory instead of replacement with the warning that Internet is not just another distribution and communications channel, but rather a branding tool with new unique features. The central in this paper notion of online brand experience is discussed from different perspectives by several authors. Ibeh et al. (2005) describe the “high-impact customer online experience” as “a key source of added value in the internet

economy”. Going even further, Pine II and Gilmore (1998, 2000) define the experience as the “fourth economic offering” in the “progression of economic value” after commodities, goods and services. Drawing on their ideas, Schmitt (1999) classifies five different types of experiences. For Cova (1996) the consumer is not only a target for, but also “a producer of experiences”. Furthermore, various authors discuss the importance of issues affecting brands online such as interactivity, connectivity, creativity, vividness, customisation, community, relevance, engagement (Cova et al., 2007; Coyle and Thorson, 2001; Christodoulites and De Chernatony, 2004). However, there is a need of systematising the primary dimensions of the OBE as perceived by the consumer. Hence, one of the primary tasks of the future paper is to reveal the most important dimensions around which brand equity is built online. The notion of online brand experience will be reviewed from the following perspectives: traditional branding theory from customer-based perspective (Keller,1993; Aaker, 1996), experiential marketing (Pine and Gilmore, 1998, 2000), and postmodern marketing (Brown, 1993; Firat and Venkatesh, 1993). The rationale behind this decision is the need of theoretical anchor in the research (traditional line), the focus on the experience (experiential perspective) and the need of an updated view of the contemporary consumer behaviour (postmodern marketing). The principal aim of a research paper would be to build an integrated conceptual model for the notion of online brand experience. In attempt to systematise the findings about the OBE and provide further theoretical clarity for branding managers and researchers the following objectives have been set:

- To explore the nature of the experience as a new notion for brand;

- To explore in detail the dimensions around which online brand experiences are built;

- To propose a theoretical model of online brand experience based on the above findings.

The exploration of the online brand experience and its main dimensions would be also the main object of the qualitative study to be undertaken as part of the future research. In accordance with the complexity of the explored area I am considering to employ the method of laddering interview. This qualitative technique has proven useful in allowing “the evaluation of ongoing experience” (Orsingher and Marzocchi, 2003) and “in uncovering insights related to the source and the nature of a brand equity” (Wansink, 2003). Furthermore, I have decided to use laddering since it allows in-depth research of the reasons for expressing certain attitudes. Unlike the factor analysis where the focus is more on the generalisation of gathered items as factors, successful laddering permits the discovery of the underlying values behind consumer behaviour. In order to thoroughly address the object of the study, a convenience sample of 20 respondents will be selected. One should keep in mind, that the purpose of the laddering method is not to be “representative of the population”, but rather to focus on the technique’s purpose – “to show how they [the respondents' answers] can be used to understand a brand’s equity” and to “find the root reasons for the consumer’s purchase” (Wansink, 2003).

The main question of the interview will refer to the dimensions around which online brand experiences should be built. In order to uncover the dimensions, the interviewers will probe according to the criteria recommended by Reynolds and Gutman (1988). Respondents will be asked to specify no more and no less than four dimensions. If fewer than four dimensions are given, questions such as “What other dimensions can you think of?” will be used for probing. Then, the respondents will be asked to state three reasons for each of the four dimensions. The result of this technique, known as hard laddering, will be 4 x 3 matrix of idiographic responses. During the hard laddering “[r]espondents are forced to fill a grid of predetermined dimensionality” (Orsingher and Marzocchi, 2003; Bagozzi and Edwards, 1998) and in this case each respondent will indicate up to 12 superordinate reasons and 6 linkages. After the content analysis of the results, these will be input in “Decision Explorer” and the formal output will be twenty individual causal maps. Additionally, a number of websites of renowned brands will be observed and a list of experience messages/promises will be compiled. In such a manner, the other side of the relation consumer-marketer will also be represented. As a result, dimensions and characteristics of the online brand experience will be gathered from three angles: literature review, consumer testimonials and observation of online branding campaigns.

A number of limitations would apply to such a research. One practical limitation of the hard laddering technique “is the forced directionality of the probing process: starting form the first level of stated attributes respondents cannot be probed downward (asking ‘what’) in addition to be probed upward (asking ‘why’)” (Orsingher and Marzocchi, 2003). Further obstacle to the generalisation of the qualitative results is the nature of the sample which could not be representative for the population. However, considering the purpose and the domain of the research it is unlikely that a statistically representative/reliable quantitative technique could be meaningfully used. Additionally, it is always possible that the respondents find it difficult to express their attitudes and feelings towards an issue.

Hence, unveiling the underlying values might prove a hard task. Another impediment is the different level of Internet awareness and usage among demographic groups. In other words, not everyone could be tagged as “Internet savvy”. Nevertheless, considering the fact that the awareness of Internet is higher among younger consumers, we may easily predict that the importance of the World Wide Web as marketing branding tool and communication channel will be even more significant in the future. In accordance with the set objectives I will select respondents who access Internet on a regular basis.

A potential conceptual obstacle could be the lack of agreed upon theoretical base for the notion of experience in the context of branding. Further impediment may be the fact that “the literature on internet branding ? is currently in a formative stage” (Simmons, 2007).

Another problem is the tendency of “[m]arketing communications in the e-business context” to go “beyond the traditional boundaries of marketing communications and marketing departments” (Rowley, 2004). In particular, we should bear in mind that the process of conveying brands as experiences is an anthropological phenomenon as much as it is a

technological one. Consequently, much broader view and an approach that accounts for the social, ethical, moral and philosophical shift in the contemporary western societies are required for the appraisal of the role of experience branding.

With regard to the ethical aspect of the research, I do not envisage any implicit pitfalls for the respondents participating in the survey. Nevertheless, the exploration of the notion of brand experience could entangle the issues of hedonism, narcissism, etc. and one should be careful during elicitation and translation of the results. The respondents will be informed about the purpose of the study and their responses will be anonomised so their identity is not revealed. I am aware of the political nature of the observed organisations and I will attempt to be unbiased and seek robust conclusions by the use of triangulation of data sources. In such a manner it will be more difficult for respondents to influence the results by inconsistent statements.

One of my first immediate actions will be a review of the major ideas in the field from all the aforementioned perspectives (traditional, experiential and postmodern). I will look for common threads which might help in achieving the objectives of the paper. I will also immediately begin the compilation of a list with URLs of major brands in several industries. Simultaneously with the compilation I will commence observation of the websites of the selected brands with the goal of eliciting and grouping messages/promises of particular experiences which are currently used in branding campaigns. These initial steps, along with the qualitative study, will aim at analysing the phenomenon of experience branding as: a new firm offering (the emotional core of the offer); a new notion for brand (reinforcing the brand effects beyond name and symbol); and a new process (executed online). The context of the exploration will be further defined by two general considerations: the possible substitution of the widely proclaimed marketing goal “to add value” (in order to win the customer) with a new one, i.e. “to deliver experience”; and the future role of the marketer – a screenwriter who “designs” the experience and leaves the

“directing” to the consumer.

Please help this research by completing the short survey.

http://boboxjordan.com/publicfolder/obesurvey/obe.htm

By: Boyan Yordanof

About the Author:

Boyan Yordanof is in the tourism business since 1996. His main interests are in Internet Marketing and more specifically Service Branding in the Hospitality Industry. Boyan is an Internet Marketing Executive at RIU Seabank Hotel Malta.

Author Links

Business URL:
http://www.seabankhotel.com

Personal URL:
http://www.yordanof.com

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Apr 07

How to Brand Your Company to Hispanics

Best Brands in the World No Comments »

Ricardo González asked:

The power of the brand! A strong brand draws people. A strong brand allows people to trust you much more quickly than a weak or nonexistent brand.

Tres Preguntas (Three Questions.)

1. What do I mean by your brand?

2. What do I mean when I talk about properly branding your company to the Hispanic community?

3. How do you properly brand your company to the Hispanic community?

When you apply the answers to these three questions you can have good people waiting in line to work for you, recruit members more easily, and most certainly, make a lot of money selling products and services to Latinos.

Question No. 1

What is a brand?

Going back to the Old West, you can picture the cattlemen branding their cattle so they could always identify which animals belonged to them.

This is the origin of the term brand. In today’s world, a brand allows you as a businessperson to identify which clients are yours. More important, when a client is properly branded by you, they will identify themselves with you. A brand is not a logo or a logotype or a trademark. A logo is a word or a few words manipulated by a graphic artist who hopefully understands how to work with typography. (By the way, most don’t.) A trademark is the graphic that many times accompanies a logo, like the Nike Swoosh. That trademark is so strong they don’t even need the logo anymore.

A brand is not something you see, it is something you feel. It is, as Marty Neumier, says in his excellent book The Brand Gap, a gut feeling. Your brand is what people feel about you. A strong brand is what people feel about you and your company in their heart and in their gut. A strong brand elicits immediate trust and goodwill. A weak brand makes people think, “Mmm, maybe I should check out some other companies, or maybe it would be better to work for XYZ Co. than your company.

Companies with strong brands do not have to worry about their clients; they worry about how to provide their clients with better products, services and systems. Weak companies with weak brands are constantly looking for new clients and constantly looking for people who want to work with them. It’s called turnover.

Question No. 2

What do I mean when I talk about properly branding your company to the Hispanic community?

When you are properly branded to the Hispanic community, you don’t have turnover. In fact, you will always have the best workers and, very important these days, the best documented workers. Again, branding is how people feel about you; it is an emotion. Coca-Cola’s market cap, for example, presently is $120 billion. Of this value, $70 billion is attributed to the value of the brand, only $50 billion to the actual company products, services and systems.

How much is your brand worth to the Hispanic community? You want people to hear your company name and say, “What I would give to work there, or, if I buy products, I am going to buy them there. I trust them, what a great company.

Question No. 3

How do I properly brand my company to the Hispanic community?

This is the meat and potatoes question. Again, branding is all about trust. It produces a feeling in the soul that says, I can trust this company. It makes people think, “I feel good purchasing here (in person, on the web, on the phone) and I know I don’t need to check around. I can go to work for them with confidence.

The million dollar question is, “How do you get the Latino person to trust you, to see you and your company and immediately feel this sense of security and trust” The answer is simple, always keep your word. Never tell a Latino something and then go back and tell him or her you’re sorry but it just didn’t work out. For the most part, Latinos are fairly skeptical and non-trusting people. Information travels very quickly in the Latino society so do things right the first time. The Latino culture is very viral. Also, you must show a sincere and genuine interest in our people and culture.

I have in front of me several pieces of literature and handbooks that are handed out to Hispanic employees. They are literal translations from English to Spanish. This is not good branding. There are no visuals and the ones that are used are exactly the same as in the English manuals. To make matters worse, I also found several misspellings. This is probably due to having someone in the shop, or a friend, who is “bilingual”, but not a professional translator. This is poor branding and produces the gut feeling that the Latino person may be a necessity in your company, but he or she is not a valued person or client.

You must make adjustments. The Latino culture is different, the people are different, and there is a different way of thinking about information and life in general. Your marketing and branding initiatives should reflect cultural relevance and understanding.

In a nutshell, yes, logos, trademarks, color schemes, company T-shirts and all this good stuff can help with branding, but these things are not the brand. Perhaps they support the brand, but they are not the brand. The brand is the feeling of trust and confidence people feel when they hear the name of your company mentioned. This goes for people who work for you and for your clients. Without either group of people, you and I are out of business! If you don’t do it, then your company will always be worth less than half of what you think it’s worth when you look at your financial reports.

Just take a look at that branding giant, Coca-Cola. In this case, it really is the real thing!

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Apr 05

Hottest Scents With Least Prices

Hottest Brand Name Designers No Comments »

Kelly asked:

If you are the one who is very passionate about fragrances and perfumes, then you won’t face again the problem of getting confused by the dainty flacon. There is a very easy way to get the best without breaking your bank balance. The wholesale perfumes offers you with really cost efficient perfumes and colognes.

A wide range of quality assured wholesale perfumes are available as wholesale designer perfume, wholesale womens perfume and wholesale perfume. Apart from being affordable, the perfume has enchanting scents to enhance your personalities.

Wholesale women’s perfume are introduced by many brands with guaranteed lowest prices. Few of the brands which I prefer are Alfred Sung Perfume, Cosco, Dolce & Gabbana, Gucci Perfume, Issey Miyake Perfume and Elizabeth Arden Perfume.

Dolce Gabbana fragrance was introduced by the design house of Dolce & Gabbana in 1992.They are characterized for their unique floral, gentle and luxurious fragrance. The various designer perfumes offered by them include Light Blue by Dolce & Gabbana for Women, Dolce Gabbana one perfume, Light Blue Perfume by Dolce & Gabbana, Light Blue Cologne by Dolce & Gabbana for men etc.

Light Blue by Dolce & Gabbana for Women is a stunning perfume. This pure famine scent is composed of intensity of jasmine, the freshness of bamboo, the calmness of white rose with deepness of cedar wood, the fullness of amber, the embrace of musk whereas Light Blue Cologne by Dolce & Gabbana, for men has sicilian mandarin combined with frozen grapefruit peel, bergamot and juniper. It has heart notes of rosemary, szechuan pepper and rosewood, and the mix is rounded out with base notes of musk wood, incense and oak moss.

Among various others mens cologne, discount mens cologne, Dolce Gabbana cologne is one of the most liked and demanded designer perfume. Launched in 1994, it is classified as a sharp, oriental, woody fragrance with spicy notes and blends of lavender, patchouli, amber and leather.

Like this based on cost, men and women can select their discount perfume and feel like fresh, cool, attractive, impressive. One can easily go for an authentic kind of the cologne and perfume, based on perceive ness of the ingredients, as the elements certify the hallmark of the scents and the duration of its stay, from wide range of discount and whole sale perfumes. Perfume are meant to be selected only at which time that flavor suits the skin, taste, preferences, climate, occasions and weather condition.

Now treat yourself to the luxury of a designer fragrance by buying wholesale and discount perfumes and plunge to wear the fragrance you desire with no constraints of money because the best is available at least price.

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Apr 01

A Web-branding Blueprint for the Experience Economy

Best Brands in the World No Comments »

Jerry Bader asked:

Change is inevitable; as an economy matures, ages, and ultimately evolves into something new, adjustments must be made to our business development, marketing and branding. Failure to adapt to new realities results in potentially unwanted dramatic consequences.

We are all aware of how modern economies have grown from agricultural, to industrial, and on to the information-based, but where do we stand now? Is the information economy dead and if so what’s replaced it?

We need look no further than Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs to see parallels between personal and economic growth in a sophisticated modern economy. The agrarian economy satisfied the first level of Maslow’s hierarchy by fulfilling basic physical needs like food, while the industrial age provided the goods necessary to satisfy a variety of concerns ranging from safety to social acceptance and status; the information economy provided answers to our cognitive needs, the desire for knowledge, but things have changed. The Web has disrupted business as usual: the effects on the music, film, television, newspaper, book publishing, and software industries, just to mention a few, has been not just dramatic, but traumatic. The adage, ‘adapt or die,’ has never been truer for business. So where are we now on the personal and economic pyramid?

Be All You Can Be

At the top of this pyramid is ’self-actualization’ the desire to make the most of our existence and as the US Army’s slogan states to ‘Be All You Can Be.’ This is the central defining issue of the new economic reality, the Experience Economy.

Authors B. Joseph Pine and James H. Gilmore state the issue of what business needs to focus on in this new economic era: “While commodities are fungible, goods are tangible, services are intangible, experiences are memorable and transformations are effectual. All other economic offerings have no lasting consequence beyond their consumption.” – ‘The Experience Economy: Work is Theatre & Every Business a Stage.’

Experiences are memorable and transformations effectual, this should be your new marketing mantra, your marching orders to fulfill what the market demands: to be all you can be.

Experiences Are Memorable, Transformations Effectual

What then does this mean: experiences are memorable and transformations effectual. In order to effect change: to turn website audiences into customers, marketers must deliver something more than commodities that are replaceable for a price, goods that are made irrelevant by technology, and services that are mere conveniences. The businesses that will succeed in this new experience economy are the businesses that will provide an experience and not just goods and services.

We are surrounded by examples of the experience economy both online and off. The growth of coffee giant, Starbucks, was not a result of great coffee but of the experience it provided to patrons, while online, iTunes satisfied the ignored needs of music buyers and Amazon did the same for book lovers. The Macintosh is finally gaining market share because the experience consumers have had with iPods has been so satisfying that they are now ready to bring that same satisfying experience to their desktops. The key to business survival is not a new feature or even a lower price, but rather an experience that satisfies the soul.

Experiences Satisfy The Soul

Traditional business thinking has lagged far behind the sophisticated psychological desires of the experience-economy consumer. Business schools have produced a cadre of bean counters and statistical idiot savants whose grasp of this new experience-driven economic reality has been outpaced by Web-savvy mavericks bent on delivering the essential emotional need of consumers to gain some measure of satisfaction in a hectic, demanding, frustrating world.

The Web is not without its own version of mindless number crunchers, selling the search engine optimization snake oil of Web-traffic nirvana. These new age carpetbaggers play on the conventional wisdom and comfort food of spreadsheet statistics. Like Texas Hold’em poker, you can play the math or you can play the man, and it’s the latter that generally walks away the winner.

The Six-Step Web-Branding Blueprint

The Goal: Transformation Through Self-Actualization

The end result of our efforts is to transform website visitors into customers but in order to do that we must take a step back. The experience economy demands a new way of thinking about your audience and exactly what it is you’re selling. Every marketing decision you make from now on should relate back to one simple priority: what element of self-actualization do you deliver? Find that element and build your marketing campaign around it. Forget price, quality and service; they are all discounted in the minds of a highly cynical marketplace bugged more than enlightened by heavy-handed old-school marketing presentations and methodologies.

Step one: understand your marketing goal is to transform your audience from unsatisfied cynical viewers into satisfied contented clients.

The Prerequisite: Expectation

Successful marketing is about creating a set of realistic, believable expectations that can be fulfilled by the offering. Almost daily we are bombarded by over-hyped, silly direct marketing Web-advertising that is structured to take advantage of consumers’ weaknesses, their desire to improve, to be the best they can be, and to gain some measure of satisfaction and relevance in their lives. Creating false expectations may lead to a onetime sale but not a long-term client.

Step two: create appropriate, believable expectations that you can actually fulfill.

The Product: Audience

One way of wrapping your head around this new approach is to think of your audience as if they were your product; you are transforming them from unsatisfied browsers to satisfied evangelists – that’s your job. You just don’t want to make a sale you want to make coverts, an army of satisfied consumers telling everyone they know how great you are. Getting people onto your emailing list is not good enough; turn them into believers and proselytizers.

Step three: the product of your marketing is your audience, turn your website audience into true believers spreading the gospel of your ability to satisfy.

The Methodology: Experience

Experiences are passed-on and reinforced by the strength of the story you tell. The Springwise newsletter has a perfect example of the strength of having a unique and interesting story. Emil and Magnus Gerbola of Denmark import Italian wine and sell it to wine bars, restaurants, corporate clients and consumers. But the experience of buying a bottle of Gerbola Vin is different from your usual trip to the liquor store. These two brothers, the sons of an itinerant Italian circus clown have set up shop in an underground candle-lit bunker built in 1942. What could be better than sitting with your friends enjoying a bottle of imported wine and entertaining them with the story of the circus clown’s wine merchant sons operating out of a World War II bunker.

Step four: enhance your offering with a differentiating story forming the basis of the unique satisfying experience you offer.

The Stage: The Web

Believe it or not there are still businesses that can’t quite grasp the necessity of using the Web as their marketing centerpiece. And then there are those that just don’t recognize that the Web is a multimedia platform, and not just a reservoir of digital brochures and catalogs.

The Web has multiplied the Paradox of Choice, the principle that the more choices you have, the harder it is to make a decision. As a consequence, websites must deliver well-crafted differentiating marketing messages using experience-generating multimedia Web-techniques.

Step five: the Web is no longer just a dumping ground of random information; it is a highly sophisticated stage for creating experiences through the delivery of entertaining, informative, compelling, and memorable stories.

The Vehicle: Video

There is just no better way to cut through the remoteness and isolation of the Web than video. And when we talk of video we are not talking about slide shows of still photos and bulleted points. Just because it moves doesn’t mean it’s effective. The way to tell your story and deliver your message is with a real person that can express emotion, emphasis, charm, personality and impact.

Step six: Deliver your marketing message, your unique differentiating story, your identity and brand through the clever and sophisticated employment of memorable Web-video.

A Final Thought

If you run a business you’re busy and that leads to a satisficing tendency to over-simplify, to reduce things down to an elevator pitch, to create meaningless mission statements and lists of bulleted points delivered by a boring PowerPoint slide show; unfortunately clients are complicated and business is complex, but Pine and Gilmore say it clearly in the title of their book, ‘The Experience Economy: Work is Theatre & Every Business a Stage’ or if you prefer just remember what old Will Shakespeare had to say, “All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players.” If you want to be a ‘player,’ you have to learn how to effectively communicate with your audience through the power and impact of experience marketing.

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