branding Archives - Page 2 of 7

Patience Is A Virtue in Marketing

It is highly important to realize that marketing takes time. Nothing happens overnight. It’s not just a question of one big ad here or there or one promoted Facebook post. People need to go through a certain process and you have to reach them a number of times before they’re going to be ready to buy from you. If you want to know more about that marketing process, check out this blog post here.

According to sales guru Brian Tracy it takes five sales calls before the customer is ready to buy. Those are sales calls and a very expensive way to sell. You have an expensive employee going there and they’re spending time with the customer at their office. They’re in the same room, they’re speaking to them face to face for at least a few minutes.

So if it takes five of those sales call for the customer to buy, you can imagine how much more often you reach your prospects through marketing methods before they’re ready to buy. (You may think that makes marketing less effective, but trust me, it doesn’t. Marketing can be scaled much more affordably than sales calls ;)

I’m going share one of my favourite marketing quotes with you to illustrate this point.

This one is from Thomas Smith:

The first time a man looks at an advertisement, he does not see it.
The second time, he does not notice it.
The third time, he is conscious of its existence.
The fourth time, he faintly remembers having seen it before.
The fifth time, he reads it.
The sixth time, he turns up his nose at it.
The seventh time, he reads it through and says “Oh brother!”
The eight time, he says “Here’s that confounded thing again!”
The ninth time, he wonders if it amounts to anything.
The tenth time, he asks his neighbor if he has tried it.
The eleventh time, he wonders how the advertiser makes it pay.
The twelfth time, he thinks it must be a good thing.
The thirteenth time, he thinks perhaps it might be worth something.
The fourteenth time, he remembers wanting such thing a long time.
The fifteenth time, he is tantalized because he cannot afford to buy it.
The sixteenth time, he thinks he will buy it someday.
The seventeenth time, he makes a memorandum to buy it.
The eighteenth time, he swears at his poverty.
The nineteenth time, he counts his money carefully.
The twentieth time he sees the ad, he buys what it is offering.

This underpins what I have been saying about “repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat”. People have to see you a number of times before they’re ready to buy. What is even more interesting is that Thomas Smith wrote this in 1885!!! So this is not new.

Marketing really does take time. Thomas Smith realised this ages and ages ago!

You need to repeat yourself, you need to be consistent and you need to be talking about the same things to start filtering through and owning that place in the prospects mind.

Are you repeating yourself enough – or have you perhaps given up too early? ;)

Repetition

In a previous blog post I have discussed how we need to identify each and every touchpoint with our brand to examine how we can use them to build it, and how we need to make sure that we consistently deliver the same brand experience through each of those touchpoint. This is not enough though. You also have to remember to repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat and repeat again.

It’s Great to Be Bored!

Repetition is absolutely key in marketing and I can promise you that if you are doing your marketing right, you will get bored. You will get bored of your brand identity; your colours, fonts, images etc., you will get bored of your marketing materials; your advertising, messaging etc. You’ll get bored with the whole thing. Absolutely, you’re going to get bored!

But the thing is, you’re always working with your brand, you’re always looking at it, thinking about it, it’s always there. However, you’d be really lucky if the people you are trying to reach see 1% of what you are up to. So you must remember that it’s not about you. It’s about them. You’re going to get bored but you have to pull through it and just stick with it!

The thing is if you start changing things up, changing your messaging, changing the look of what you are sending out, whether it is advertising, brochures, stuff on social media, blogs or whatever it is, you end up at square one again.

We all know how many things are there out there vying for people’s attention each and every day. So when you start changing things up they’re not going to recognize you. You’re going to have to start building awareness and recognition all over again. However if you stick with it and you stay the same, you’re going to be strengthening their memory structures of you in their minds and they’re going to end up sticking.

Snakes and Ladders

It’s a bit like a game of snakes and ladders. [Read more…]

Your Logo: How Do You Buy A Face?

A long time ago I sat in a conference room with a brilliant branding consultant and the CEO of a major company. The consultant was pitching to the CEO and had shown him some fantastic case studies and made some excellent suggestions as to how his agency could help bring his company to the next level. I had not been in the business long at this point, and I remember being absolutely mesmerised. I have always loved the branding aspect of business and this session only made my love stronger.

After about an hour’s pitch the CEO looked at the consultant and said: “So, you want to change our logo?” My face dropped. I could not believe what I was hearing. The fact that a CEO of a major company distilled the whole subject of branding down to changing the logo not only shocked me, but also frightened me. If the big boys don’t know what branding is all about, what hope is there for small and medium businesses?

Fortunately, not everyone is like that CEO. I am happy to say that more and more people realise what branding is all about, and that the whole concept is about so much more than a logo. Check out my resource page on branding if you want to know more. In this post, however, I do want to talk about the logo. Because although a logo is not the same as a brand, it is an important part of it. You could say that your logo is the face of your brand. It is often the first thing, and often for a long time the only thing, people see of your brand and it is therefore extremely important.

A logo is not really a simple thing

Your logo is the face of your company, your product or your service. Your logo has to convey the right message. It has to be “on brand”. This, often very small icon or image, has to convey your brand in a simple way, often just logotype, i.e. just letters, or just a simple image. It has to differentiate you in the market. It has to be easily identifiable and recognisable.

A logo has to adapt to a variety of situations. It will be used on paper, electronically, on a web site, in black and white, inverted, in full color, with other logos, it can be used absolutely huge, like on a building, or incredibly tiny on a mobile website or in an app.

Given its importance, and the complicated world in which it is used, you need to make sure [Read more…]

Branding: Be Different, Be Brave!

Do you want to beat your competition? Do you really want to be the winner in your market?

Then you need to be clear on why people should choose you rather than the others.

Typical answers to the question “why should I choose you over your competitors?” are things such as:

“We are better”
“We have better customer service”
“We have better quality products”

These kinds of answers just aren’t going to cut it. Better according to who? According to what standards? Of course we should always aim to give our customer the best we can, within the confines of our positioning in the market. If we are going to be the cheapest, we are not going to provide luxury quality, but we can aim to provide the best quality within our affordable price range. But there is a fundamental flaw in choosing “better” as the main reason for choosing you over the competition. First of all, there are no universal standards as to what is considered good, better or best, it is all relative and it is all in the eye of the beholder. Secondly, these kinds of things can be imitated. If you are doing or providing something better than the competition, they can study you and copy what you are doing. They may not always succeed, but they will definitely try, and may very well succeed. So whilst I am not saying you should not aim to be the best at what you do (you should!) I am simply saying, that it is extremely unlikely that this is enough and you need more.

So why should people choose you over your competitors?

Simple. [Read more…]

Branding: Brand Touchpoints

Brand and branding, the act of building that brand, are at the core of marketing. It is what makes you different from the rest and, if built well, appeal to your target groups. As I’ve discussed in other blog posts, you need to determine what your brand is today, what you want it to be and then go about building it in a focused and effective way.

So let’s say that you know exactly what you want your brand to be. You have a clear brand core (know which drawer you want to be in ;) You know what you want people to think and what you want them to feel. How do we take those brand associations and the characteristics that we know we want for our brand and actually build them up in the minds and hearts of the customers?

There are two key points here: [Read more…]