Building
your brand
Did you know that more than 2/3 of the
total market value of ASX 200 companies is made up of intangible
assets? How much of a price tag do you think Coca Cola or Holden
place on their company image? If you’re betting “a
lot”, then you’d be right.
The fact is that the more a business grows, the more emphasis
should be placed on both market planning and image. It’s
no coincidence that companies that say the right things to their
carefully considered audiences are the ones that generate a
better bottom line for their proprietors.
Ask 100 people on the street to name a successful business
and 99 of them will name a brand. Taking it one step further,
most of those companies have only reached a high level of recognition
because they have made a concerted effort to develop their business’
image.
In today’s saturated marketplace, no business is really
selling anything unique, and if they are, it is soon met with
renewed competition. Even if you are lucky to get it, a Unique
Selling Proposition will never last long before it is copied,
cannibalized or overtaken.
The only thing that really separates businesses these days is
identity—the way the market perceives your goods or services
to differ from that of your competitors.
Of course, it isn’t really as simple as that, is it? Because
at the end of the day, successful businesses don’t trade
in services or products—they sell ideas. They rely on
the way the market bonds with the promise of what they have
to offer, and then they deliver it.
As such, Nike doesn’t sell shoes. Holden doesn’t
sell cars, and Hawkins doesn’t sell plants. They sell
athleticism, masculinity and lifestyle. In doing so, these brands
bear out the old advertising dictum of the importance of “selling
us ourselves” - that is, they create an image that we
can firstly relate to before investing our dollars. Marketing
executives work out what our hopes and dreams are and repackage
them as commodities. In doing so, they don’t have to do
so much “selling” at all—because a specific
relationship has already been formed. Most importantly, this
is a bond that you, as the business owner who has such a marketing
plan, can exert some control over.
It’s a no-brainer to say that the relationship between
prospective client and/or target market and your business is
an important one, but many owners don’t actually realize
how carefully it needs to be constructed in order to work effectively
and consistently. Some would argue that they “believe
in” referrals and word of mouth over marketing, but this
ignores the fact that these things are marketing, they’re
just un-systemised. Further, their biggest problem is that they
only work to a certain point before the aforementioned saturated
market begins to apply its own laws of diminishing returns.
In other words, you hit a wall because you can’t simply
create new relationships with all prospectives in the market.
Which, of course, brings us back to branding. When implemented
appropriately, branding can not only build those relationships,
but just as importantly create cashflow stability, provide leverage
into new markets, expand your G.P. and ultimately, improve your
bottom line.
Channel Planning
How do you get new clients? How does the average person that’s
looking for what you’re selling come to realise you exist,
then choose you? Of course, there’s no one answer to these
questions, but there’s some guidelines that work to get
the right people beating a path to your door.
Channel Planning isn’t about working out what’s
on TV tonight. It’s about working out the various channels
of communications (anything from the Yellow Pages to the Internet
to TV to direct mail) that your target market comes into contact
with; then figuring out the best way to use those media to create
pathways to the door of your business.
Of course, the trick is to say the right things to the right
people in the right way at the right opportunity. In other words,
for starters, you must have the right Brand Image that communicates
to your target market effectively. Secondly, that Brand must
be put to use to spark the needs / wants / desires of your target,
otherwise it will never be noticed. This brings us to the third
thing:
Let’s say I’m watching TV and an ad comes on for
front doors for homes. Say I’d been thinking about updating
my front door for a while but never got around to it. The ad
then mentions a security feature I wasn’t aware existed.
This does catch my interest, because it creates a sense of urgency
on top of decorative concerns because, after all, I want to
protect my family. So maybe I call that business; or maybe I
look up “Doors” in the Yellow Pages to look more
broadly.
When I do, I’ll eliminate certain businesses on the basis
of how well they are presented, as well as what they are saying.
Which ones speak to me and my particular fears that are fuelling
my desire for this product? At this point maybe I’ve found
a few that convince me enough to visit their showroom, but I
don’t have time to go to all of them. Some have web addresses,
so I concentrate on them in the hope of finding some better
images and some info on which doors are stronger, and so on.
So I finally end up browsing websites, find one that answers
my every need and communicates an image that I feel I can trust,
so I allocate a half the following weekend to visit them and
buy a door.
This terrain of individual choices, options and selections is
a messy one. Most importantly, as a business owner, it’s
a numbers game that you have to strategically configure in order
to win. In this case, this business has communicated all the
right things at each stage and led a customer literally to their
front door. So, Channel Planning is about your need to enter
the mind of your prospective clients and work out their likely
train of thought so as to pick your battles of communication,
where the battles are fought, and how you can manipulate the
media terrain to your best advantage.
If this seems interesting at all please contact us
on 1300 136 904 or info@outsourceservices.com.au
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