A guide to product branding

Product branding turns a common product into a unique and exciting buying opportunity. It builds on a number of factors important to consumers such as image, utility, value, quality and service. For a company to properly brand its product it is prudent to be prepared for a merciless market that's whims can change at the drop of a hat. Fortunately, there are proven techniques and marketing know how in the area of product branding.

Product branding techniques

Branding a product can be extensive, but for purposes of brevity a few key principles are vital to the effective implementation and outcome of any product being branded well. Some of those methods are as follows:

• Customer affinity

Customer affinity is the type of relationship a consumer has with a product. For example, person A prefers Apple Ipods because they just feel right, are reliable, and they have the right features in comparison to MP3 players. This entails a confidence of the consumer, not only in the product but with the company.

• Product differentiation

It's an old principle, but time tested when a marketing professor or guru says, "differentiate your product". This is so because stand out products stay in the memory for a reason. The ideal product differentiation is not only distinctive, but also enhanced in some way.

• Brand equity

Brand equity is the sum of all branding. A product with high affinity but low differentiation has a more average branding in total. The key in branding is to optimize all the branding techniques for as few advertising and research dollars as possible.

The branding process

If branding is done well, and the market likes what it perceives in a brand, it can lead to increased sales, greater corporate and product recognition in addition to serving as a platform to initiate new brands. Once a company and its products are branded it is difficult to move away from that image. Consequently, a bad branding or unsuccessful branding can cost a lot in failed advertising and lost revenue. A problem with branding is knowing how the market will respond to a brand as it is not an exact science. This may involve significant market research, and significant marketing tactical and strategic know how.

Techniques and resources available to business owners:

The field of marketing is diverse and has a wide a scope and depth as can be imagined and created. In the case of branding a few approaches and resources can serve a company well in the branding process. Add-on selling, consumer behavioral analysis and brand image can assist a marketer when taken proper advantage of. To utilize product branding methodologies, a marketer may first study the goals his or her company wants to achieve, then build the brand in line with those goals and the branding methods. Professionals in the field, marketing text books, online gurus and articles, and branding intuition are all resources a marketer might consider before, during and after engaging a product branding project.

Guide to effective advertising and marketing

Good marketing and advertising takes effort, know how, financing and research. These ingredients are as essential as flour, yeast, water and heat are in making bread. To think you can get by with one or two of these ingredients is fooling yourself as the market is competitive and to compete positioning is essential. This doesn't mean the ingredients have to be huge, just there. Small marketing can be as effective on a smaller scale if its done right. Below are a few tips on getting started, maintaining momentum and keeping existing clients.

• Be Pro-Active in engaging current and future clients

• Know your market inside and out and around

• Have a product or service worth buying

• Involve your company in the community

These are just a few of the more intuitive approaches to marketing and advertising. There are also marketing principles, marketing theory and marketing analysis. While these are all useful and fall into the 'know how' category they aren't stand alone methods. A few of these principles are the following:

• The 4 P's of marketing (Place, product, price and promotion)

• Brand Equity

• Customer Life Time Value

• Target marketing and Niche marketing

• Primary and Secondary Research techniques

• Persuasion

Marketing and advertising is thus a multi-dimensional field that changes as people and people's needs change. Add to that a highly competitive environment in which other companies try to out think, out sell, out produce and out expose one another. Staying competitive involves continuous effort and devotion to the marketing and advertising effort. Staying competitive is another dimension of Marketing and Advertising that takes ability and capacity. Specifically it is good to keep abreast of a few important factors in addition to following the techniques listed above. The most important of these is innovation.

Innovation

Innovation is what keeps a company alive, it brings new life to the corporate world, new revenue, and new ways to grow. Think Apple, Toyota, Grameen Bank, Boeing and many other companies that's future has depended on innovating existing products by making them better or more differentiated in some way.

Financial management and corporate communication

Effective corporations communicate needs and problems between departments and work together to solve problems. Shying away from difficulties and/or brushing them under the carpet so to speak doesn't solve problems it allows them to fester and grow. The Japanese call this approach Kaizen and it works to improve morale, efficiency and productivity. Team work is at the core of this method and that doesn't mean selling your soul to a company it means actually working for a company rather than a paycheck. After all, if you're at work, why not work in a pleasant atmosphere that benefits and faces problems rather than avoids them?

Additionally, since a corporation is at in a major way a financial vehicle with financial motives, these motives should not be ignored. Working within a budget is fair so long as it allows the above methods and principles to be followed. This can involve some pretty tough negotiating and possibly some heavily weighted consultants. However, with team work consultants aren't always needed and the money spent on them can go to more advertising.

Advertising and Marketing well is an art and a corporate lifestyle. It is different from other divisions of Business because it is in many ways the face of the company and the truer this image is to the actual business the more possible it is clients are likely to see a company as genuine. This is so as advertising that doesn't reflect actual corporate operations can be perceived as phony and can turn some clients off a product or service for life.

Customer service

Good Marketing and Advertising also involves strong customer service. While this is not the field of Marketing and Advertising it is very much related and relevant to the process as customer service agents are often the first communication a client as and you know what they say about first impressions. The same may hold true to second, third and fourth impressions. In other words, keeping clients happy if something goes wrong, knowing what makes them happy and developing new ways to make clients happy without being totally unreasonable to corporate objectives is key to steady revenue, and customer loyalty.

All this said, the real challenge of Advertising and Marketing is actually doing it. Many things are easier said and done, but not impossible. Starting small is always the first step in learning how to walk in the World of advertising and marketing.

Sources:

1. http://www.helium.com/tm/535927/there-types-styles-marketing
2. http://www.helium.com/tm/533690/niche-marketing-different-arguably
3. http://www.valuebasedmanagement.net/methods_kaizen.html

How niche marketing can benefit your business

Niche marketing is a form of business marketing that focuses promotion of product(s) or service(s) on a specific target market. Since it 'targets' a specific portion of a population demographic niche marketing is an arguably more effective way of generating revenue than mass marketing. This is so as the products or services may be more likely to be purchased by the target market because in a sense the products or services are customized for them.

Niche marketing using Earth friendly branding

Source: 'Ecogirls'; C.C. By-S.A. 3.0

The reason niche marketing is used is because it is a cost effective form of advertising. Rather than spending endless amounts of money to drag a marketing dragnet across a sea of people it is considered beneficial to identify that group or those groups of people who are most likely to use a certain type of product or service. After this group is identified a niche marketing campaign can begin.

Defining niche marketing

To illustrate what niche marketing is think of a specific type of product like writing services. People who like to read a lot are probably more likely to enjoy writing than those who prefer talking a lot. Markets can be divided further through complementary products. For example, if someone is already subscribing to a writing magazine, they then become a more likely candidate for a writing website than someone who doesn't subscribe to the magazine. At least that's how some marketing logic works. This group of people subscribing to the writing magazine then become a potential niche demographic for additional writing services, and marketing of those services is then considered 'targeted'.

Benefits of niche marketing

The benefits of niche marketing including a more researched study of who is likely to purchase a product in addition to potential advertising savings and increased sales per advertising dollar. So long as the research costs don't outweigh the decrease in advertising dollars the decision to establish a niche market is well founded. Acquiring a niche market involves more than just finding magazine subscription lists however.

A niche market is also found through other means such as website visits, personality type, income demographic, religion, socio-economic status and culture. There are many ways to identify who is going to buy what and this is assisted by the use of statistical tools such as cluster plots, and mean regression analysis. When various groups of people demonstrably fall in to certain groups, this is illustrated through statistical charting and graphing. This research is then used in obtaining marketing financing from finance executives. Additionally, when the results of primary research such as surveys and focus groups leads to probable success of a nice marketing campaign such financing is further justified.

• Potentially increased sales per dollar of advertising
• Higher corporate profit
• Better researched consumer profile
• Product or service viability and usefulness defined in terms of consumer
• Increase marketing efficiency

Summary

Niche marketing is thus a form of marketing that matches a certain brand with a person or group of people. While this is ideally intended to lower advertising costs and increases profit from revenue and the sales per advertising dollar ratio. This beneficial affect of niche marketing may not always happen as the 'market' is composed of human variables and is thus an inherently adverse enterprise. Nevertheless, in addition to enhanced demographic identification which stabilizes market forecasting are ideas like brand equity that are used in collaboration with the targeted marketing. This brand equity can also improve the perceived value of the product or service to a client and theoretically increases the likely-hood of product or service patronage.

Source: http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/niche-marketing.html

Principles of marketing

There are many types and styles of marketing so the first thing one might consider in reviewing principles of marketing are the 4 P's of Marketing. Price, Place, Product, and Promotion. These are marketing pre-conditions that determine how marketing is done as a boat generally is not marketed the same way(s) as a candy bar. From this point several other important principles can follow. These principles can be divided into two categories internal and external product/service benefits and consumer awareness.

 The Four Ps of Marketing

 

Source: 'Grochim'; GFDL, CC By S.A. 3.0

  
Internal and external product/service benefits

By internal and external, we are talking about benefits to the business or person providing the product or service and the recipient of said product/service. Two important marketing principles that pertain to these locus' of benefit include 1) Customer lifetime value and 2) Brand Equity.

• Customer life-time value is the past, present and future value of existing and potential clients via extension of the idea that a present customer's value also includes future cash flow from that customer. The reason Customer lifetime value is important is because it represents a qualitative and quantitative estimate as to how much an individual client is worth in relation to a business. What's more, it reinforces the notion customers are for life and not just a one time purchase.

• Brand equity is also important as this is often what a consumer uses to value a product and/or service in their mind. A company's brand equity consists of the potential use, benefit and satisfaction gained by a client after purchasing a product and/or service. For example, how is a product different and better from a similar product (product differentiation), how good is the quality in relation to the price, how convenient is the product or service. The better a perceived brand equity is, the more likely a client is going to want what you have to offer.

Neither Customer lifetime value or brand equity are worth much if the product or service isn't actually marketed. This is why research and advertising budgets are so important to a company's success. A few of the key principles of getting your business noticed are target marketing, primary Research, secondary research and persuasion. These are also part of the marketing process model.

Source: 'Grochim'; CC By S.A.-3.0

Secondary research and persuasion

• Targeted marketing is the localization of marketing efforts to specific groups of people who are believed to be more likely to purchase and/or respond favorably to a company's marketing efforts.

• Primary Research is what assists a company in targeting a market accurately. While not all marketing is based on this type of research it is important as it provides first hand evidence of patterns in consumer behavior and preferences. Primary research is direct research with a population sample via surveys, interviews, and/or product testing. The data gathered from this type of research is later analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively and then decision are made pertaining to an advertising campaign, product release or continuation.

• Secondary Research is anything derived from 2nd party's such as prior research studies, sales and demographic information, magazine subscription lists and previous consumer behavior polls or studies. This type of research is also relevant and can be combined with primary research for potentially more effective conclusions.

• Persuasion can be described as the effectiveness of an advertising message, campaign, or promotion in selling a business and its services. There are many techniques used in delivering advertising messages and these techniques are used through various mediums of communication such as radio, television, billboards etc and also through corporate policies and enacting of those policies via customer service, product differentiation, and brand equity. Ideally, the more consistently a business conveys their well planned messages to existing and potential clients the greater the chance of persuading them a specific product or service is really intended for them and not someone else.

There are many ways to perceive marketing and consequently many more marketing principles to support those methods. Marketing is a competitive and ever evolving practice as the market is very discerning and quickly learns a marketing technique. What's more holding the interest of a market in a very sensational marketing environment takes innovation, consistency, effectiveness and presentation. Marketing is an art that's sum of parts is not complete without hands on practice and experience. While the principles of marketing have value, it is the productive application of those principles that yield results.

Source(s):

1. http://www.netmba.com/marketing/mix/
2. http://tinyurl.com/4dtg5lk (Search CRM)
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brand_equity
4. http://www.allbusiness.com/marketing/market-research/1310-1.html