Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Five More Tips To Develop Your Brand













These additioinal tips are too important to keep you in any suspense beyond yesterday's blog.


5. Conduct a brand assessment. Ask twenty of your customers to name one word that they would use to describe your brand. If your twenty responses all come back different, you need to work on your Consistency. If the large majority of them don't meet the message you were hoping to send, then your Clarity needs improvement.

6. Conduct a SWOT Analysis. A SWOT Analysis is a method often attributed to strategic planning that calls for the analyzer to evaluate the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats involved with a brand.  With a SWOT Analysis, you can create a detailed and honest assessment of where your brand soars and where it suffers. You can also find key avenues which might grow your brand and, of course, determine potential threats to your brand awareness and uniqueness.

7. Understand your value. There is only one of you. That has value and that has power -- but only if you know your brand value and power. What do you bring to the table that no one else can? Why would someone want to buy your product? What makes you different than everyone else? These are all questions whose anwers belong in your brand consideration.

8. Define your positioning strategy.  When your customers think about your brand, what kind of thoughts do you want them to have? When you have the answer to that question in mind, you're in a position to craft a brand that will reach your target market effectively. Remember, however, that it's important to conduct a brand assessment frequently to ensure that your message is being delivered and received as you intended.

9. Deliver your authentic self. When building brand awareness, you must deliver your authentic self. Be original, be yourself and be honest. The more of your authentic self that you bring to the table, the more successful you will likely become.

By R. Kay Green, IKG Marketing Solutions

Monday, March 25, 2013

Nine Tips To Develop Your Brand


While these nine tips were published in our Manufacturing Marketer last week, they're important enough to repeat again for those that missed them.
 
A brand is the power of you on paper or on screen.  It is the extension of yourself that your marketing materials attempt to project. Brands work the same whether large of small. The brands that succeed are the ones that are unique, but they're also the ones that are authentic.  A brand must come from the heart. It must define who you are. A brand is a direct representation of you as well as your promise about what you will deliver to your customers. With this in mind, let's examine a few key insights into how to develop a brand.
 
1.  Determine your vision and your purpose. Ask yourself one question: "What is my business really about?"  The goal of a successful brand is almost always to make something happen first and foremost. So what is it that you want to make happen?  Answer this question honestly and thoroughly, then write down in the fewest number of words possible.
 
2.  Determine your target market. Ask yourself who is the most profitable segment of market that is likely to purchase your product. Once you've answered this question...you may then craft your strategy to attracting these prospects. You must be clear on who you are targeting and how to attract them.
 
3.  Determine who your competion is.  If you're stuck on what your brand should be, the best way is to study what the competion is doing. It could be that there's something specific about their brand that might help you to shape your brand. Maybe you perceive a shortfall on the part of the competition's brand -- one that will fit nicely into your brand message. Maybe from a survey into your target market, you determine a flaw in something the competition is doing. That's something that you may use to your competitive advantage.
 
4. Remember the three C's for branding. The three C's for branding are Clarity, Consistency and Constancy.  With regard to clarity, you want your brand image, purpose and message to be unassailably clear. When prospects see, think about, or learn about your brand, you want them to know immediately and exactly what you stand for. Consistency is a matter of keeping your message uniform.  You can't present your brand in print differently than you do in person.  Constancy is a matter of getting the message out there to the point where it is most ever-present.
 
Tune into my next blog for five more compelling tips.
 
By R. Kay Green, IKG Marketing Solutions


Sunday, March 17, 2013

Why Sales People Don't Follow Up Good Leads - Part II

Let's return to "where's the disconnect" from my last blog....

Here's a statistic that would surprise most sales reps -- and might surprise some marketeres as well. About 45% of business-to-business leads, that is prospects who've inquired about a product, will end up buying.

Going back to our salesperson, out of those first 100 leads, assume 45 will eventually buy.  Of course, not all of them will buy from our salesperson,  but out of 45 opportunities, he can expect to close about 15.

But here's the problem: Reps often underestimate how long it takes for those leads to turn into sales. Some statistics show that about four will buy the first month, about the same the second month, and so on.

It makes sense if you think about it.  A prospect could be anywhere in the buying cycle when the rep calls. Some are ready to make a final decision while others are just beginning to explore their options. In other words, only about four are ripe. The rest are too green to pick. And, unfortunately, a green lead can seem like a bad lead. They're not focused.  They're not ready to set an appointment.  It's easy to assume they're not really serious prospects.  But they will be once they ripen!

The worst thing that our salesperson can do with green leads is to throw them out and start with a new batch. He's already done the hardest part -- making contact and establishing a connection.  Now he needs to cultivate those opportunities.

But most don't. Believing that the leads have gone stale., he puts them in the "when I get to them" file and never gets to them. So he doesn't get those 45 sales opportunites.  He gives up after a few months and maybe gets only eight or ten -- which only reinforces his belief that the leads were lousy to start.

What does it mean for marketers? You have to work closely wth your own sales force and dealer organization to make sure they understand how leads continue to ripen. And you need their buy-in to keep following up on those leads.  Do that, and marketing and sales will be pulling in the same direction.

Thursday, March 14, 2013

Why Salespeople Don't Follow Up Good Leads


No matter how much effort marketing puts into delivering high-quality, actionable leads, most salespeople remain convinced that marketing-generated leads are lousy.

The problem usually isn't the leads, however; it's how salespeople follow up on them.

Let's look at a typical experience from the salesperson's perspective.  He gets 100 leads. Marketing promises that these leads are golden. The tire-kickers have all been screened out. Each is an inbound lead from someone actively looking to buy - prospects who called the toll-free number or clicked on a web page asking for information.

The salesperson blocks out precious hours - hours that he's taking away from existing customers and deals already in the pipeline, and starts calling.  By the time he gets to the bottom of the pile, he's won exactly two sales.  Next month, he gets another 100 leads and gets the same results.  The month after that, he gets another 100, but by now he's not getting any sales from them because he's shoving them into a bottom desk drawer to ignore them.

So where's the disconnect?

Tune into my next blog. :)

MY OBJECTIVE:

To share common sense lessons learned with 40-plus years experience in marketing, sales and as a B2B publisher.

Followers