Brand Quarterly Aug 2013

Brand

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Issue 4 | Volume 2

August 2013

Quarterly

Building Your Business From The Brand Up™

Does Your Brand Have GAME? Grow Your Business With Practical Brand Management Remaining Authentic While Going Global Storytelling is The New Black: How An Old Tactic Makes Your Brand Human Laying The Groundwork For Successful Marketing Strategies

Brand Quarterly™

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In This Issue Storytelling Is The New Black

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How An Old Tactic Makes Your Brand Human

Remaining Authentic

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While Going Global

The Online Review Culture

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Conversation Capital:

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A Localized Global Marketing Strategy

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Mobile Africa

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Does Your Brand Have GAME?

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Help Or Hype:

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The Principled Selling Method

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What It Means For Franchising

As Vital As Cash Flow

Why Every Business Needs One

Lessons For Brands Targeting The African Market

Grow Your Business With Practical Brand Management

What Do Your Customers Want?

Four Steps To Sales Success

Current

Transition

Future

Managing Change As A Process

Laying The Groundwork For Successful Marketing Strategies Building Your Business From The Brand Up™

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Design 101

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Innovation

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The BizRadio Roundup

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Loyal To A ‘T’

Repetition Repetition Repetition

It’s More Than Just Invention

Our Favourite Podcasts

Customer Loyalty - Create it, Nurture It

From The Editor Wow - 3 Months Is A Long Time Welcome to another bumper issue of Brand Quarterly.

This issue we give you advice and opinions from four continents (UK, US, Africa and Oceania), and feature nine new contributors - successful business people, marketing practitioners, Ph.D’s and published authors. With such a wide cross-section of experts, there are sure to be plenty of keen insights for you to apply in your own business to help it grow.

We’ve had a record number of new subscribers leading up to this issue. So welcome one and all, and we hope you get great value from it.

If this is your first issue, I would recommend reviewing previous issues of the magazine as there are some great articles in them (I’m not biased at all...). Plus, keep an eye on our blog at www.veseycreative.com as we are now publishing previous Brand Quarterly articles there on a regular basis.

Fiona Vesey Vesey Creative

I’d like to say a big Thank You to all of you who participated in our first every reader survey.

We are combing through all the answers and are finding some really helpful stuff. Watch this space for some major changes coming soon.

Also, congratulations to S. Cook and D. Yanick, the two winners of the signed copies of ‘Competitive SME’.

I hope you’re enjoying your new read and getting some great ideas from it.

Enjoy this, the eighth issue of Brand Quarterly, and as always - If you love it, please share it.

Fiona

Issue 4 | Volume 2 | August 2013 Brand Quarterly magazine www.brandquarterly.com Publisher/Design: Vesey Creative Ltd studio@veseycreative.com

As the publishers of Brand Quarterly, we take every care in the production of each issue. We are however, not liable for any editorial error, omission, mistake or typographical error.

The views expressed by all contributors are not necessarily those of the publisher.

Brand Quarterly™

Copyright: This magazine and the content published within are subject to copyright held by the publisher, with individual articles remaining copyright to the named contributor.

Express written permission of the publisher and contributor must be acquired for reproduction.

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Featured Contributors David Tovey David Tovey is a motivational speaker, coach, consultant and author of Principled Selling – How to Win More Business Without Selling Your Soul, published

by Kogan Page. With over 25 years of sales and marketing experience, David works with individuals and organisations to help them build amazing business relationships and achieve outstanding sales growth with a joined up approach to inbound marketing, social media, sales, major account management and sales leadership. www.principledselling.org/david-tovey

Rachel DiCaro Metscher Rachel DiCaro Metscher is the director of corporate communications at Hobsons, a provider of personalized learning, academic planning, postsecondary enrollment, and student support solutions.

Currently, Rachel is responsible for Hobsons’ external communication programs, which include public relations, brand, website, and social media. You can hear about her positions and thoughts on PR and social media on her blog, Metscher’s Musings. www.metschermusings.wordpress.com

Ingrid von Stein Ingrid von Stein is the Founder and CEO, Indigo Zebra Communications (www. indigozebra.co.za) and BizRadio (www.bizradio.co.za) . She has spent the last 25 years a communications strategist, conversational capitalist and industry innovator and has worked side-by-side with some of the largest brands globally.

Known for her tenacity and true entrepreneurial spirit is was a natural progression of her communications business to evolve and launch Biz Radio - currently the only entity of its kind on the African continent and brings together global thought leaders and industry innovators in the world of marketing, media, advertising, branding, communications and business who are willing to share their industry insights with the world and especially those wanting to grow their knowledge and business skills on the African continent.

Ken Vesey Ken Vesey styles himself as a ‘QA Specialist, People Management Specialist, Facilitator, Implementer, and Technical Writer of policy and procedures’. His passion is towards the small business owner, whether in business or in education.

Over the past 27 years, Ken has compiled a wealth of management knowledge whilst holding the positions of NZQA Panelist & Moderator, Learning Manager at the Employers and Manufacturers Association, and Regional Director of Training for the Order of St John Auckland. www.approachableconsultancy.com

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Building Your Business From The Brand Up™

Andrew Vesey Andrew is Director of the New Zealand and United Kingdom based Graphic Design and Branding Agency, Vesey Creative - the official Brand Guardians for Global Marketing Network (GMN).

Working in partnership with a wide variety of clients around the globe, Andrew’s business experience includes over a dozen years leading design and branding studios and agencies. He is also a member of GMN’s Global Advisory Council Andrew is a strong believer in continually upskilling, learning and staying relevant in business. This ‘education brings growth’ mentality lead him to create Global CMO™ The Magazine, a digital magazine for Professional Marketers, and the magazine you are now reading. www.veseycreative.com

Linda Coles Linda Coles of Blue Banana is a professional speaker, author and trainer in the area of social media and building relationships.

She has written two books, “Learn marketing with social media in 7 days” (Wiley) and “Start with Hello” (Wiley) on the subject.

A keynote speaker, she has presented to teams at Microsoft, Auckland University and many, many more, and is one of only 250 LinkedIn Influencers worldwide where she has a following of over 60,000. www.bluebanana.co.nz

Dr Antony Michail Antony is the Founder of Anacalypsis Strategy and Marketing Consultants and Global Marketing Network’s Country Director for South Africa.

He has experience in auditing the marketing function, strategy, and tactics, providing direction for future growth and development, new product development, effective budgeting, forecasting, and measurement.

Antony has also designed a number of new initiatives to promote creative thinking in relation to new product development such as specialized Think Tank rooms, QMI (quick market intelligence) and VOC (voice of the customer) workshops. www.anacalypsis.co.za

Dr Nitish Singh Dr. Singh is Associate Professor of International Business at Boeing Institute of International Business at Saint Louis University. He also serves as Director for Program Innovations for School of Business. His educational efforts in the field of global e-commerce have been supported by US Department of Education, Qatar National Research Foundation, CSU, Google, HP, IBM, Microsoft and other companies. Dr. Singh is also the co-author of the critically acclaimed book: “The Culturally Customized Web Site: Customizing Websites for the Global Marketplace,” & “Localization Strategies for Global e-Business”. He holds Ph.D. in Marketing and International Business from Saint Louis University and MBA and MA from Universities in India and the UK. www.business.slu.edu

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Featured Contributors Fiona Vesey Fiona is Co-Founder and the Creative Spark at Vesey Creative, the New Zealand and United Kingdom based Branding and Graphic Design agency. She is also the Editor of Brand Quarterly and Editor-in-Chief of Global CMO™ The Magazine.

She thrives in partnering with people and companies wanting more than just aesthetically pleasing design.

Her initial training lead Fiona to opening her own photographic studio, and becoming a well respected multi-award winning professional photographer. As an active member in the photographic industry, Fiona sat on the Auckland board for the New Zealand Institute of Professional Photography for 3 years. www.veseycreative.com

Steven Frost Steve is a Founding Partner at Smith & Henderson, which helps forward-thinking companies outperform the competition by consistently measuring and delivering word-class customer service; engaging their people to be the best they can be; and benchmarking and better prioritising resources. Steve specialises in the franchise sector and his clients include McDonald’s, O2 and Stanley Black & Decker.

In 2011 Smith & Henderson launched The Best Franchise Awards, supported by Lloyds TSB Commercial. These awards are uniquely based on feedback from thousands of actual franchise owners, so provide unique insight into the very best franchise opportunities – not simply those which have the best advertising. www.smithhenderson.com

Danette Breitenbach Danette is the editor for the new Global CMO™ Africa Edition. Prior to this, she was editor of AdVantage Magazine in South Africa. She has worked extensively in marketing, specialising in internal and external communications and public relations.

Today she works in a diverse number of industries, including advertising and marketing, mining and engineering, construction, gaming, disability and general business. She has interviewed some of the top business people in South Africa including Lazarus Zim, previously vice-president of Anglo American and Sipho Nkosi the Chamber of Mines president and CEO of Exxaro Resources. www.theglobalcmo.com

Andrew Jones Andrew is the CEO of G2 Innovation. He is truly passionate about innovation, with broad experience in all aspects of innovation, solutions provision, funding acquisition, market identification and development, sales and marketing. Direct experience with industrial product design, “3D Branding”, mechatronics and finance acquisition. Interested in innovation and technology developments.

G2 Innovation is a dynamic innovation consultancy specialising in the commercialisation of new ideas. The bring sound engineering and technology expertise together with high end design and fine tuned commercial acumen to ensure products not only launch but they fly. www.G2innovation.co.uk 6

Building Your Business From The Brand Up™

From The Web Brand equity is the sum of all the hearts and minds of every single person that comes into contact with your company.

Christopher Betzter

What Can Your Company Learn From Lego?

All companies could learn a great deal from David Robertson’s account of Lego. In his new book “Brick by Brick”, the University of Pennsylvania professor tells the story of this family-owned business that began making wooden toys in the 1930s, Click the image to read via Entrepreneur.com

7 Great Business Reasons to Say ‘No!’ Everyone wants to hear ‘Yes!’ but sometimes ‘No!’ is the answer that’s best.

Here are 7 excellent examples.

Click the image to read via Inc.com

Turbocharge Business Results through Marketing Insights The constant flow of information across a business has created an opportunity to increase the pace of decision making, to observe and react in the moment – just like humans do.

Click the image to view via LinkedIn.

Brand Quarterly™

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Storytelling Is The New Black How An Old Tactic Makes Your Brand Human Storytelling has experienced somewhat of a recent renaissance as marketers are looking for better ways to connect with their audience. The term “storytelling” itself gets thrown around quite often in marketing departments without much thought to what it truly means.

Most stories follow a consistent structure:

There are several interpretations to storytelling, but I think the simplest definition is: storytelling builds emotional connections between your business and audience. One great example of storytelling is the recent ad that Dodge created called “God Made a Farmer.”

D. Development

It is a two-minute spot sharing rich images of farming, trackers, dirt, you feel the sense of how backbreaking farming is without ever stepping foot on a farm. It is not until 1:48 that you realize this is an ad for the Dodge Ram, a pick-up truck. The video alone on YouTube has garnered more than 15 million views. Think about that. This was an ad spot that people were willing and wanting to watch because Dodge’s agency, The Richards Group, painted the picture through storytelling.

But how does this relate to the corporate marketer?

After all Dodge is a multibillion-dollar brand with plenty of resources.

Like many of you, I have sat in marketing meetings with internal stakeholders and heard from the team they need more datasheets or other “needed marketing assets.” From my perspective, “a datasheet with more people photos that allegedly look like your Rachel DiCaro customer” isn’t going to make Metscher the difference. The issue is not Hobsons the datasheet itself, but that the datasheet doesn’t paint the picture for the prospect of what she can expect from your product or service. In fact, Forrester reported that 70 percent of the content B2B buyers read and study before making a purchase decision is actually found by themselves; as opposed to being given to them by marketing or sales. You need to tell a consistent story as to why prospective customers should buy from you.

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A. Setting - the location where your story takes place.

B. Characters C. An event to start things rolling

E. The Climax F. The Ending

Setting: Where Your Story Takes Place You need a setting. Maybe it is a customer who was in crisis. Maybe it was a client who needed help achieving new goals. Whatever it is, you need to take the reader through the trials and tribulations.

We like to read about how people failed and were redeemed.

Think back to the Dodge example, the ad vividly shared detailed photos of the farmer. The dirt on his hands or the scenes of the landscape. The setting is the set up. You need to paint the picture to the reader of the scene. If this were a case study, what was the challenge the client faced?

Characters: Make Your Brand More Human.

The first way to bring storytelling into your business is to make your customer the hero. Not to be trite, I often see many websites with more sales sheets than client success stories or case studies. Storytelling allows you to put your customer in the limelight.

Share their successes and challenges. At Hobsons, we began using video to share industry insight by the folks (clients, employees, pundits) who have been in the market and shared their experiences.

Social Media is another opportunity to connect with your market. If your followers are not re-sharing your content, then you are missing a huge opportunity to engage and connect. When you think about content you share on social media think in terms of your ideal client. What do they want to share? What type of information they need? What do they want to hear?

Building Your Business From The Brand Up™

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Most folks want to share photos, stories, links to articles that will help or teach them something new. Be the source of information people want to engage with. Charity: Water does an amazing job of telling the story of how bringing clean, safe drinking water to people in developing nations is connected to their donation. I love the page about sponsoring a water project that in great detail shares what a contributor’s donation actually is used for. Fantastic use of images, details to tell their story and how it contributes to the greater good.

An Event To Start Things Rolling: Let Clients Be The Lead In Your Storytelling Stories can have multiple actors but your company doesn’t need the lead role. I believe one of the best ways to tell your corporate story is highlighting your clients through earned media opportunities. Earned media, as defined by the Altimeter Group, is usergenerated content created and/or share by users.

This could be trade publication articles, blog posts, tweets, or reviews. Why is it important? Earned media, in theory, is unbiased and unsolicited. When folks go to Google and search for your company, they can find all kinds of reactions and social shares that are unfiltered and not corporate speak.

This is more than telling customers about your product. People will remember a story more than your products. Two years ago, I added our clients to our public relations efforts in terms of highlighting them telling their successes using out products rather than our experts. Risky? Maybe, but I would anecdotally say we actually have more coverage by highlighting our clients as more customers are sharing those stories. Better yet, when they are meeting with sales, prospects are mentioning they say X client and how they are using our products Win.

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Development: Think Like A Movie Director In terms of storytelling I think development should be about teaching people something different. I watched Argo and was mesmerized. My favorite scene is when the embassy workers were shredding the “classified documents.” Where they going to make it? Would the “bad guys” going to get the documents? I was hooked for 2 hours. Not only was the movie compelling, but the director did a fantastic job of telling the story. Storytelling isn’t just for the movies. Just because you’re in a B2B market, doesn’t mean you cannot be compelling.

The Climax: It’s About The “Ah Ha” Moment The climax of your story needs to have the moment where the reader is at the edge of their seat. So for B2B marketers, the climax is “the ah ha” moment in your success story or case study. The moment when you client realizes that your product or services was the lynchpin in their success.

The Ending: Storytelling Is Innate In Marketing Or Public Relations After all, Storytelling is PR; it essentially boils down to connecting organization and people through a story. It is your role to paint a cohesive and consist story about your organization. And think about, it is in our human nature to share and respond to great stories. Traditional methods are no longer as effective to reach your market. According to Corporate Executive Board recent research, 58 percent of B2B customers are researching and gathering information before they every engage with your sales team. ~ BQ

Building Your Business From The Brand Up™

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Brand

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Remaining Authentic While Going Global People recognise and are attracted to authenticity.

Whether consciously, just knowing it when we see it, or on a subconscious level, feeling drawn to a particular person, product, service or brand.

This connection to authentic people and companies becomes even stronger, when our experience with them shows us their values are similar or in alignment with our own.

As the global marketplace grows, the importance of maintaining this authenticity grows with it.

Following are a few tips to ensue your brand and marketing remains authentic, while appealing to foreign markets. We’ve been privileged in helping some great people and companies expand internationally, and have found the following tips to be relevant regardless of industry.

Understanding Before starting this process let’s ensure you clearly understand and connect with your company’s brand values. Are they precisely defined and communicated in your current markets? It’s vitally important for this stage to be tight before moving forward. You need to be intimately aware of what your company stands for, before you can consider trying to clearly communicate it, let alone in a way that will appeal to other cultures. Ensure your brand values are documented and understood by your team.

Research and understand your new target market.

Start general then narrow it down. So, you’re expanding into India, great - What do you know of the customs, culture and beliefs? Do your brand colours mean the same thing in India as they do in your home country? What specific area/s within India you will be targeting? Who within that area is an ideal client for you? Why? What’s their daily life like? What and who’s important to them? What are their preferred ways of communicating? The list goes on…

Once you understand both your brand values and your country of expansion, it’s time to discover how your brand message is interpreted there, and what it means in that culture. It may be necessary to change how you explain those values in order to be authentic to them in another country.

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Communication & Customer Experience Your brand values remain the solid constant on which all of your communications are based.

People around the world recognise and are attracted to that authenticity. Listen and learn from the people in your new market, communicate in a way they’ll respond to and that builds connection.

Elisa Steele, Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) at Skype, and I had a great conversation on this topic the other day. I loved what she shared in relation to how Skype cross cultural borders, while staying authentic to their brand values:

Building Your Business From The Brand Up™

“It gets back to the concept of listening, Skype is inherently social, it’s all about communicating with each other. And so we are very open and transparent in talking with our users in a social environment.

We listen a lot in social channels, we respond a lot in dialogue all day long with our users. And then we have a team who’s based in London, that if there are things our users have questions about, or it’s not working, or they don’t know what to do, we have a place where we can send them and they can have an interaction with us to get them on track.

The global nature of the brand is our privilege and the beauty of what Skype’s all about, and then we have to step up to making sure that we give users the forums which they can talk with us if they need us and they can also share their stories because that’s really important to us and it’s important to them.”

Brand Quarterly™

Fiona Vesey Vesey Creative

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The tone and language of your brand messaging may need to be adjusted, sometimes quite dramatically, depending the differences between country of origin and new area of expansion.

Modify what you say and how you say it to ensure it resonates in the target culture.

For example the tone and words used in a successful brand and marketing campaign in Russia can easily come across as abrupt, cold and arrogant to the US market. On the opposite side of the scale trying to connect with your target market in Russia using what’s been successful in the US may easily be portrayed as light weight or worse, disingenuous and fake.

Your visual communication and images also need to be taken into consideration, to be the right fit for each country. An image being used for elderly care by a company in the UK is seen by their market to show a joyous elderly lady with much more life ahead of her. This same image has been reported as giving a very different message to the US market.

There it’s been interpreted as showing someone far older than necessary, with to many facial lines, someone the target market doesn’t connect to.

Keep in mind the advertising mediums, offers/discounts you select will also be interpreted differently depending on culture.

Creating true, authentic consistency in your brand values is incorporated into the way you conduct your business and treat people.

Through your brand and marketing communications, you’ve created an expectation in the mind of your potential client as to what sort of customer experience they will have in dealing with you. I can’t emphasise strongly enough how important it is that this experience (at each and every stage) is in alignment with your brand values. These values and messages played a key part in gaining their attention and trust in the first place, meeting and/ or exceeding their expectations is only possible with that continued level of authenticity.

Live it, breathe it and be true to your brand and your purpose – people will be attracted to and resonate with that integrity. ~ BQ

The Online Review Culture What It Means For Franchising One of the most fantastic things about the internet is the opportunity for people to self-publish and share their experiences and opinions. For businesses this means online reviews about their products, Tweets about queues in their stores or even a blog dedicated to their bad service. This review culture and greater transparency has changed the decision making process for many consumers.

Here, I will explain what this fundamental shift means for franchise companies, particularly when they are looking to recruit new franchise owners.

A Mega Phone For Bad Experiences In the digital age, online reviews have magnified the consequences of a consumer having a good or bad experience. Rather than telling ten of their closest friends, a customer can reach tens of thousands people through their blog. In fact, some have even led to the resignation of CEOs. Take the story of Canadian musician Dave Carroll.

When travelling on United Airlines, his prized guitar was broken while in United Airlines’ custody. Upset with United Airlines’ indifference and lack of care, he recorded a spoof song called “United Breaks Guitars” and posted it on You Tube. It received 150,000 hits on the same day! Within 4 days of the video being posted online, United Airlines’ stock price fell 10%, costing shareholders about $180 million in value and leading to the eventual resignation of United Airlines CEO. The video has now racked up over 13 million hits!

The Importance Of Customer Reviews One of the biggest changes in consumer behaviour during the last decade is linked to the growth of online reviews, whether left on dedicated review websites, auction sites like ebay or retailers like Amazon. In the digital age, online reviews have largely taken the place of word-of-mouth referrals.

After all, it’s easy to search for and read reviews of a specific product, rather than ask around all your friends in the hope that some may happen to have purchased that product so can offer advice.

Online reviews directly influence buying decisions – reviews Steven Frost written by actual consumers Smith & Henderson are trusted much more than traditional advertising messages. According to a survey conducted by Dimensional Research, an overwhelming 90 percent of respondents who recalled reading online reviews claimed that positive online reviews influenced buying decisions, while 86 percent said buying decisions were influenced by negative online reviews.

What Does This Mean For Franchise Companies?

Like all businesses, franchisors are being affected as their end customers have changed their decision making process. However, this shift in psychology has massive implications for franchise owner recruitment. Prospective franchise owners are conducting record levels of research about a franchise opportunity before even contacting the franchisor. In such a competitive and crowded marketplace, this creates challenges for how franchisors built trust with prospective franchise owners and differentiate their franchise opportunity.

Franchisors must be prepared to share much more information through their website and online franchise recruitment directories. Including recent case studies, details of company awards and breaking down exactly what the franchise owner receives in return for the franchise fee can help to build trust. ~ BQ

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Conversation Capital: As Vital As Cash Flow When we start our business we are so focused on raising the capital to get it going and cash flow to keep it going, in the same vein we should be looking at creating and continually building on our “conversation capital”.

What is that? Some call it public relations, some strategic communications and some just lump it into the marketing mix. But without it your business will remain in the dark.

The process is a simple one, but one that requires continuous work and effort – it’s a vital business relationship and needs constant work – remember, what you put in is what you will get out.

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Creating a conversation is a simple...

• Identify who you want to talk in your market (these are your potential clients and media who cover your market segment) • Be clear about what you want to communicate to them – no one is interested in the fact that you have just moved into a new space or have a new staff member – what they are interested in is what you offer, why they should choose your business/service/ product and what are the benefits to them.

• Like dating – you will find out all you can about the person before hand, then you will make the call and intro yourself and then take them for coffee – you will spend time preparing how you look and what you want to share with them – same process goes for your communications. Who you are and what you say, will say volumes about your business.

Building Your Business From The Brand Up™

•

•

•

•

• In the beginning you will have to have these conversations yourself and send out the relevant information to media – but you will have met them and spent time with them and found out what they like to cover in their publications and will ensure you give them what they need.

• As the business grows you may bring in a professional conversation capitalist to help you grow your market credibility – a few tips here: 1. Do they pass the “chemistry test” – if it feels right from the first conversation, follow your gut 2. Do they have a track record – ask them to introduce you to some of their other clients?

3. Do they know your market and the media in that sector?

4. If they ask you what your business strategy is and what your company goals are for the next 6/12/18 months – this is a clear indication that they know what they are doing – it’s pointless creating conversations for your brand if they have no idea what your business goals are.

5. Don’t confuse social media (Face Book & Twitter) as conversation capital – yes it’s a great to have, but you need to be very specific about what you put out into market and it needs to be managed carefully – some businesses do not need this presence as their market may not be interacting on these platforms.

6. Be clear about what you want to communicate – again know that “fluff” will not be picked up by media and published – they want information/ insight and industry news – so ensure that you tailor make your message to suit the market.

Be aware of what is happening in your industry – take the time to research upcoming events/ conferences/workshops for your industry and go to them, it’s a great networking opportunity and again a great platform to create conversations.

If you see an article in print or online and you wish to add your insight to it – do so in the comments section. This opens the gateway to conversation. Never pull another brand down when trying to build your own.

Be open and honest – do not lie – you will be found out and you and your business will lose credibility Be open to criticism and complaints – this gives you the opportunity to engage with the other party about your business and again develops the conversation – do not be arrogant and defensive. Acknowledge if you have made a mistake and take the appropriate steps to correct it. Remember what you put out into the market place is what will be perceived about your business.

It may sound very simple, and it is – you are what you say and if what you are saying is positive and informative it will resonate within the marketplace and soon word spreads about your brand. But be realistic – it does Ingrid von Stein not happen overnight, it’s a Indigo Zebra relationship and if you want a long and happy one, well then you best invest the time and effort into it! ~ BQ

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A Localized Global Marketing Strategy Why Every Business Needs One Finding the balance between standardization and localization of the web content is one of the preeminent dilemmas that companies face when tapping international markets. Many times companies, either due to lack of coherent global marketing strategy or for cost/efficiency reasons choose to standardize their marketing mix for international markets. Rationales for standardization strategy are many including1: • Standardization seems to be a cost-driven strategy for marketers, as it leads to leveraging the same template/product/service configuration globally, creating economies of scale and cost savings.

• Standardization can also lead to development of single and unified brand and corporate identity worldwide. This can lead to better global recognition and provide global competitive advantage over competitors.

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• Standardization can lead to having a rationalized product line which includes only a few core global brands instead of multiple localized brands and brand extensions. This could lead to a better allocation of resources, higher efficiencies, consistent marketing, and higher profits • When implementing a standardization strategy, companies assume homogenized consumer needs. Thus investments in international market research related to modifying the marketing mix are minimal.

The marketing mix includes company efforts related to four basic P’s of marketing: Product, Price, Place (distribution), and Promotion.

• Companies following a standardized approach to marketing tend to have a centralized global marketing program, and thus the need for coordinating, managing, and controlling local subsidiaries for local marketing strategy is minimized.

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However, both research and business experience suggests that standardization strategy may not be the most effective way to meet international market demands. The complex nature of the international marketing environment promotes diversity in terms of physical environment, political and legal systems, cultures, product usage conditions, and economic development. For example, Intel ads promoting a microprocessor experienced severe backlash in the US for showing black men bowing in front of a white man; this imagery evoked feelings of the dark practice of slavery.

Localization or ”adaptation strategy” takes into account the inherent diversity that exists in international markets and treats individuals as “cultural beings” whose values and behaviors are shaped by the unique culture in which they live. Localization strategy is geared toward understanding local consumer preferences and other locale-specific requirements and then adapting the marketing mix and other business strategies to best satisfy consumer needs and wants.

Several companies have created standardized products and communications that have offended people in international markets.

There is a long list of companies, including Pepsi, Electrolux, Chevrolet, Colgate, and Gerber, whose non-localized messages were misinterpreted in various countries. While several of the publicized marketing blunders came from US or other developed-country multinationals, we are now seeing multinationals from China, India, Brazil, and other countries making the same mistakes. The Chinese automobile industry is growing fast and is poised for global expansion, but the industry faces international barriers related to poor quality perceptions of Chinese cars.

Even the Chinese car brand names seem to be less global. I asked my students what they thought of Chinese car brands such as Geely or Cherry; they responded that they sound too feminine. Another brand name that got a lot of giggles in my class was “Bimbo bread,” for obvious reasons. Bimbo bread is being marketed in the US by Bimbo Bakeries, which is a part of Grupo Bimbo, a Mexican company. The lack of localization strategy can mean missing the

Localization Strategy Localization strategy is geared toward understanding local consumer preferences and then adapting the marketing mix (products, price, place, and promotion strategies) to best satisfy consumer needs and wants.

consumer sweet spot or, even worse, making costly errors that result in sanctions, product recalls or even consumer boycotts.

So Why Localize?

1. Proper localization can save a company millions. Why? Because the cost of offending a group of consumer by insensitive marketing messages can be very expensive and in some cases permanent, leading to costly efforts in terms of re-positioning. In 2002, Abercrombie & Fitch’s T-shirts with Asian stereotypes led to consumer protests in the US, especially among the Asian-American community. T-shirt slogans such as “Two Wong’s can make it White” or “Get your Buddha on the Floor” were widely condemned and led to petitions for consumer boycotts2.

2. Localizing brand names into other languages without compromising brand identity is a crucial international marketing challenge for many companies. This becomes more of a problem when brand names need to be localized for languages wherein phonetic and semantic issues pose a challenge. The most common example is when companies use transliteration strategies to localize their English brand name to a completely different writing system, as in the case of Chinese script. For example, Carrefour chose its Chinese brand name (Jia-le-fu) based on how it sounds (phonetic appeal), and its positive meaning in Chinese: It means “home/family-happyfortunate”3. The famous example of a bad brand name translation into Chinese is that of Coca Cola: The translation of ko-kä-kö-la meant something like ‘bite a wax tadpole.”

3. Leaders of India’s Jewish community expressed outrage over a line of bedspreads called “The Nazi Collection” from a Mumbai (Bombay)-based home furnishing company that used swastikas in its promotional material4.

4. Even a simple thing such as the use of a number in a culturally inappropriate way can derail product sales. A golf ball manufacturing company packaged golf balls in packs of four for convenient purchase in Japan. Unfortunately, pronunciation of the word “four” in Japanese sounds like the word “death” and items packaged in fours are unpopular. Similarly, in the US, the number 420 is associated with the cannabis culture, and in India 420 spoken in Hindi refers to a conman or conDr. Nitish Singh woman and has negative Boeing Institute of connotation.

International Business

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Thus, these are just few examples of how lack of consideration for local culture, norms, practices etc. can lead to major business blunders. To better target their international audiences, many companies have proactively adapted or localized their products and marketing mix. Some examples are Nabisco, McDonald’s, and KFC. Yum! Brands, the parent company of KFC, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, and Long John Silver’s, has become a success story in China by adapting its menus and food retailing strategies. Now Yum! Brands is experimenting with the idea of East Dawning, a quick-service restaurant brand, providing authentic Chinese food to the Chinese customer that leverages the successful KFC business model.

A company’s products and communication are not the only areas that need adaptation; prices may also need to be adjusted to meet local market needs. For example, McDonald’s and KFC might be considered inexpensive fast food in the US but in India and China they are considered higher-priced alternatives to local cuisine. For example, in India, the menu items for KFC and McDonald’s range from Rs 20 to more than Rs 300, which is still more money that Indians pay for food from street vendors5.

Some of the food alternatives available from street vendors and local shops in India cost less than half of these prices. Thus, these American brands have localized their pricing effectively to match the Indian consumers’ perception of relatively higherend family dining.

On the other hand, in an attempt to reach rural markets in countries such as India, Indonesia, Philippines, and other emerging markets, various multinationals are creating product packaging and product sizes that can be sold at cheaper prices.

The goal is to enable populations with low monthly incomes to afford their products. For example, Colgate sells economically priced small “sachets” of tooth paste and small containers of tooth powder to appeal to the price-sensitive rural population of India and other south Asian countries.

Companies need to localize their distribution, logistics, retailing infrastructure, and even merchandising based on local consumer preferences. Logistics and distribution infrastructure vary globally. In India, major multinationals such as Coke, Colgate, Nestle, and others use nontraditional channels of distribution to reach the vast majority of the Indian population that resides in small towns and villages.

Some of the distribution and retailing methods used to reach consumers in rural India include rickshaws, bullock carts, boats, cycles, trucks, and dukandaars (small mom and pop stores).

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In Japan, companies leverage the extensive network of corner stores to achieve maximum market penetration. “Konbini Commerce” represents the merger of Japanese convenience store and e-commerce.

There are more than 50,000 Konbini or Japanese convenience stores across Japan. Konbini are an integral part of Japanese shopping culture and daily life. They are also an integral part of Japanese e-commerce as they allow the consumer to order online and pick up and pay for the merchandise at the store.

7-Eleven is the largest chain, followed by Lawson and FamilyMart. 7-Eleven Co. Ltd has set up a shopping site, 7dream.com, where Japanese shoppers can purchase from more than 100,000 items and then pay and collect the orders at the nearest 24-hour 7-Eleven store.

Similarly, Amazon Japan (amazon.co.jp) allows its Japanese customers to shop online and pay at their local convenience stores such as 7-Eleven, Sunkus, FamilyMarts, Daily Yamazaki, and others.

McDonald’s in India has localized its delivery service with the introduction of a “McDelivery” option in some cities: Indian consumers can order online or call 6600666 for home delivery.

Thus, it is neither desirable nor feasible for firms in several industries to achieve standardization of their marketing activities. Even when dealing with industries or product categories that do not seem to need localization, there is a chance that a certain element of the marketing mix may need adaptation if the product(s) will be marketed internationally.

Could companies really standardize customer service, distribution, pricing, and products when global variations in institutions, cultures, and other peculiarities are considered? ~ BQ References: 1. Adapted and Excerpted from “Singh, N (2012). Localization Strategies for Global e-Business. Cambridge University Press”.

2. One of the petitions is still available as of November 1st 2010 at http://boycott-af.com/.

3. Brand Source (2009), “Insights into Branding in China and Abroad. Accessed on Jan 2011. http://www.labbrand.com/ brand-source/chinese-transliteration-strategies-foreignbrand-names 4. The Sunday Times (October 2, 2007). Accessed Jan 2011: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/ article2570559.ece 5. An American dollar is worth around 40-45 Indian Rupees.

You can see Dr. Nitish Singh, along with many other brilliant Global Marketing speakers at the Brand2Global Conference in London, on September 16th-18th 2013.

Through our partnership with Global Marketing Network, we have been able to secure a 15% Discount on 1 and 2 day Main Conference registrations (see the advert opposite).

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Mobile Africa Lessons For Brands Targeting The African Market The mobile is the one item most people carry with them 24/7 and ‘use’ for multiple purposes. Mobile has fundamentally changed the way in which people communicate and interact with each other and the world around them. The mobile evolution is creating new interactive ways for organisations to connect with consumers at the right time and place. Brands must create mobile solutions that suit the consumer.

Mobile makes social more realistic and search easier and makes consumers lives easier and better.

People also spend long periods of time on mobile phones and they trust their mobiles. They prefer to access information on intended purchases from their phones than from sales people.

Danette Breitenbach Global CMO™ Africa Edition

Mobile phones play an important role in peoples’ lives, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. “In South Africa (SA) one medium that cannot be ignored any longer is mobile. What mobile represents to us today and in the future is fundamentally the most important opportunity for any business to connect with its consumers in a genuine and relevant way by providing a far deeper and personalised engagement if done correctly,” says Prakash Patel, CEO of Prezence Digital, a full-service digital agency that delivers highly strategic and immersive digital experiences across web and mobile in Africa.

But the continent does have some characteristics that make it unique when it comes to mobile use and these need to be considered by companies that cater to markets here.

The Audience In SA, and Africa generally, marketers are talking to a youth market where the majority are under-educated and jobless.

According to the South Africa Demographics Profile 2012: • Population: 48,810,427 (July 2012 estimate) • Age structure: • 0-14 years: 28.5% (male 6,998,726/female 6,959,542) • 15-64 years: 65.8% (male 16,287,314/female 15,972,046), • 65 years+ 5.7% (male 1,125,709/female 1,660,694) (2011 estimate) • Median age: total 25 years; male 24.7 years; female 25.3 years (2011 estimate) How this population segment is communicated to needs to be considered.

Even reaching the so-called ‘mass and middle income market’ in SA is an on-going challenge, because it is a moving target says Habari XL, 22

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MD, Mark Futcher. “Literally, this market is continually ‘on the move’, going where the work is, spending numerous hours every day commuting, and seldom standing still.

“Figuratively, it is continuously shifting, changing at a rate that most of us can’t even comprehend, driven by a combination of the radical socio-economic changes in SA and the exponential growth and development of technology on a global level.

“Add into the mix that this market segment is not – as the glib terminology insinuates - one homogenous mass of people, but actually a diverse group of consumers within different economical, age and habitual life stages. Stretching from LSM 3 to 7, hailing from backgrounds as diverse as the population of this rainbow nation, and working for a wide ranging monthly incomes - you therefore can understand why so much marketing is missing its mark.”

The Choices Apps:

The Costs Due to the costs – both of data and devices themselves – in SA most users are choosing feature phones over smartphones. The perception of expensive data costs has limited our use of smart phones says Mark Molenaar, director TNS Director.

He explains that the features people in SA are using on these phones - photos, emails, social media, games, browsing internet and instant messaging (IM) – are on apar with the global mobile usage. “Where we differ is our use of apps and this is because of data costs in this country. Contract customers, in particular, have been hit with huge data costs.

This goes back to apps, which are working in the background on your phone. This has made people nervous because of the cost and risk involved, and as a result they are so they are reverting to what they are use to. Other countries do not have that constraint. The low adoption of certain features, again apps, is mainly because of cost.”

The Devices Patel explains that iOS and Android devices only count for 14% of the smartphone market. “Therefore we are not like the rest of the world with regard to mobile device type penetration and need to think local in executing the perfect mobile channel strategy.”

Tim Bishop, Chief Technology Officer, Prezence Digital concurs with Patel, saying: “Everyone has a smartphone, right? While you may think so, this is far from the case.”

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He points out that global research can’t be used to measure smartphone penetration in Africa. Of the 58.8 million cell phones in SA, only 17% are smartphones. Research company Nielsen revealed in February that almost 50% of cell phone users in the US, by comparison, owned “smarter” phones and 90% of those smartphones were either Apple or Android platforms (usually the incorrect first choice for SA brands wanting apps). “But in SA, the story is very different where nearly 90% of smartphone sales are Blackberry and Nokia with Android and Apple still trying to gain traction. This fragmentation of platforms in SA where Blackberry and Nokia are the clear winners means that brands in the mass market must prioritise these two platforms followed

by Android, Apple and Windows (the five platform approach) (regardless of what your CEO wants).”

Bishop warns if your market is in Africa, it would be wise to “pause, research and then think deeply before you take your leap into an app”. He cautions that you first need to thoroughly understand smartphone usage in SA and your own objectives.

OnePixel COO Nicholas Rixon believes there is a need for local application developers to develop apps specifically for the African market that solve local problems and provide utility to the local market.

“The market is overrun with international applications, many of which do not add value in the African context. Local consumers are looking for Apps that help them in their daily activities to solve local problems and increase their effectiveness,” says Rixon.

The rise of mobile incubators and accelerator programmes in Africa is leading to some great innovation in the mobile and application space, and could lead to the development of more ‘made for Africa’ apps. These localised projects help entrepreneurs create successful mobile businesses that will look to tackle African problems using mobile devices. “Within the next two to three years we can expect to see some of these mobile businesses create real socio, political and economic impact across the continent,” says Rixon.

Mxit: The South African grown Mxit, Africa’s largest social network, was developed for feature phones, and demonstrates the power inherent in this often forgotten class of mobile phones. “It shows

Building Your Business From The Brand Up™

Mobi Sites:

that feature phones, where mobile sites are still accessible, should not be ignored,” says Patel.

Mobile Display Advertising: Even though the visual impact may be low, mobile display advertising in SA is currently outperforming desktop display advertising, says Adrian Varkel, Managing Partner, OgilvyOne Cape Town. “It’s working as a tool. Marketers need to find ways to tailor their content to suit the mobile medium. We need to look at ways to make the content work harder visually. Potentially partnering with other brands may be a solution instead of purchasing media space.”

Bulk Airtime Voucher Branding: Mark Futcher Bulk Airtime Voucher Branding is right on target. “In 2011, Habari XL teamed up with GloCell, one of South Africa’s national retail, wholesale and informal sector cellular groups and the result is the branded Bulk Airtime Voucher, a media platform that provides advertisers with the unique ability to connect with this market via a one on one, uncluttered engagements, on a known and trusted delivery system.”

“Mobi sites are a platform that is extremely powerful when done well and can rival apps for what we call “visual bling” and functionality. More importantly, with a single deployment a mobi site can service the entire smartphone market as well as the 30 million feature phones in SA,” says Bishop.

SMS, WAP, Mobile App Display Ads, Search Ads, Rich Media, Video And Push Notifications: The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) in SA says: “With a range of mobile advertising options including SMS, WAP, mobile app display ads, search ads, rich media, video and push notifications - the landscape can be a bit complicated. Advertisers are now accruing value and increasingly adding mobile in their marketing budgets. In SA, SMS is one of the most popular advertising methods and this is attributed to its low cost and ease of use.

“The biggest decisions for marketers now are whether to build a mobi site or an app, for advertisers, whether to advertise on mobi sites, apps, or both. Mobile advertising is constantly proving that marketers are taking an interest in new technology, marketing within apps is as easy as creating an ad campaign targeted to a specific audience,” it ~ BQ concludes.

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Building Your Business From The Brand Up™

Does Your Brand Have GAME? Grow Your Business With Practical Brand Management It’s a very common occurrence for a business to feel the need to up their marketing/advertising spend or completely re-Brand because they aren’t getting the results they are looking.

From my 15 years in the Design and Brand world, I can confidently tell you that a heavy majority (let’s call it 80% as the 80/20 rule seems to work everywhere) are doing themselves a disservice by following this route. It doesn’t matter how much more you spend on Marketing or how many times you re-Brand. If you’re not executing it properly to begin with, you’ll just end up in the same place again.

So, how to you tighten up your execution before you take the long (and expensive) re-Branding and Marketing spend road?

It’s as simple as ABC... sorry... I mean GAME

G is for Growth Readiness Quite simply, Growth Readiness is setting a solid foundation to initiate your business growth from.

In order to be successful in business, you need to know where you are, where you want to go, and how you plan on getting there. The same is true with your Brand and Marketing. Running blind will get you somewhere, but you’ll have no idea where that is until you get there.

And let’s face it, 99 times out of 100, it’s somewhere you don’t want to be.

Andrew Vesey Vesey Creative

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GAME divides Growth Readiness into three notable areas: A Solid Cornerstone Your Brand and your business are intertwined on every level, so before doing anything else you need to understand your business properly.

Understanding your business at a base level (Target Market, your SWOT, business goals, your product/ service and how you actually operate) will give you some key insights for the other areas of GAME. It will also allow you to fix any minor ‘business issues’ before they turn into ‘Brand issues’.

Knowing your values, your vision and goals is one thing, presenting them well is another.

It starts with getting your messaging right, building rapport with potential customers and understanding what makes the consumer tick. Then you need to present your messaging and visual identity in a clear, concise and relatable manner. The most successful Brands always do BOTH of these things well.

The three sections for this area of GAME are: Keeping It Real You know who you are. Now it’s time to tell the world.

Defining Your Core Brand Before you can create a great Brand or deliver effective Marketing campaigns, you first need to define your core Brand. What Values does it stand for? What promises does it make?

Just as important as defining your Brand, you need to make sure your team (internal and external) understand what it is all about - and buy into it. This ensures everyone is working towards the same goal.

If some of your team don’t know where the goal posts are, it makes it difficult for them to do their jobs efficiently.

Brand/Marketing Game Plan As the old saying goes - Failing to plan, is planning to fail.

Planning ahead for your Brand and Marketing spend and campaigns can pay off big time. Through game planning, you can improve the efficiency and returns of your Marketing, control your costs more effectively, as well as position yourself to take advantage of other opportunities that may arise in the future. Remember - more isn’t always better – it’s about being as effective as you can be with what you have.

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A is for Authenticity & Strength

With Growth Readiness, we made sure your core Brand was defined and understood. Now is the time to convey those messages to your target audience.

Getting these messages across effectively is an important part of building your Brand. When you don’t get it right, people will know. They may not know why, but they know something isn’t kosher.

Clear effective communication is key.

Brand Etiquette It’s not just what you say – it’s how you say it.

Building rapport with potential customers is all about doing the right things, as opposed to saying the right things. Choosing the right tone of voice, the correct Marketing mediums, through to whether you use a giveaway as opposed to a discount; these all effect how people will interpret what you say about your Brand and your business.

The Face of Your Brand What’s a Brand without a look?

Having a consistent and strong visual identity is always key in the Brand discussion, and can be quite

Building Your Business From The Brand Up™

a polarising topic. How much do you really need?

Is it consistent? Is it appropriate for your audience?

Does it align with your values? Visual identity alone, almost certainly won’t give you a successful Brand but, poorly executed, it can kill it.

M is for Management & Implementation Just like your business itself, you need to be aware of the day-to-day running of your Brand.

This is a key area you can make ‘business gains’ in. Poor management and implementation of your Brand and Marketing can lead to costs and man-hours ballooning out of control which can ruin your plans and budgets. It will also greatly reduce the effectiveness of your visual identity and Marketing messages. Correct management and implementation on the other hand, can pay huge dividends.

To attract these dividends, GAME breaks it down into these three areas: Quality Assurance The three most important things to effective Brand Management - Consistency, Consistency, Consistency.

Ensuring a top quality product or service makes for a successful business. The same can be said for your Brand. The larger your Brand presence, the more people involved and/or the more complex your Brand identity, the greater the chances of errors being made that will weaken your Brand’s position.

Look to greatly reduce these errors, and fix any issues before they do additional damage.

Using The Right Tools You wouldn’t use a sledgehammer to drill a hole.

Selecting the right tools for the job can give you a major edge. And when I say ‘tools’ I mean staff, suppliers, systems and Marketing materials (and even the materials those ‘materials’ are made from). Do you outsource? Insource? Crowdsource?

Getting these things right will help you keep your level of consistency and quality up. Creating the required systems and processes will become easier, and in most cases, there are cost savings to be had.

automation. Digital asset management system?

Online Brand Management? A simple spreadsheet?

It’s important to work out what’s right for you.

E is for Evaluation & Development Your Brand is a ‘living’ thing. You can’t just implement and forget it.

The world and the marketplace are forever changing. Your Brand needs to be aware of this and adapt along the way. In this, the final quarter of GAME, we ensure you have in place the pieces that will allow you to see what is working, what isn’t and keep an eye on future developments.

GAME closes out with the following three areas: Marketing Analytics Data is useless… unless you know what pieces are actually important to you.

There is an ever-growing multitude of ways to measure the response to your Marketing campaigns, your website effectiveness and consumer response to your Brand. It’s important to not get overwhelmed. Focus on what information is the most relevant to your business and Brand, and use the most cost and time efficient way to get the accurate data you need.

Identity Monitoring & Protection No Brand is an island.

It is important that you monitor what is happening in the marketplace and protect your Brand’s integrity.

Protecting your IP, keeping up with consumer opinions and monitoring your competition, all are important things if you want to truly be successful.

So often knowledge of the things you can’t directly control is what separates the winners and losers.

Brand Development Programme The final piece of the puzzle is to ‘rinse and repeat’.

Systemised Branding

Obviously this doesn’t mean it’s time to re-Brand already. What I’m talking about is the need for regular small reviews (the more regular they are, the smaller they can be) to make sure everything is on track and to find new ways to make your business and Brand more successful – i.e.: future-proofing and continued business growth.

The larger you get, the more the volume of work will stay the same - If you’re systemised.

Over the coming issues, I will go into a little more detail on different aspects outlined here. Until then...

Once you have your quality assurance in place and have selected the right tools, you can then start to look at options for further systemisation and

oh... I can’t help myself...

- GAME, set, match -

Brand Quarterly™

~ BQ

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Help Or Hype: What Do Your Customers Want?

Building relationships with your prospects and customers is definitely a longer process to getting the sale but the long-term gains are worth it.

Gone are the hype-ful campaigns, and in are the help-ful campaigns, a new way of communicating with the masses that is catching on but it takes a little more time.

Linda Coles Blue Banana

I think most of us know when we are being sold to and hyped up.

Our bull alert swings into action and we turn our attention off and move on to something more interesting. It’s happened to most of us, and because many of us have an inbuilt bull-ometer, marketers have to now get smarter and change their behavior to win the customer on side and that means more work.

Think about the last really bad newsletter you received and what it contained, probably hype about a product or service usually at a discounted price. Then think about a really good newsletter you have received of late, what made it so worthwhile to you? It may have included a tip, an event, a book review or an interview, all relevant to the topic you have subscribed to and all helpful.

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A hype-ful newsletter is so much easier to put together than a help-ful one because it’s usually simply the current offer and maybe a staff member change. It takes more thought and therefore more resource to be helpful, but wouldn’t you rather have your campaign talked about than simply tossed in the bin?

By sending useful information to your prospects and customers, you are in a good position to be allowed to repeat the process at regular intervals because the useful content you are sending is something they would be happy to receive themselves and be happy to pass on to others, extending the reach of your brand a little further.

Over time, the relationship you have with your prospects and customers should deepen because they are hearing from you regularly and they appreciate the help and advice you are supplying, whether it be via email, the social media platforms or good old fashioned in person, you are now on their radar and that’s a good thing.

How can you add more help to your product or service to help your customers buy it? ~ BQ

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| Brand | Implementation | Design |

The Principled Selling Method Four Steps To Sales Success We live in a time when technology has given all businesses, from independent consultants to the largest corporations, the ability to make a massive impact with their brand in months not years.

Yet so many businesses seem to struggle with the change of approach they need to make to harness the new marketing and selling environment.

David Tovey

At a creative session with my editor when I was writing my book; I was trying to distil in as few words as possible the Principled Selling approach. The result was:

Author: Principled Selling

‘Generate, Motivate, Secure, Develop’ Four words that sum up the business development activity all businesses who want long term profitable relationships need to focus on.

1. Generate Generating the right number of enquiries from the right profile of customers and clients is the first step to building a great client base. Long-term profitable growth depends on selling products and services to clients and customers who buy and re-buy.

Finding the right prospects in the right numbers has never been easier if you apply new thinking to your marketing activity and adopt the content marketing mind-set. Ditching expensive brochures and marketing material for well thought out content shared through social media channels enables reputations and brands to rapidly establish. In an era where trust in anyone ‘selling’ is at an all-time low, you can now build trusted relationships with target markets and even individual senior decision makers in a way traditional marketing and selling has never been able to. Despite what used to be said – it doesn’t take long to build trust and buyers are actively seeking trusted suppliers.

Marketing is no longer about mass production of propaganda or telling your story in the hope that someone who is ready to buy will notice; it is about motivating potential customers to engage with you.

A brand and reputation is no longer what we say it is, it is what customers and our market tell each other it is via their social networks on and off line.

2. Motivate Most long- term relationships usually involve at least one face-to-face meeting and relationships can be won or lost in a less than sixty minutes. Traditionally this was when the ‘selling’ started. There are so many myths about ‘selling’ and so much bad press about salespeople that it isn’t really a surprise that many people who need to win business hate the idea of having anything to do with it.

Yet selling is no more than the exchange of goods and services for money and can be a really comfortable and natural experience for both seller and buyer. There are principled skills and behaviours involved that motivate customers to buy if selling is approached ethically, with integrity and a conscience.

The lines between traditional marketing and sales have become so blurred now that those charged with meeting customers or clients and the marketing team need to work more closely than ever before employing valuable content throughout the selling process.

A brand and reputation is no longer what we say it is, it is what customers and our market tell each other it is.

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Building Your Business From The Brand Up™

Clients no longer need a salesperson to explain a product or service, they can do their research online and compare suppliers in an instant. What they do want is someone who can really understand them and who can help them achieve their organisations critical success factors. Knowing how to get proposals, RFT’s and presentations right is also important and many suppliers still get the basics wrong.

3. Secure Holding on to existing customer and client relationships has never been so important.

Managing the customer’s experience of doing business with you, having objective measurements of the strength of relationships and delivering as promised all contribute to customer loyalty. In a world where there is so much competition, there is a need to put at least as much effort into securing existing relationships as competitors do into trying to attract your best customers! Sharing valuable content with existing clients is just as important as using it to attract new clients.

4. Develop Doing a great job for customers is no guarantee that they will continue buying from you or that they will buy your complete range of services or products. Developing new opportunities with existing customers requires as much planning and business development activity as winning new clients. If you have major accounts or key clients, having a two page action plan for how you grow new opportunities is much more important than static data kept on a CRM system.

In my experience the organisations that sustain sales growth understand where they need to focus their resources and energy – generating new customers, winning orders or instructions, securing existing customers or developing new opportunities. The best have strategies and actions plans for all stages of the business development process. ~ BQ

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Managing Change As A Process It is important to remember that there is no single change methodology that fits every company or every situation.

However there is a set of practices, tools, and techniques that can be adapted to a variety of situations.

Current

In the previous article I noted that it was important that change must involve the people and not be imposed upon them. A recent example of imposed change is the change in social welfare payments provided by the New Zealand government. The stakeholder was told the change would occur on Monday 15th July 2013. Just read the letters to the newspaper, talk back radio and the opposition. Resistance is rife. Yes. I agree it would be difficult with the numbers involved to make the changes any differently. Keep in mind that any change is going to create resistance from someone or groups of people. You Ken Vesey are interrupting their ‘routine’ which they Approachable have developed to make themselves Consultancy comfortable.

Change Is A Process Prosci, specialists in change management, remind people that change occurs as a process, not as an event.

Prosci goes further by saying change does not happen instantaneously because there was an announcement, a kick-off meeting or even a go-live date. Individuals do not change simply because they received an email or attended a training program. When we experience change, we move from what we had known and done, through a period of transition to arrive at a desired new way of behaving and doing our job.

Transition

It is easy to see changes in nature occurring as a process.

Whether it is a caterpillar turning into a butterfly, or winter shifting into spring, we can easily appreciate the process of change. But when we begin changing processes within the business with projects and initiatives, we often forget the fact that change does not happen instantaneously.

Prosci break change down into three distinct states: the Current State, the Transition State and the Future State.

The Current State The Current State is how we do things today. The current state are the processes, behaviours, tools, technologies, business structures and job roles that establish how work is done. The Current State defines who we are. It may not be working great, but it is familiar and comfortable because we know what to expect. The Current State is where we have been successful and where we know how we will be measured and evaluated. Above all else, the Current State is known.

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Building Your Business From The Brand Up™

Future

The Transition State The Transition State is messy, disorganised, unpredictable and constantly in flux. The Transition State is often emotionally charged - with emotions ranging from despair to anxiety to anger to fear to relief. During the Transition State, productivity predictably declines. The Transition State requires us to accept new perspectives and learn new ways of behaving, while still keeping up our day-to-day efforts. The Transition State is challenging.

The Future State The Future State is where we are trying to get to.

It is often not fully defined, and can actually shift while we are trudging through the Transition State.

The Future State is supposed to be better than the Current State in terms of performance. The Future State can often be worrisome. The Future State may not match our personal and professional goals, and there is a chance that we may not be successful in the Future State. Above all else, the Future State is unknown.

Kotter’s ‘Eight Steps To Successful Change’ American John P Kotter (b 1947) is a Harvard Business School professor and a leading thinker and author on organisational change management.

Kotter developed a model for understanding and managing change. Each stage acknowledges a key principle identified by Kotter relating to people’s response and approach to change, in which people see, feel and then change.

Although Kotter was mainly focused on organisational change, the same principles apply even for small changes. In fact, if one considered the model carefully it could be adapted to be used with one person. The important issue is the steps of the model which lead people from one point forward to another.

Increase urgency - inspire people to move and make objectives real and relevant.

Build the guiding team - get the right people in place with the right emotional commitment, and the right mix of skills and levels.

Get the vision right - get the team to establish a simple vision and strategy. Focus on emotional and creative aspects necessary to drive service and efficiency.

Communicate for buy-in - Involve as many people as possible. Communicate the essentials, simply, and to appeal and respond to people’s needs. Declutter communications - make technology work for you rather than against.

Empower action - Remove obstacles. Enable constructive feedback and lots of support from leaders - reward and recognise progress and achievements.

Create short-term wins - Set aims that are easy to achieve in bite-size chunks. Manageable numbers of initiatives. Finish current stages before starting new ones.

Don’t let up - Foster and encourage determination and persistence. Encourage on-going progress reporting highlighting achieved and future milestones.

Make change stick - Reinforce the value of successful change via recruitment, promotion, and new change leaders. Weave change into culture.

Thinking Change Each step in the process is crucial. Experience has shown me that many organisations fall down in their change process by not putting in the time to think then plan what they want. This section of the article will be confined to the thinking initiative. While reading through this section, ask yourself, ‘Does my organisation undertake this or a similar process on a regular basis?”. If not, how could you set up a management operating system so that the review of improvement opportunities is undertaken on a regular daily on-going basis as part of your daily management processes?

Step 1 – Build Awareness The first step in in the change process begins with building awareness. Staff in your organisation needs to be aware that there is a continuing pressure to make change or improve. Why? Otherwise things will stand still and the status quo will remain the same and many things will never change with the business. Remember, your aim in business is to achieve rapid results and better results than you did today.

Introducing a philosophy of change is the expected daily rather than when we are not doing well allows the competition and competitive forces within the organisation to take over.

The benefit of creating this awareness and pressure is that it gets things moving and when actioned correctly gets positive things done. Perhaps you can start the pressure mechanism as you will have insights into what lies ahead and in which direction you want the business to head. This awareness becomes the initial pressure to change.

This awareness amongst staff is a significant benefit for the business because it provides the business a motivational edge. When the motivation is

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followed by action your business can lead its field.

In addition it invites into the business anticipation of what lies ahead which is more important than ever because of the rapid rate that business consumer and producer markets are changing and tougher competition comes into the market

Step 2 – Recognise An Area Of Need To change for the better one must recognise where within the business is the most important need right now. We are often aware of the pressures around us to change something but are not always able to identify the most important need right now. So how do we determine what area of the business needs our focused attention. Where is the greatest need?

One of the simplest methods of establishing the needs is to use the GAP analysis technique. This technique simply asks where the business is now and what is the gap we need to fill to get to where we want the business to be. The other way is to compare the elements of a high performance business to your own, which we call benchmarking.

Internally often the area of need can be recognised by reviewing the business’s financial performance.

It may not be about financial performance. It could be about staff attrition rates, number of injuries at work, or when the business is not producing the volume it has the capacity to produce. There may be too much downtime of equipment, high maintenance, failure and defect rates, or the trend in successful sales calls may be heading down.

Step 3 – Diagnose The Problem Diagnose the extent of how broad the opportunity is to improve. It is important to identify which problems need to be corrected first. We also need to identify which aspect of the problem we need to work on first. There are many change management tools available to assist you in the diagnosis.

Once diagnosed, we need then to analyse as much of the information we gathered during the diagnostic phase as possible. At the end of the day we need to establish how widespread the issues are and another important aspect, how important is the issue. It is of no great cost benefit to the business to spend 20 hours working and implementing a change that will offer the business an extra $5.00 per week! The analysis may point to overall business changes being required such as reviewing business goals, plans and practices or may involve just one area or aspect of the business.

Step 4 - Make Decision 1 A simple decision – are we going to take this opportunity or not? In other words are we going to fix the problem, or not fix it and maintain the present course we are on?

Step 5 - Develop, Review And Compare Possible Courses Of Action Now is the time to determine which course of action or actions will provide the business the best result in the shortest time. Keep in mind the old expression – ‘Time is money’.

When determining the appropriate course of action for the business keep in mind that more than one area of the business may improve with some action, while other actions may not fit well because they can cause a problem somewhere else. Remember the old law of physics – for every action there is an equal reaction.

This step’s goal is to deliver the sustainable results you seek in the shortest possible time.

Step 6 – Make The Big Decision Select the best course of change action for the business. When making this decision, base it on the proposed end result which you will achieve. This means, the decision will • support the business’s strategic objectives • be sustainable and • provide financial benefit to the business.

Summary Thus Far: We do not live in a world of certainty and predictability so businesses must establish a system of working within this type of environment.

For a business to achieve long-term sustainability results from change management activities and for the business to be the best it possibly can, the process must be implemented as a continuing operating process. Implementing a continuous business change process reduces the cost of changing and enables the business to implement change faster, improve change results and helps create a high performance business.

If we are serious about making productive and sustained changes to our business, we need to follow a logical process. The six steps discussed so far relate to the biggest part of the change management process – thinking about the change.

In the next quarterly we will discuss step 7 – plan the change. ~ BQ

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Laying The Groundwork For Successful Marketing Strategies In one the recent events of The Global Marketing Network (GMN) in South Africa, one of the attendees asked me how come his Marketing doesn’t work! Following a brief conversation I asked him: “How come and you know that it does not work? Have you measured specific activities?

Are you personally involved in implementing your strategy? Have you done your groundwork? Do you have a plan?”. The young entrepreneur looked at me and said no.

So if you are already ‘doing’ marketing, what’s the problem? The issue is that not knowing that you’re doing it makes it less likely that you can repeat the activity consistently over time. Applying a simple marketing framework enables you to identify which activities are effective and under 38

what circumstances. You can then plan to use them again when appropriate, and more easily communicate this to others. In today’s changing global environment it is essential not to overkill in planning but at least you must have a plan in place!

You need to know where you want to be and how you could achieve it. Marketing professionals and entrepreneurs spend time every day to focus on their marketing activities and tactics and tend to forget the most important element of Marketing: to build their Marketing Strategy

Here are some guidelines: Audit your existing marketing strategy, plans, and tactics. What works and what does not work?

Evaluate, analyse, and build insight.

Building Your Business From The Brand Up™

Markets: How much do you really know about your current markets or future market? Why do your customers buy from you? What could you offer that would attract more non-customers? How can you sell to more of the profitable customers? If you add features or services, will people pay more for them or will they attract more customers? Have you segmented your markets? Do you know who your target market is? Have you identified potential markets, determined their size and the potential of market segments?

Competition: Who are they and why are they after you? What is the overall market trend and how are you holding up in terms of market share and profit position? What substitutes are there to your products and how much of a threat are they?

Distribution: How can you get your products/services out to outlets profitably? Are there unbranded opportunities? Can you bundle in your products with someone else’s?

Supply Chain: Are you at the mercy of wholesalers for your raw materials or product Dr Antony Michail components? How can you Anacalypsis Strategy and Marketing manage suppliers and gain more buying power over them?

Can you simplify your products and reduce your supply needs? Can you buy in bulk and store them somewhere in a cost effective manner? Can you buy some things pre-fabricated

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cheaper than doing it yourself (or vice versa)?

Do You Have A Strong Marketing Strategy?

Positioning: Positioning is about communicating a product/service or an organisation, so that it occupies a distinctive place in the mind of the target audience. Where do your products/services fall in relation to the total market? Is this truly the position you want? Have you defined your market segments?

An ideal marketing strategy has the following five key elements:

Products: What is the total product concept for this good or service? Will it satisfy consumers’ needs (or B2B’s needs)? How does the product differ from that of the competition? Describe the package (size, colour, label, etc.) and its benefits.

Are any warranties or guarantees offered? What is the perceived quality of each of your products/ services? What is its competitive advantage? How to you plan to manage product profitability?

Promotion: What promotion tools make the most sense to promote your products yet are consistent with the marketing image you want to project? How do you know if they pay off?

Pricing: What is your pricing strategy? Does variable pricing make sense for different markets, perishable products, or time-based sales processes, or various customer types? Are you charging for everything you do?

Service: How well and how consistently are you delivering/producing your products/services? What people problems must be addressed? Do you really train people in their overall role and mission, not just the mechanics of their job? How do you know your customer service is satisfactory? How can you use disservice situations to build customer loyalty?

Financing: What is your capital structure? That is, what are the proportions of cash, bank borrowing, other borrowing, invested funds, and net income to your operation? Do you produce an annual financial report and a monthly cash report? Are there other sources of capital you should look at?

Are there cheaper sources for say, bank loans?

Strategy: How can you build customer loyalty? How can you increase sales to existing customers (more frequent use or buys, selling a broader product line to them) or new customers (existing and new products)? How can you penetrate into new areas profitably?

People & Systems: Do you have the right people and systems in place? Do you empower your staff to maximise their contribution, and in doing so, boost their job satisfaction. How efficiently does your marketing operation work? What processes would help you find, service and retain customers better?

What processes can help you better measure marketing performance?

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1. Real Market Segments: Real segments are based on customer needs and motivational drivers. This contrasts with the common but much less useful segmentation process of many companies (classification into groups, based on whatever data is available – i.e. age, gender, income (in B2C) or industry, size and usage (in B2B). In data-driven segmentations the customers will deliver varying and unpredictable (and therefore less cost effective) responses to any offer made to them.

2. Tailoring the offer to each defined segment: Your marketing strategy should make a particular offer to defined segments based on the known customer needs of that segment. This should result in the delivery of an adapted marketing mix to each defined customer segment. This follows the logic that given a choice the customer is most likely to choose the offer that best matches their particular needs.

3. How unique is your offer in comparison to that of your competitors? Uniqueness works because it effectively side-steps your competition, rather than going head-to-head with it. By defying or negating direct comparison with the competition, a unique offer often comes to dominate your target market/segment, achieving strong loyalty and relative price inelasticity. To test your offer’s uniqueness, ask yourself: what would happen if your business disappeared overnight?

4. Is your marketing strategy developed in such a way to cope with future challenges? Bear in mind that markets, customer needs, distribution channels and competitors’ offerings are constantly changing. The strongest marketing strategies anticipate change and target and design the offer accordingly.

5. Marketing strategies work best when they have SWOT alignment. Here your strategy should aim to makes good use of what your business is better at than its competition whilst avoiding the effects of any relative weaknesses that you have. By doing this the business targets segments where it is especially well placed to compete.

To infer, keep it simple, focus on your customer needs, communicate the point of difference and have a marketing strategy that will address the future customer and market challenges. ~ BQ

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TM

Experience Vesey Creative.

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When you’re creating and maintaining a brand, you’re working with designers.

Whether they are in-house or an external team, designers and branding are never far away from each other.

Design 101 Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition unifies and strengthens your messaging and creates a level of visual interest - while also simplifying and making your information easier to follow.

Let’s be honest. Who doesn’t want their marketing collateral to be more enticing to read, and more impactful when it is?

There are many different ways you can use repetition to strengthen you messaging. Here are a few of the most popular.

Font Choice It is always recommended to keep your selection of font to a minimum. A main, a complimentary and a contrast. With this limited number of fonts, repetition is unavoidable. The trick is to use one of your selected fonts for a very specific purpose.

Headings and subheadings, testimonials or the most important information can be highlighted, to ensure the viewer sees the best bits.

The same can be done with font variants (eg: Bold or Italic). Just remember - don’t over do it. ALL emphasis is NO emphasis.

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Design 101 is a series aimed at bridging the gap between you and the design world. Helping you to better communicate your vision with your designer and get an understanding of ‘how they tick’.

Colour Choice Repetition of a specific colour will really unify your design and boost your Brand awareness.

Repeating the one colour in a series of different tints can either guide the viewer through your design by creating a visual hierarchy, or it can be used as a scale to advise the level of important of each piece of information.

If your design is on white or black, you can use a Brand colour or any other colour you choose. If you are using an other colour as your base for the design, then make sure you get our your colour wheel and find an appropriate match - Complimentary, for guiding people through.

Contrasting, for emphasizing important points.

Content Formatting Formatting the layup of your text is key to easy to follow marketing collateral, whether it’s text heavy or only has a few words. To help build a level of interest and emphasize the important, use solid repetition of bullet points, alignments, drop caps, underlines, and other formatting options.

If you have 5 ‘sections’ to your content, make all 5 follow the same pattern of alignments. This way the viewer is made aware of where each ‘thought’ starts and finishes. Making it more appealing and easy to follow.

Building Your Business From The Brand Up™

Lines Leading lines, parallel lines and intersecting lines can all be effective in repetition - Just try not to use them all at once.

When it comes to lines, you can use repetition in it’s purest sense, or you can select one or two specific aspects of the line to repeat. Thickness, colour, style, direction, length. By choosing just one or two, you can keep a lot of variety while maintaining an underlining unity.

Keri Sandford Vesey Creative

Brand Elements Do you have a Brand Device or element extracted from your visual identity? If so, then finding how to repeat it through your design - without over doing it can help to build a good level of Brand continuity.

Branded bullet points, drop caps, watermarks, image or page framing etc are all options to look at.

Spacing And Object Relationships The main thing people believe about spacing and how the objects on the page relate to each other, is that it’s used to ‘keep it tidy’ and ‘look professional’.

Well, it does. But there’s so much more.

Uniform spacing and alignment of objects will look great and is a good starting point. But then you need to thing what it is you want to do.

Want people to take more time in certain parts?

Spread your objects out a little more in that area to slow down the tempo. Want emphasis? Being the one object that doesn’t repeat it’s spacing will stand out from the rest. Three distinct parts to each section? Try three distinctly different spacing methods to really make them stand out and make it easy to match the same parts from different sections together. ~ BQ

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Innovation It’s More Than Just Invention The other week I attended a new Networking event for SMEs. After the initial pleasantries were exchanged, as common courtesy dictates, I was asked what I do for a living.

Upon hearing that I am an Innovation Consultant, the immediate response was ‘So you invent things?’

This common misconception, whilst frustrating, is not unsurprising. Innovation is closely linked to exciting market entries, medical research and technological advances, however if that was really all that it were about, I would be out of job.

All we have to do is look at the patent database. There are literally thousands of patents listed that have never made it to the market. In fact, some barely made it out of the lab or studio in which they were created and the blunt reality is that these so called ‘innovations’ have not reached commercial reality. In my business, innovation is about taking an idea and making it a commercial reality.

So why is this misconception so widespread?

Because, all too often, businesses are putting the invention process first before properly identifying and addressing the market need. All over the world there are businesses who have employees, departments and committees dedicated to innovation, who are spending time and money coming up with ideas, then even more time and money proving that these ideas work perfectly, rather than talking to the market first and identifying what the consumer actually needs.

What is perhaps even more frustrating is that it’s not just businesses that fall into this enticing trap. There are likewise plenty of Innovation firms and consultants who love to use ideation tools and problem solving techniques without first asking the question: ‘What does the market need?’ and ‘What is actually the problem to be solved?’.

Henry Ford purportedly said “If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.” Jokes aside, Ford listened to his potential customers, observed their needs and identified a true market. The first step towards reaching commercial reality is therefore market research and customer insight.

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The next step is to encourage businesses to embrace failure. Instead of spending thousands of pounds building a prototype to prove that their product will work perfectly, we encourage businesses to make a low cost prototype and test it on the market. If the inexpensive model fails to excite the market, then 9 times out of 10, so will the expensive model. In some cases, the difference between failing with a low cost prototype versus a perfect prototype can be the difference between the life and death of a business.

Dr. W. Edwards Deming, who is widely considered to have changed modern industry by developing better ways for people to work together, was a firm advocate of embracing failure and prototyping to learn. He also introduced a philosophy and methodology that allows individuals, organisations, government agencies and large companies, Andrew Jones to plan and continually G2 Innovation Group improve themselves, their relationships, processes, products and services.

He encouraged cooperation and continual development, whilst redefining mistakes as opportunities for learning and improvement.

One of his most well-known strategies, the PlanDo-Study-Act cycle, is the perfect process for increasing the speed and effectiveness of any Innovation activity:

Plan: Look at the market/customer wants and needs, identify and plan your solution.

Do: Make/Devise/Develop your idea (For example make a quick prototype and test - the earlier the better!).

Study: Watch its reception in the market. Study its successes and failures. Failures are good, they inform far more than an early success. Learn from failures and embrace them.

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Act:

R&D Tax Credits

Make adjustments and plan your next test (when ready take to market).

In the UK, the HMRC’s R&D tax relief scheme exists to encourage investment in research, development and innovation by UK companies, thus eliminating many of the fears associated with the cost of innovating. The benefits are huge, with companies claiming back between 8.4p and 30p per pound spent on development.

The words when ready are imperative here. It is very uncommon for businesses to succeed with their innovation after just one PDSA cycle and even if a company is commercially successful after only a few attempts, this cycle should be on-going in order to continue to innovate the original concept, any future concepts and the business as a whole.

Markets and competitors will not remain stationary, so nor should an innovation strategy.

There are numerous reports commenting that 70%, 80%, 90% of leading global businesses claim that innovation is critical to their business, however, only a handful of these actually actively engage in an innovation strategy.

Why? Fear and Misconception Fear that it will take too much time and cost too much and misconception that innovation is purely invention (and inventions most often fail) when in reality it covers a wide range of activities aimed at improving performance, including product development, service, distribution processes, manufacturing processes, marketing and organisational method.

So, how do businesses overcome these Fears and Misconceptions?

There are a number of ways that a business can begin to innovate. Three that would recommend are:

These R&D tax credits can be used to reduce corporation tax payments and even loss making businesses can benefit. Industry and politicians agree that increased investment in technology and innovation is vital to the future success of the UK economy. The promising result for business is more cash available to fuel further investment in innovation.

Patent Box Another tax break in the UK which can aide Innovation is the HMRC’s Patent Box initiative. This regime applies a 10% corporation tax rate to profits attributed to patents by 2017, thus giving companies not only an incentive to protect and commercialise their patents, but also to initiate innovation and growth. It is being phased in between April 2013 and April 2017.

Tax breaks available to you will most likely differ from the above if you are outside the United Kingdom. Our advice to you is to do your research. Find out what you are eligible for and get advice on how to best utilise it.

An Innovation Management System These systems guide businesses through an innovation process. Unsurprisingly, the innovation system we employ focuses on market & insight first.

However, we also believe that Innovation should not be the charge of just one person, department or committee.

Just as Health and Safety and Quality Control have now infiltrated businesses from the ground up, Innovation should be everyone’s responsibility.

Every vital pillar of business from products and processes, financial and risk management, talent development, branding and promotion, among others should be included within the Innovation strategy and hence every employee from the Office Assistant through to the Company Director should actively and innately be considering innovation on a day to day basis. A good Innovation Management System will address this.

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There are many exciting and indeed, innovative, ways of helping businesses to develop an innovation strategy. The key thing to remember is that it need not be expensive or time consuming and that it is more than just developing inventions and generating ideas.

Innovation is a company-wide concept, which when implemented properly will result in commercial gain. As more companies begin to genuinely understand this, our future can only become brighter. ~ BQ

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Loyal To A ‘T’ Customer Loyalty - Create it, Nurture It Depending on which research you look at, it costs five to seven times more to pick up a new customer than keep a current one.

An amazing statistic really. But, what’s even more amazing, is that so many companies forget this and get caught up in the crusade for new customers, often at the expense of their current ones.

Yes, I understand that you’re looking to grow so need a lager customer base, but think about this: A customer kept, is one less new one you need to attract to meet your goals.

Let’s quickly run the numbers: • Say you need 100 customers in any given week.

• Finding 100 new customers every week can be challenging and pretty darn expensive.

• But convert 20 of those customers into weekly regulars and you have a head-start on week two.

• If you manage convert another 15 customers the following week, that gives you a total of 35 regulars I think you can see where this is going.

The more repeat business you can generate through your current customer base, the better the return you will get on your Marketing investment and the greater your potential for business growth.

So, enough about ‘Why?’, let’s talk about the real question - ‘How?’ As I see it, there are two main categories of loyalty to consider:

Organic Loyalty Organic loyalty is what we should all be striving for with our customers. In short, organically loyal customers hold a true connection with your Brand. They keep coming back because they really do want to, not because you’ve got the best promotion that week. The can also be much more forgiving if you mess up a little (as long as you handle it in line with your Brand values) and won’t jump ship the second they hear a strange noise.

When these customers reach a high level of connection with your Brand, you’ve just secured yourself another Brand Evangelist. A one person, unpaid Marketing machine for your Brand. Let’s face it, we all want that.

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However, while we all love the idea of purely organic loyalty, we have to face the fact that very few businesses are able to generate any sizeable amount of loyalty through just doing a wonderful job. Enter, Synthetic Loyalty...

Synthetic Loyalty Synthetic loyalty is a much more fickle thing. On the outside, it may look like your customers are wonderfully loyal, but the moment someone else offers them a promotion that beats yours, they’re out the door - until you offer something better.

Now, synthetic loyalty isn’t all as bad as it sounds.

In ‘real world’ terms, synthetics can quite often be a preferred option (synthetic motor oil is a prime example). So, while this type of loyalty can be fickle, it also has a number of benefits.

First and foremost, you’re probably not going to get that many organically loyal customers off the bat.

Most of them will be generated by first enticing the synthetic and then over time, winning them over to the organic.

The other big bonus lies in the fact that a large portion of your customers will connect with like minded people. Therefore, as your promotions draw them in, their ‘group’ will only be a step behind.

Now we have a handle on the types of loyalty we’re trying to generate, let’s check out a few of the most common examples.

There is the argument that almost all forms of loyalty programme are really only good for generating synthetic type loyalty. While there is some truth in that, I believe the key rests in how you use each tool, rather than what the tool is designed for.

So in this vain, I will shed some light on how to make some these methods more ‘organic friendly’.

Discount And Loyalty Cards These types of loyalty tools are quite simple. You offer a discount and hope it’s better that anyone else’s.

To give these a slightly more organic appeal, don’t make them readily available to just anyone. Create a simple system where your customers register and once they have met a certain set of basic criteria (length of contract, number of purchases etc) then they receive their discount card.

Building Your Business From The Brand Up™

You can even take this a step further by creating a stepped discount system which will enable you to reward the most loyal customers even more (yes, we’re working toward Brand Evangelists here).

The next step from a pure discount card is the loyalty card. Instead of just giving a discount up front, a loyalty card will normally offer a free product after a number of purchases, or in lieu of a discount, it will give the customer a store credit based on what they spend.

This is a great tool, as you are not seen as directly discounting your products, you are seen as rewarding loyalty. When compared to throwing discounts around, trying to persuade someone to purchase from you, this rewarding of loyalty is a powerful tool. People like to be appreciated, and will show more loyalty back.

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Competitions We all know what these are. You give a prize away to a lucky person in order to get a lot of people to either purchase, join your mailing list, or do something that gives you free promotion.

While outwardly synthetic, they can be highly effective and done right, can generate long term loyalty.

For me, it is important to think carefully on your competitions and craft ones that build loyalty rather than ones that just get lots of entries.

Pay close attention to both what your prize is, and what you are asking your customers to do. Both can be loyalty catalysts. Is your goal sales generation?

Then maybe you need them to purchase multiple times to enter. Perhaps it’s extra entries for referring friends.

Before you go rushing out to spend hundred or thousands on cool gadgets on prizes, think about offering your product or service for an extended period of time instead. You instantly generate a level of loyalty with the winners, and more importantly, you will also be able to reach everyone in their network on a regular basis - attracting more new customers.

There are those that may be sceptical with this type of competition as they feel it will attract less entries.

But if your product or service is as good as you say, then you may actually receive more entries than with a generic prize.

If you don’t, that’s ok too. Because the entries you do get are from people who already like your product or service and will be the easiest to convert to loyal followers.

You can even contact everyone who didn’t win the big prize and give them a special VIP style offer 50

which will keep them coming back (and bringing their friends).

Organic Tools While there may not be many truly organic tools for generating loyalty, there are a few things you can do to help.

People want to be loyal to something, so make it easy for them. Make sure your Brand Values match that of your target market (if they don’t, then fix your values or change your target market) - and even just as important, tell them about it.

Instore materials, website posts, social media, ‘Keep Warm’ activities (eNewsletters etc), are all opportunities to make that connection that little bit stronger and show you are just like them.

Be their friend, their champion, their leader, what ever it is that your target market is looking for.

Reward people for being loyal, and not just with discounts and giveaways. Sometimes a simple ‘Thank You’ or similar piece of recognition can be more powerful.

Above all, be authentic and show your customers that you appreciate their loyalty and will be loyal to them too. This will create a strong, almost unbreakable bond and you can keep them as customers for life.

We all want to grow, and that does require new customers. But, don’t forget your current ones, who are just searching for something or someone to be loyal to.

While new customers can be the catalyst for major growth, it’s securing loyalty from the ones you already have that will be the real fuel to get you to your (hopefully lofty) goals. ~ BQ

Building Your Business From The Brand Up™

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• ‘Glocalisation’ – The Mantra For Today’s Global Marketing Strategies Svend Hollensen fgmn

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• Metamorphosis Of 20th Century Institutions, Into The 21st Century “Corpnation” Anuja Prashar pgmn

• Value To Each Customer – The Only Pricing Strategy That Really Works Peter Hill

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August 2013

New Frontie rs In Adland: Chi na Mark Tungate

“Corpnations ” The Metamor phosis Of 20th Century Institutions Anuja Prashar pgmn

Value To Each Customer The Only Pric ing Strategy That Really W orks Peter Hill

Marketing In Africa Is Changing Darrell Kofkin

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