How to start defining your brand?

I get this question often - "how do I define my company's brand?"  Building and defining your brand can be daunting for any size organization.  My advice is to start with the customer (this is usually my advice for just about anything marketing related!).

You will need to 1) define your target audience and 2) understand the one thing you have their permission to own.  This will help you get a clear idea of how you are different from the competition in the eyes of your audience so that you know what space you can own based on the value you create. 

Define Your Audience
Being choiceful and zeroing in on your target audience is critical, even if it means excluding other audiences. You build your brand around your core audience and the differentiation you own, and let other audiences either be drawn in or be left out. The reason you are okay with exclusion is that the customers you attract ultimately define the kind of brand you are and the way you operate. Think about the way your customers ask you to respond to them today (cut prices? deliver faster? etc.)......you build everything around their needs, so be careful to get the customers you want.  Need more help segmenting your audience?  Read this.

Understand Your Competitive Advantage from Your Audience POV
Start by talking to your existing customers to understand why they choose you over the competition. Ask potential customers how they perceive your brand.  If you can, engage market research professionals to help you. Based on the insights ideate around what space you can own - what do you want your brand to represent in their hearts and minds above and beyond product and functional features? What emotional territory do you want and have permission to own based on your competitive differentiation?  Also, what about their current perception do you want to strengthen, shift, or change?    

Clearly defining target audience and your brand’s “ownable” competitive advantage among that audience is the key to occupying a unique, defensible position in a customers mind and building long-lasting brand affinity.

Got questions? Email me.

Telling Your Brand Story.....Without Saying a Thing

Your brand story is not actually about you.

Your brand story is about your customers.

And in fact your brand story is not about words or about what you "say"; it is about action your brand takes on behalf of your customers and the benefits they receive from interacting with your brand.

A prime example is Zappos.  Instead of just saying "We have great customer service", they offer free shipping both ways and allow returns for up to one year.  If you have ever interacted with a Zappos customer service agent you know how friendly, responsive and earnest they are.  In fact, they can usually get you what you want, or do better than what you want (exceeding expectations).  The Zappos brand story of great customer service is told through these actions & interactions.

How is your brand story told?

Need help bringing your brand story to life?  Email me.

How & Why to Segment Your Customers

Segmentation is the process of defining who, along the spectrum of potential groups, should be your customer (who is most likely to value your offer, product or service).  Segmentation shapes every piece of the marketing strategy since the reason you exist is because you create value for a customer group.  Read why it is critical that your marketing strategy start with the customer here.

The segmentation process deserves time and thought. Below I've outlined the steps to start the segmentation process. You should seriously consider if you need to hire a marketing professional to help you complete your segmentation study if you do not have the expertise yourself. 

Segmentation Steps:

Brainstorm: Who are the Buyers?

Who are all the potential buyers or consumers of your product or service?  Make a list.  Get creative.  Think about different ways to describe them.

Brainstorm:  Consider Different Ways to Segment the Consumers

Think:  what are all the different ways you could divide the list of buyers & consumers you made?

Some common differentiators include geographic (city, nation, rural vs urban, etc.), demographic (age, income, gender, etc.) and lifestyle (luxury, modest, etc.). 

Push beyond these generalities and consider how consumers use or engage with your product or service (at a category level). For example, are there heavy users & light users?  Do they value different benefits - price vs performance?

Define the Segments

Give your segments names & descriptions.

For each segment, describe:

1) use of product or service, 

2) benefits they seek from the product, 

3) attitude and level of loyalty toward product, and

4) pain points or satisfaction level with existing options.

Create Scenarios & Evaluate

For each segment, consider what it would mean for you & your organization if you pick them.  

Take time to explore each segment fully to understand the implications to channel selection or distribution, pricing & brand positioning.

Pick a Segment

Deciding which segment to select depends on several factors.  You need to assess:

1) your "own-able" competitive advantage,

2) your business goals, 

3) available resources and 

4) the expected return or profitability of the different segments.  

Develop Your Positioning Statement

This is one of the hardest steps, but it is very important.  The goal is to "define the specific position you want to occupy in the mind of the target audience you chose." 

This is based on 3 critical elements: 

1) your point of difference or competitive advantage over the other choices your target audience has (your claim), 

2) the reason to believe your point of difference (your proof), 

3) the end benefit your target audience receives (emotional benefit, not functional).

Read more about the concept of positioning from the people who originated the idea in the short book Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind. 

Got a question about segmentation?  Need help?  Email me.

Why You Need To Segment Your Customers

A worthy re-post. I originally posted this in July 2010, if you missed it, now's your chance!

Often businesses and organizations skip a critical step in formation of their marketing strategy - target audience segmentation, or essentially defining who, along the spectrum of potential customers, to attempt to serve.  Segmentation shapes every piece of the marketing strategy since the customer, not the product or service, determine the game plan and rules by which the game is played.

So why do smart people (like you perhaps) skip it?  Common response:

In reality, many people just don't understand the power of segmentation or how to do it well. 

As I mentioned, segmentation drives key decisions related to your marketing strategy.  To do it well does take time, but it is absolutely, one-hundred percent worth it.   And even if your product is designed for the mass market, you still need segmentation to define who the most likely early adopters are and how to engage them.

For example, a chocolate brand segmenting the market based on use habits may choose to target those who primarily use chocolate for cooking & baking, while another might target those using it for daily snacking.  The choice has important implications for what kind of chocolates to make & in what shapes, how to package & price their chocolates, and where to sell it. 

Segmentation involves deciding on what basis to divide the variety of consumers that might benefit from your product or service.

Thought-starters:  How does your organization segment the market?  How should they segment it?  Are you using the right marketing tools to reach the segment you've chosen?

Need help answering these questions?  Email me.

Using Insights to Inspire & Innovate

Entrepreneurs, start-ups and innovation labs at big companies in the modern world face a similar challenge - how to inspire their people to innovate in a way that will result in big ideas that actually make it out of the lab and into the marketplace.

Many of these talented individuals miss a critical step in their innovation process:  gathering the right consumer insights to inform their innovation & brainstorming process.

The right insights are NOT:  demographics, what consumers say they want.

Those kinds of insights don't help inform innovation, in fact they can stifle or mislead it.

The right insights come from: understanding your target consumer unmet needs, observing the habits of the extreme users of your existing products,  understanding your customer's perspective by putting yourself in their shoes as they shop for and use your product.

This last one is really important - what is it like to be a mom toting three kids to the grocery store to shop for your product?  What is it like when she gets home and tries to open your product, figure out how to start using your product?  What could make her experience more rewarding for her?

It's easy to forget that how you see the world is likely very different from the consumer you are trying to win over.

Once you understand their perspective - by literally putting yourself in their situation - you can put your product development hat back on and create a new product that will not only make it out of the lab successfully, but will win over customers again and again with your product alone, not a marketing gimmick or message.

Are you gathering the right insights to inspire you and your team?

A Lesson in Engagement

I've blogged about this before, but it is worth re-posting.  This framework is invaluable for thinking about how to engage your customers, stakeholders and anyone for that matter who you want to believe in your idea - your "tribe". The very talented folks at Seattle-based Groundwire, a technology consulting group, have developed an insightful framework for how to think about your customer & tribe engagement, rightly named "the Engagement Pyramid."

Non-profits and for-profits alike will benefit from understanding this ladder approach to building strong relationships with your target consumers.  

Check out the full details of the Engagement Pyramid here.

How to Make the Most of Your Next Focus Group

First, video it if you can. 

Every good researcher videos the focus group.  This is because a focus group is a psychological experiment and you will have to use your ability to read and understand human behavior.  The info you gather will need to be interpreted, and having a recording of the group really, really helps.

Second, come up with good questions. 

Lots of them. Then, PRIORITIZE your questions, because a good focus groups almost always runs over time. To come up with good questions, think about what you want to know in order to make decisions.  So, think first of all the decisions you have to make. Then, think about what you would like to know to help you make a better decision. Then, think what you would like to know from the target audience that might provide that info. 

Third, let the conversation flow.

While you need to have your questions prepared, at the same time, be ready to let the conversation flow and be more free form in order to get at the "whys" behind the answers your participants give.  Again, its psychological - you want to know the rational AND, more importantly, emotional reasons people behave a certain way.

Finally, remember success relies on your skills to interpret & understand human behavior.

If you don't know how to do this, hire a professional who can.  Participants will not be able to articulate the "whys" behind their behavior very often.  You will have to draw it out of them with questions that will flow from the answers they give.

Does your social media strategy convert customers?

Drilling in on Social Conversion Strategies - The Conversion Scientist

A great blog post by Brian Massey who really gets how to think about and use social media tools to help drive your business.  This is about thinking through your social media strategy as part of the entire marketing funnel from awareness to referral.  Check it out:

Drilling in on Social Conversion Strategies

Is Social Networking Right for Your Business? - NYTimes.com

Is Social Networking Right for Your Business? - NYTimes.com

Q. You are considering whether to start a social networking effort on behalf of your company. Can that kind of exposure be beneficial?

A. In many cases, it can be. As an employee, you are an extension of your company and can enhance its brand by connecting with current and potential customers on sites likeFacebook and Twitter, as well as through blogs. Social media can be a powerful tool for listening to customers and building a reputation for responsive service, says David Nour, chief executive of the Nour Group, a business development consultancy in Atlanta, and author of “Relationship Economics.” “You get real-time feedback and can engage with customers quickly to answer questions or help them solve problems.”

If your company is about to release a new product or service, for example, social media can spread the word and increase your reach exponentially, he says.

Read The Article in the NYTimes Here.

Do you need more traffic or just more of the right traffic?

Often start-ups and small businesses evaluate their web site based on a few key metrics: 

Traffic

Time on Site

Bounce Rate

and of course Conversion.

These are all good metrics to use to understand the quality and quantity of your web site traffic and the performance of your web site.  But which one is most important?  The answer often depends on the goals of the company or organization.   For almost every brand though, Conversion is the primary focus. 

And that's great, but remember that in its simplest form Conversion is made up of two variables:  # of visitors and # of converted visitors.  The reason I bring this up is because many marketing managers and CEOs focus on the second variable.  I encourage you to always be evaluating your traffic-driving techniques in terms of driving qualified traffic only, and really work to actually bring the first number (# of visitors) down.

Down?

Yes.  More traffic is not always better. In fact, more can be worse because it costs your more in terms of advertising and customer service. It essentially drives up your overall marketing cost of customer acquisition and drives down your conversion rate. 

Drive qualified traffic by refining your advertising and outbound marketing efforts to engage your target audience as best as possible.  It takes more work up front to find the right sites, keywords,  etc., but it will pay you back in form of lower costs and a better-performing site.

Need help evaluating your marketing programs or web site?  Email me.

Free E-Book on Real Time Marketing & PR

Check out David Meerman Scott's newest free e-book on real time marketing.

From the book:

"As financial market players know, advantage comes from reacting to news first. The same thing is true for all companies. When you start the conversation, you are recognized as someone who is plugged into the marketplace of ideas. If you talk about an idea early, you naturally get more exposure because the threads of conversation stem from what you have said. If you’re in late you get lost in the cacophony.

With a new product, if you get first to market in a hot category, your initial momentum may give you an
advantage for many years. If you’re an early adopter on a social media platform, you build a larger following
than those who join later. If you’re first to engage the market, people notice and your offering gains valuable
attention. If you react early and connect with customers as their concerns arise, they see you as thoughtful
and caring."

Seth's Blog: The problem with "global warming"

Seth's Blog: The problem with "global warming"

Do you inspire your customers?

Think about inspirational leaders and brands.  Do you know why they inspire you?

Think about you and your business.  Are you inspirational?  Does your product, brand or service inspire your customers or clients?

Simon Sinek, anthropologist turned marketing professional, argues that inspiring others is all about why you do what you do - your purpose or your cause. It is not what you make or what you say that delivers the inspiration.

Find 20 minutes today to watch this video of Simon Sinek talking about his simple, but enlightening principle for inspirational leadership. He stresses the idea that people choose to do business with you because of the "why", not the "what"  - and his examples using Martin Luther King and Apple really help bring it home.

The New Faces of Social Media | Fast Company

Interesting article in Fast Company for marketers grappling with how to make the most of their social media marketing initiatives.


Key insights:
Identifying and engaging the influencers in your space, that matter to your target audience, can have dramatic impact on growing your brand awareness in a genuine way. This means someone your customer trusts is sticking up for you, spreading your ideas. 


As this article highlights, it is critical you take an authentic approach and partner with the influencers to bring interesting & relevant ideas to your customer, not just a promo for your product. Think longer-term about building relationships, not making a quick sale. Social media presents a unique opportunity to do that. Are you part of it? If not, get going!


The New Faces of Social Media | Fast Company

Aspirin or Vitamin?

Which one are you?  Are you (and your product or service) addressing a real, unmet need - a pain point that your target customers have & feel deeply, therefore making your solution a must-have?  Or, are you trying to sell a vitamin - a nice-to-have product or service?

You need to be the aspirin.

If you are a vitamin, consider how you could change your product, service or delivery of it in order to become an aspirin.  Your target audience will thank you, and reward you for it.

Fast Company addressed this very concept in a recent article.  Worth a read - the Felt Need.

What Are You Talking About?

What are you really talking about on your blog or web site?  Want to see a beautiful visual of your words?  Check out Wordle.  It will take you 10 seconds to create it - you just enter the URL of your web page or blog that has a feed.

You may be surprised at the words you use often and what those words are saying to your customers, friends or community.  What words do you want to see on your Wordle?

Here is what the Spark & Hatch blog is talking about:

Gobbledygook

Great (and free) ebook from marketing veteran, David Meerman Scott, on writing messages tailored for your audience that focus on how your business, product or service solves their problem, versus blathering on about features.......worth the read!

Turning Insights Into Innovations to Change the World

Using business to combat poverty.  A powerful story about innovation and business changing the world to inspire you to take a break from your daily routine, like the Bangledeshi entrepreneur Iqbal Quadir did when he came up with the idea to bring mobile phones to poor people in his home country.

What insights to have you unique access to in your life – personal or organizational - to spur innovation?

The Idea:   Issue loans to current, reliable people in these poor villages in Bangledesh who would then use mobile telephones to earn money in their village as an income generating enterprise.

The Product:  GrameenPhone, which started with one phone and is now the leading telecommunications provider in Bangladesh.

The Insights:  

• The lives of poor people in Bangladesh are full of inconvenience associated with isolation and a lack of information. Farmers, for example, sell their products to an unscrupulous middleman who cheats them with an unreasonably low price, when a simple telephone call would have enabled them to find out what the market prices are or what prices the competitors are offering.

• Wasted time is a huge cost for everyone and poor people should not waste time —time is at least one resource poor people have the same amount everyday as rich people do.

• The costs of software and hardware decrease as volume rises.

• The value of a product increases when greater numbers of people use it. 

The Result: 

Saving valuable time for poor people and empowering them to lift themselves out of poverty.

Read the full story here.

Serendipitous Discovery

Many of your marketing strategies and tactics probably focus on ways to "reach out to" your target audience.  That makes sense. After all, you know who they are and why they value your product or service, so of course you should be seeking them out to engage them.

But, what tactics are you employing to let your target consumer and other consumers discover you?

A few weeks ago I attended an interesting session hosted by Social Media Breakfast Seattle with Holly Brown, 20 year marketing veteran, speaking about brands as publishers in the age of peer to peer communication.

She shed light on how to select and start conversations in communities that already exist and are of value to your target audience. Instead of relying on consumers to actively seek you out, you can leverage communities where they exist to engage with them with content that is relevant to them.

Letting consumers find you in this way is called "serendipitous discovery."

Does your marketing plan answer these 5 questions?

1. How do your marketing strategies & objectives support the critical organizational goals?
2. How are you measuring each marketing initiative?
3. What is your target cost per acquisition?
4. What is the customer lifetime value of your target customer?
5. What are your alternative strategies if things change?

These questions are fundamental to your plan, in addition to many others that I'll touch on in future posts.  If your plan answers these it means that you are headed in the right direction in order to move your business or organization forward and spending time on the right things.

If your plan does not answer these questions, get to work understanding where you are falling short.  Get your team together and answer them together.  Be prepared to change what you are working on after answering them......

Of course, I am assuming your marketing plan answers "Who is your target customer?" because that is fundamental. How well do you know your customer is an entirely different question.  Read this to get inspired on that topic.

Oh and if you said your target customer is everyone - don't believe yourself. Read this.