Brand Relationship Channels (sm)

In tough economic times, it is even more important that organizations solidify their brand reputations with their publics. They just can't afford to lose a sale because of a tarnish to their reputation.

There are three key relationship channels that every organization needs to think about. Usually, they only think about one of these. The one they think about is the company's relationship with their customers. Actually, this is only half correct. The real relationship channel they need to develop and ensure it is managed well is the relationship between their employees (teams) and their customers.

But there are two other, equally important relationship channels that organizations should develop and manage. The first is the relationship management has with their employees (teams) that ensures the brand is understood and represented professionally. I call this the Vertical or "top-down" channel, but it is as much bottom-up as it is top-down.

In tough economic times, it is even more important that organizations solidify their brand reputations with their publics.

The second relationship channel is what I alluded to above: the relationship between employees and customers. The reason this is so important is that most organization CEOs and management don't have the time to spend with their customers so they better have confidence is what their employees are doing with them ... that relationship better be solid. I call this the Horizontal or "down and out" relationship.

The third relationship channel is Circular and I call it "out and around." This is the relationship between current customers and prospective customers. These prospective customers may be their friends, families, colleagues, etc. Or, they may not even know them. But current customers can still be a huge influence on prospective customers if this relationship channel is developed and managed well.

The crux of all this is that human beings are the most authentic representation of any brand. People who truly understand the brand and are committed to representing it well could be a powerful brand-building resource in an organization's marketing mix.

Maybe the most powerful resource in their entire arsenal.

Thanks for reading. More to come.

[Photo used under the Creative Commons License courtesy of Flickr.]

The LIFE(sm) Approach to Brand-Building

Several years ago, I was helping some University of Georgia college students with job-hunting and I told them about a customer contact philosophy I use that has the acronym, LIFE(sm). Before I tell you what LIFE stands for, I want to discuss brand messages and a way to approach what organization say about themselves.

More than anything else, an organization must achieve a level of trust from those who will do business with them. According to Stephen Covey, trust is a function of two dynamics: competence (how well you do your job), and character (your integrity). I think there is a third component and I call that commitment (how much you care about your customers' issues). These three form the basis of trust and determine how much organizations are trusted by their customers. There are many ways to build trust among customers but each must be grounded with a genuine effort. Sadly, many organizations continue to market their brands without the authenticity that is always present in great brands.

Perhaps not as important as trust but also critical to success is defining the relevance a brand has in solving the problems its customers have. Great brands continue to be relevant in the lives of those who use them. Staying close to your customers' needs via quantitative and qualitative marketing research can help companies keep their brands relevant to their user base.

Sadly, many organizations continue to market their brands without the authenticity that is always present in great brands.

Once a company has crafted a message that is both relevant and genuine, the question becomes "how"that message is conveyed to the target. By "how" I mean in what ways and how often are customers reached.

Every time a prospective customer or current customer comes in contact with a brand, I call this an "encounter." This can be a call from a salesperson, a drive by the store, a call into the company's customer service office or actual use of the brand. Every one of these is an encounter and there are hundreds of other ways that customers and prospective customers have encounters with brands. Some of these encounters are controlled (outbound) and others are not as controllable. The trick is to control as many of these as possible and, if your brand is genuine in every way, your chances of having positive encounters between your customers and your brand are good.

Just looking at those encounters that you control, the LIFE approach says that you will need a frequent number of encounters to build a memorable reputation for your brand. As a point of reference, pharmaceutical companies tell their reps that they will need to call on physicians 9-11 times before the doctor writes the first prescription for the drug they are selling. Wow! An average of ten sales calls before the first prescription is written. Does that tell you something about the power of perseverance and the importance of frequency?

Now, if you need that level of frequency of sales contact to build a brand, then it stands to reason that those frequent encounters need to be of a low intensity, or you will turn off the prospective customer. Said another way, if you are going to be "in their face," you damn well need to be nice about it. Thus, your authentic and relevant messages need to be presented in Low-Intensity Frequent Encounters (LIFE) to prospective customers. While I generally have given this advice to those marketing professional and business services, in the age of the empowered consumer, the rule applies to about every industry.

In future posts, I will discuss this concept as it relates to brand-building via your own employees and customers. Thanks for reading. More to come.

[Photo used under the Creative Commons License courtesy of Flickr.]

The Brand Community

When some businesses talk about branding, they want some type of facade to cover their business that will "say" something about their brand that will increase sales. This is unfortunate because these businesses have gotten the idea that branding is a game, or even worse, a charade -- something that does not actually have to be true, but can be whatever they want it to be, as long as they pay their ad agency.

The businesses that acted on this premise are in a lot of trouble right now. The recession is eating these guys for lunch. Actually, the recession and the Internet are doing them in together. The recession because these days consumers and businesses are being much more cautious about who they spend their money with. The Internet because 1) the word can get out much more easily than it ever did before about poor customer satisfaction, and 2) there are many more options that can replace the poor performer than ever before.

In the 19th century, it was a frequent joke that "God may have made men, but Colonel Colt made them equal." The truth in this was that Colt's handguns being available to almost anyone made self-defense not just something that a large man could be assured of. These days, it is the Internet that is the Great Equalizer of business. A small company that does business right can eat the proverbial lunch of a large company that does not listen to its customers. And that is how it should be.

What all businesses need is a way to do this. How can they best listen to their customers? Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba offer a technique in their book Creating Customer Evangelists called Customer Plus-Delta. It is a simple technique in which businesses find out what they are doing well (the Plus) and what they need to work on (the Delta). And businesses need to hear the Delta just as much as they do the Plus. Then, they need to act on that feedback. If it is true, fix it. If it is not, explain the misunderstanding.

Instead, many organizations increasingly use technology to act as a barrier to their customers. They don't seem to want to be in contact with their customers. What kind of businesses are these? Take the automated phone system of most larger businesses: you can answer quite a few prompts before you get a real person on the line. This happened to me with Sears last weekend. Then, I got disconnected twice before I ever got connected to the right person. Did they make me feel important to them?

Some businesses have gotten the idea that branding is a charade -- something that does not actually have to be true, but can be whatever they want it to be.

Or have a look at most Internet websites. It is not easy to contact many organizations about a problem you are having. One could get the impression that they really don't want to hear from their customers, that they just want their money. Say it ain't so, Joe!

But the facades are there for many organizations. They want to act one way and have you perceive it another. That is not authentic marketing.

But there is a light. And, many time it is with the entrepreneur. The small-business person who actually wants her business to be a reflection of her values. And wants her customers to surround her organization with ideas for product or service improvement, new ways to use her product, new customers that she can do business with. She has the wisdom to speak with every customer, particularly the ones who may not be happy with her business for any number of reasons. As she listens, every customer she listens to becomes more loyal and begins to connect on new levels with her brand.

In so doing, a brand community is formed. This brand community protects sales during a recession and contributes to increased growth when money becomes more available. No facade here, but live human beings who identify on both a logical and emotional level with what she sells.

The good news is that no one can buy a brand community. They have to earn it. Authentically.

Thanks for reading. More to come!

[Photo used under the Creative Commons License courtesy of Flickr.]

Who is building your brand?

Here is the thing: Everyone who represents your organization is contributing to your brand reputation. Everyone.

Not just sales people or the receptionist or your spouse at a community event -- everyone. Your most discontented employee is building your brand for you right now. At the grocery store, at a little league baseball game, at church, at lunch. That has got to terrify you.

And not just employees but current customers, former customers, people who have just heard "something" about your organization. That doesn't even begin to consider what your competition may be telling your customers about you. Now, there's something to think about at 2 a.m., huh?

Nowadays, it is even more critical to relentlessly pursue building, enhancing, and maintaining your brand to those who have potential to do business with you or influence those who might consider your organization for future business. Trust me -- if you have a vulnerability in your brand, it is going to surface and hurt you when it does.

Your most discontented employee is building your brand for you right now. That has got to terrify you.

So, it may be worth thinking about who is building your brand, how they are building it, and if you can influence their construction.

Unfortunately, tough economic times give some organizations an excuse to reduce their investment in brand-building and that puts them at more risk than any recession ever could.

The bottom line: Representatives --> Reputation.

[Photo used under the Creative Commons License courtesy of Flickr.]

Creating Brand Relevance

Several months ago I wrote a column, "The Reality of Branding." When that was published it was suggested that I follow-up that column and discuss how marketers can make what they sell more relevant to those who purchase that product or service. Said differently, how can marketers better connect with prospects and their real needs?

Branding has less to do with product features/benefits and more to do with customer needs, wants and aspirations. Without insights into the prospect’s attitudes and behavior as they relate to the product, branding assignments can be pretty speculative and highly risky. Brand relevance comes only from a genuine understanding of the stated (and unstated) needs and wants of the target market. How do we get at these needs and wants?

If “location, location, location” is the success formula in the real estate business, “research, research, research” is a key ingredient of successful branding campaigns. Unfortunately, many businesses are unwilling to invest in (or don’t understand) the strategic research that might reveal unknown customer and prospect needs/wants.

If you are interested in getting to know your customers/prospects a lot better, a good place to begin is with a Segmentation Study of your industry. This type of quantitative research will tell you how the industry is segmented in terms of different buying preferences/motives. After all, not everyone purchases your product or service for the same reason.

How large is each segment of the market? Do your customers segment the market as you do? Which brands do customers associate with each market segment? What product performance issues are most critical to each segment? What brands are most relevant to each segment of the market?

Once you know something about how the industry is segmented, it might be helpful to know how your customers actually use your product or service and how they feel about using it. This type of research (also quantitative) is called an Attitude & Usage (A&U) study. Larger marketers conduct an A&U study every few years.

Importantly, A&U studies attempt to get at exactly how customers relate to brands. What are they happy about? What product improvements do they want? What needs are not being met by the current brands in the marketplace? Do they use the product exactly as the marketer designed it to be used? Marketers are going to understand a lot more about how relevant their products and services are to their customers when they invest in an A&U study.

If “location, location, location” is the success formula in the real estate business, “research, research, research” is a key ingredient of successful branding campaigns.

At this point someone must be saying, “But what about focus groups, aren’t they valuable?” Focus groups are certainly valuable at exploring the range of feelings customers have about the market and the product/services being evaluated. However, focus groups are probably the most misused research technique on the face of the earth. There are a number of reasons for their misuse.

First of all, they are relatively cheap to do and if your budget is small, you can do them and feel like you have done some marketing research. Second, what one hears in a focus group tends to be what one wants to hear (selective retention). I can recall more than one discussion following a focus group where we argued about what the respondent was really saying in the group. Third, if you don’t know squat about research, you think you sound smart saying, “lets do some groups to see what we learn.”

What is so bad about focus groups? Nothing -- if you are going to follow them up with some of the studies mentioned above. But many marketers don’t ever follow them up with quantitative research. Thus, important marketing decisions may be based on what 15-20 people said in a room to/with folks they had never met before.

One-on-ones, a variation on focus groups, puts one interviewer with one interviewee, allowing for greater confidentiality and perhaps greater learning about needs, wants and product usage. However, they are also a qualitative research method and suffer from the problems associated with qualitative research.

Legitimate marketing research is not cheap. However, the more you know about your prospect and their needs, the better you can design your product or service around meeting those needs. Then, when you set your ad agency team loose on a branding project, they won’t be asked to perform miracles, just to communicate a relevant benefit clearly to your prospects.

[This article first appeared in GSA Business. Photo used under the Creative Commons License courtesy of Flickr.]

The Reality of Branding: Smoke and mirrors just makes it harder to see the brand.

Who’s fed up with reading about the death of Branding? Entrepreneur magazine recently carried the cover story, “Branding Backlash.” Darwin magazine’s July cover also assured us that, “Branding still has a future.”

What really gets me is that most of the obituaries for branding are being pronounced by those associated with technology/internet-oriented businesses. As their advertising demonstrated, many knew little if anything about branding in the first place. A lot of money was wasted entertaining their prospects rather than creating relevant selling propositions for potential customers. Now, they want to pronounce branding a bad idea -- as if branding is something you have a choice to do or not do.

What they don’t seem to understand is that branding is something your prospects do to your product or service, much more than what marketers do. Prospects do it every time they decide to purchase from you or not, based on how relevant your offering is to what they feel their needs are.

This isn’t to say that marketing communications can’t influence the sale. However, marketing communications is only one influence to the prospect’s purchase experience. To exaggerate the influence of marketing communications misleads everyone and worse, it suggests that any marketing communications is effective. The dot.bombs will certainly tell you that’s not true.

The reality is that every time one of your unhappy customers talks about their unpleasant experience with your product, you are being branded. Your worst salesperson is branding you as you read this. One very bad experience in your restaurant will probably brand it forever with that patron. Your most discontented employee is having a field day branding your product or service. And, consider how your toughest competitor is branding you with your customers when they call on them.

Branding is something your prospects do to your product or service, much more than what marketers do.

Unfortunately, branding has recently come to represent some type of “con” – an exaggeration of what a product or service can do. Over thirty years ago advertising legend David Ogilvy warned marketers, “The consumer is not an idiot, she is your wife.” This served as a wake-up call at the time, but a lot of marketing communications practitioners have lost their way since then. What we have now is more than a failure to communicate; we have a very jaded buying public, be they consumers or businesses.

What is to be done with this cynical buying public who brands our products and services so harshly? Most importantly, we need to start making “relevance” the priority in communications. Relevance means, “fitting the purpose, appropriate, pertinent.” We can influence how our customers brand our products/services by rethinking the relevance of what we sell to those who buy it. To do this, we need a better connect with our prospects and their real needs.

When we do create relevance, we may be able to plant the seed of branding, thus actually influencing how prospects brand our products and services. Then, every time one of your satisfied customers mentions your product, they may use a brand descriptor you provided, if that descriptor is relevant to their actual brand experience.

Branding is far from dead. In its purest form, it has been around for centuries and will be around for as long as products are considered for purchase. The question marketers must answer is how relevant is what they sell to the real needs of their prospects?

[This article first appeared in the September 24, 2001, issue of GSA Business. Photo used under the Creative Commons License courtesy of Flickr.]

Marketing Research for Small Businesses

One of the reasons small businesses have a reluctance to do marketing research is that without proper planning and execution, the client can end of with a bunch of facts that don’t necessarily lead to actionable strategies and tactics. If marketing research isn’t going to give you something you can use, why do it?

For the small business person with the commitment to better understand their customers and prospects, here are some marketing research techniques to help them.

Secondary Data Analysis. This should always be the first step. Take a look at all the information already gathered by someone else. It could prove very useful and just might alleviate the need to fund more expensive primary research.

Experience Surveys. In this exploratory technique, a person who has considerably more experience in the specific area of interest is interviewed about their area of expertise or previous market experience. A good interviewer can make this search for "best practices” very productive.

Case Studies. Another business may already be doing it better (or worse) and it might make sense to do an in-depth study of their progress. Here you may also be looking for “best practices,” but from a situation rather than a person.

Pilot Studies. This is a broad term that includes focus groups, one-on-one/in-depth interviews, and a variety of projective techniques.

Focus groups. Probably the best known and most utilized of all techniques. They are most appropriately used to generate new ideas, get initial reactions to concepts or probe attitudes regarding a problem situation. It takes a skilled moderator to make them truly productive.

One-on-ones. In-depth interviews with only one respondent at a time. Some issues can be discussed more candidly in a more private atmosphere than in a group setting.
Projective techniques. These can be helpful in getting a handle on attitudes and motivations when the respondent may not want to be completely honest about their motivations. Asking a prospect why someone else might want to try a particular store, could help in understanding why people choose (or choose not) to shop that store. Or you can provide a brand name or other word to a customer/prospect and ask what words/brands come to mind. Try asking your customer to complete a sentence about the store. Projective techniques, which have become popular in the Account Planning discipline, may seem a bit like psychotherapy but can reveal wonderful nuggets of wisdom for the small business owner willing to listen.

Surveys. This quantitative technique doesn’t have to cost a fortune and you can do them in Questionnaire or Personal Interview formats. Make sure your questions/directions are clear and unbiased and that you allow adequate response opportunities. This form of research used to be very expensive but nowadays, with Survey Monkey, it is very inexpensive to do.

Experiments. The most popular marketing experiments are test markets and many small businesses just can’t afford this research technique. The Simulated Test Market variety is also too expensive for most small businesses.

Observation. Go get a clipboard and watch how your customers shop. I think you will learn more if you just observe without them knowing what you are doing. You can then do an in-depth interview after you have observed them to question whatever you found interesting in their behavior.And there are other techniques, too.

Before you begin any research project, however, make sure you have a clear idea of exactly what you want to know and what you will do with that information once you get it -- whether you get the answer(s) you were expecting or not. That way, the money you invest in research will help your marketing expenditures yield the return on investment you want.

[This article first appeared in GSA Business. Photo used under the Creative Commons License courtesy of Flickr.]