You want to make an educated decision on spending for product branding, so tell me, where is fancy bread, in the heart or in the head?
MAKING FANCY BREAD
Your product branding does more than create visual appeal. It assigns a value. It helps you to add value over price. Bargain items compete for the lowest price, leaving little margin. By building a brand, a consistent image, and a message to the community, you begin to add value over price. What makes you unique? Maybe it is your value-added services. Perhaps your high quality, or fashionable style. Whatever aspect of your product you use to create your brand needs to be unique and create positive feelings for the customer. Ultimately, sales decisions are made by the heart, not the head. Make your product lovable and as good as it is sold.
EXPERIENCE MARKETING
Another consideration in building your brand is the experience you create during the sales and post-sale process. Making the customer feel good about their purchase, warm toward your company, and see you as people, not a corporation, will increase your sales, referral sales, and add-on sales. Win Win Win.
TARGET MARKET
Marketing gets the word out about your brand and product. You need to have them see your product branding several times before they begin to sink in. You don’t want to broadcast to the whole world. For effectiveness, you need to narrow down your focus. Tell me, who are your best customers? Choose a narrow market to target. Choosing a target market does not mean that you will turn away people not in that market, but does assist in making your materials speak to your best customers.
RESEARCH
What is your competition doing? Before beginning a new marketing plan, study their website content, advertising campaigns, and customer experience. How would you like your experience to be in comparison? Their content topics will show you what they think customers want in regard to the purchase or in general terms. If you know what other things your customers are shopping for, researching, interested in, and acting on, you can use this information in your own content to make your website and promotional materials more relevant to them. It may even direct you to some new places to advertise or even new products.
CHOOSING YOUR IMAGE:
- Consider your image thoughtfully in regard to your target market, and test as possible. Your current customers can provide a wealth of information.
- Polish all your materials until they uniformly carry your brand style, colors, logo and message.
- When you begin to get bored with your image and want to mix things up, don’t. (Your customer only sees a small fraction of your impressions, and they aren’t tired of it yet.)
- Choose your marketing spend very carefully. Yes, you need many impressions, but if they are not going where your customers are, they are wasted impressions.
- On the average, companies spend 1-3% of sales on advertising. Make the most of your spending with marketing that is personal, targeted and meaningful to your customers. Referral marketing is the best bang for your buck.
