A Branding Broadside

Two thoughts on growing margins in a time of flat revenues.

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 23:43:00 GMT

One's kind of a quick hit. Except that it took 30 years to come up with.

The other, we'll be discussing more over the next several posts.

The quick thought.

We market to make sales. We brand to maintain margins.

The longer thought.

If you took marketing courses in school - and I never did - you learned about the four Ps that supposedly fall under its umbrella:

Product.
Price.
Promotion.
Place (meaning distribution).

Only, I think a lot of contemporary businesses would take issue with that set. The definition hardly leaves room for engineering and operations. Not to mention finance.

But I would suggest that the part of product development that has to do with packaging and bundling specific items and services is not only a function of marketing but also has a big effect on a company's brand.

Which lands it right in the purview of the branding consultant.

More and more, rearranging the product lineup and packaging it is a big part of what this branding firm does to help our clients establish premium positioning in their markets.

As we've all seen in the international marketplace, sometimes those product bundles wind up creating not just new positioning but reinventing entirely new product categories.

Take a look at Apple in that regard, for instance.

But even stopping short of the full-on category reinvention, pulling together more valuable product and service bundles can help any business make real money. It can:

Capture new sources of revenue.
Bring in that new revenue at higher margins.
Widen margins with new, high-value offerings in current markets.
Maintain margins on current revenue sources - even when the competition is trying to start a price war.

Of course, delivering on the promises implied in those high-value bundles is critical - just like delivering on the promises the existing brand already makes.

Is it about passion?

Tue, 15 Jun 2010 03:20:00 GMT

I've been resisting buying Seth Godin's book Linchpin.

Skimming over his blog posts, not even half paying attention to his relentless promotion of the book. Not bothering to read his definition of one. Telling myself, Oh, it's just another book.

Until tonight, when someone I deeply respect, Francine Hardaway, wrote in her blog about how it changed her life before she even finished reading it. So I clicked on the link, and there was a review by Hugh McLeod, whom I also respect.

Deeply.

The book is now downloaded to my phone - Kindle for iPhone - and I'm crying big tears. These are words I have desperately needed to hear.

They come from Hugh's review, on Seth's definition of linchpin as artist:

"By Seth’s definition, an artist is not just some person who messes around with paint and brushes, an artist is somebody who does (and I LOVE this term) “emotional work.”

Work that you put your heart and soul into. Work that matters. Work that you gladly sacrifice all other alternatives for. As a working artist and cartoonist myself, I know exactly what he means. It’s not what you do, it’s the way that you do it."

The way that you do it.

With passion.

Unable to stop until whatever it is, is right.

A blog post. A Tweet (No, I am not the New York Times.)

A logo.

A home page.

A brand.

Great news! For my client, Cindy Schaper of Sew It Seams, and all of us direct marketers!

Mon, 07 Jun 2010 20:37:00 GMT

Cindy writes:

I had a customer first thing this morning because of the email. They about 5 or 6 more.

Email does work.

That was a week ago, based on a campaign we sent on a Thursday around 8 pm. All those customers came in the very next day!

Find her at sewitseamsllc.com.

Want to draw a flock? Then focus your marketing on female sheep. (Yes, it's a pun.)

Sun, 21 Mar 2010 15:46:00 GMT

I see three kinds of marketing all around me:

Little Piggy Marketing.

It goes We, We, We, all the way home:

We offer this.
We're great at that.
We promise you the other thing.

What's in it for the poor reader? Where's the solution to his or her problem?

Three Tenors marketing.

Mostly from sole practitioners and political candidates, it sounds a lot like Placido Domingo warming up for a concert: Me, Me, Me, Me.

My strengths are this.
My beliefs are that.
I promise this.
I'm a provider of that service.

(And don't get me started on the word provide. Is there a more dead word, devoid of excitement and action, in the English language? Can we even really classify it as a verb at all?)

If we're going to look to farm animals for our marketing examples, the one I'd pick is (pun gets bad here - look out) the female sheep.

Ewe.

Here's what's in it for ewe.
Here's how ewe benefit -preferably in exciting new (newe?) ways.
Three new solutions to ewe-r (your) biggest problem.
How ewe can be the biggest/prettiest/happiest/whateverest ewe in your flock.

And it works in B2B too. Because business buyers are still people (ewe) first - 24 hours a day.

How to feel like a CEO.

Sat, 20 Feb 2010 17:48:00 GMT

Guy Kawasaki says the biggest mistake startups make is not budgeting for marketing, because entrepreneurs tend to think the product will sell itself.

I see lots of folks not paying attention to branding, for the same reason: If the product is good enough, they think, it ought to open doors all by itself.

Here are three counterexamples from my own experience:

My client Artesys is rolling out nationally this coming week as a featured investment choice in retirement plans from OneAmerica Insurance. (Check out their new site from Atomicdust.) Could that have happened if the product was still called "Global Strategic Asset Allocation?"

Kimberly Schneider, The Manifestation Maven, knew it was time to get a real brand in 2009. She was starting a major expansion into television, radio and public speaking - and had just booked her coaching schedule solid. She knew in advance - unlike most entrepreneurs - a hodgepodge of homemade package designs wouldn't cut it when she was presenting to major media representatives.

TransFigure Total Health could have chosen to be just another mom and daughter selling a diet. But they're building a company that's changing people's lives, 40 days at a time.

In each case, they needed to do more than pass the four-second test. That's that test that asks if you're a legitimate businessperson:

How smart are you?
Do you have any money?
Can I trust you?
Do I like you?

They needed to create a real look and even a language all their own, a way their prospects and customers can identify them and, down the road, each other. They knew they needed to create a culture that would grow a following, that would build their businesses and grow their incomes.

Most of my clients know their new brands will bring them new levels of success and growth. They knew their new brands would ultimately make them more money.

As we got started, they were each excited about the process and the future.

But once they had a real brand working for their businesses, I think they were genuinely surprised at how much more successful they felt.

They had a new level of confidence.

They weren't just business owners anymore. They were company presidents and CEOs. And the world started to treat them that way, too.

Rebranding a turnaround? Better do this first.

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 04:28:00 GMT

This went out as a special Pro Pro Secrets for Better Branding.

This week's Secret is Secrets 7: The critical first step in rebranding a turnaround.

Or, as they say in London's Underground . . .

Mind the gap.

Brand is about customer experience. A more accurate term would be brand reality, as it exists in the customer's mind.

Branding - those symbols and colors and pictures, and the sensory experiences - whether sounds on the web or smells in the coffee shop - is about telling us what our experience is going to be like before we actually get there. It's the brand promise.

As soon as somebody starts engaging with your business, they can see how well you're going to deliver. It's not going to be perfect.

There's always a gap between the brand promise and the brand reality.

Even at the best customer-service organizations in the world, places like Nordstrom and Zappos.com, where pleasing the customer is an obsession, and every employee is authorized to spend company money to make customers happy.

Yup. They have a gap. If only because the bar is set so high that their customers expect nothing short of perfection. Psychic powers, even. So they get their share of angry emails.

So of course, you and I have gaps too - much wider ones. We'll probably survive them, as long as we come close enough, in the areas that matter most to our customers.

A turnaround doesn't have a gap. It has a chasm.

Now, when a company is distressed enough that it's getting new management and new capital, it needs new revenue too. A rebranding makes sense - the old brand is liekly damaged beyond repair.

But that can't be Step One.

On the way down, chances are good that the old management missed some delivery dates to customers and broke a few other promises too - probably not just brand promises, but actual, explicit promises. It likely did a number on product and service quality too.

Hence, the chasm.

So before you can start the rebranding, it's worth it to talk to old customers and suppliers to make sure you can close that chasm into a normal, manageable brand gap:

Find the most serious gaps. Talk to customers who left at representative periods in the decline of the company - especially the ones who were loyal the longest and who were the most upset when they left.
Gauge the damage to the original brand, the company's credibility and its knowledge base. Find out exactly what happened to products and services, and when, both officially and officially. What capabilities do you need to rebuild? What do you still have, but just need to strengthen, or re-publicize?
Close, preemptively, the gaps that may form between the promise of a new brand and what it can actually deliver within acceptable margins. Train staff in customer service, set up systems for efficient delivery and build back channels to communicate with customers at a variety of management levels, so you can be sure you're delivering what their people need, the way they need it. Those systems will also let you be the first to know when problems crop up, so you can fix them almost before your customers are aware of the issue themselves.
Reassess. With the Close step mostly in place, head back to those disgruntled ex-customers for another dose of candid feedback. Do they think you've got a good start on addressing the problem - enough so a rebrand/relaunch won't strike them as a cruel joke? Would they, perhaps, try your company again, at a big discount?

At that point, whatever they answer is a positive.

If they decline, they probably have their own reasons. You've done everything you can reasonably do to repair your company's business relationship with them.
If they accept, you have a huge story to tell as you market the products of your fully repaired company. With testimonials that have a level of credibility psychologists say your competition will never be able to match.