Is "Plus" a differentiator?

As I've admonished anyone who'll listen, the key to building a successful brand is to differentiate your company or offering in such a way that you stand out from competitors, and that your differentiator will be hard to imitate.

So, what do you think of those companies whose name states their prime business and then goes on to expand upon that idea? It's like being in the prime business is just not enough.

I'm thinking of companies like Bed, Bath & Beyond; Brakes Plus, and Containers & More.

Did they rationalize that "more" differentiates them? Or were they afraid they'd miss customers if they really niched, so they  "hedged their bets" with a name expansion?

Jack Trout, author with Steve Rivkin of Differentiate or Die, states that "breadth of line" is a difficult way to differentiate. It costs lots of money, competitors with money can copy this strategy easily, it blurs what the brand represents.

For really big box chains, having lots of inventory may be a customer plus in and of itself, but most of those stores - Home Depot, Pep Boys, CompUSA - never claimed to narrowly focus in the first place. Their differentiation is a combination of breadth of line, lower prices and customer service. Within their retail categories - home improvement, automotive after market, and hi-tech electronics - they can and do focus.

I'd like to hear from you on this subject: Is adding a name expansion helpful in establishing a solid brand? Does it dilute the company's primary differentiator, or does it enhance it?

Martin Jelsema
Signature Strategies
Helping smaller companies profit from the power of branding

Branding for referrals

In today's over-advertised environment where credibility has never been lower, the small business, just like its big competitors, need to base their business on referrals, not ad impressions.

And people refer other people to a resource only if two things occur: The referrer has confidence in the company they are referring someone to, and they can easily and quickly state what differentiates the company from its competitors.

Branding helps.

Particularly if you look beyond the name and logo to the foundation of the brand. The brand is the expression of a firm's position within its competitive arena. When you set out to position your company - also read product/service - you look for a way to differentiate yourself from competition.

I've blogged earlier this year about the various ways you can establish a viable position through differentiation. (See the blog archive for July/Aug)

But once you've discovered a position you can call your own, make it your own using all the tools available, beginning with a commitment to own the position. Then product, service, messages, graphics and employee interactions will mesh and re-enforce the brand, making it unique and desirable.

Then you'll be able to ignite enough passion and knowledge about the brand to generate referrals and expand your market penetration through less expensive and more effective communication methods.

Martin Jelsema
Signature Strategies
Helping smaller companies profit from the power of branding

www.signaturestrategies.com

Niche for long-term growth

For my entire career - coming on to 50 years counting the summer job selling advertising for the Estes Park Trail-Gazette - I've heard that focusing your marketing efforts is the best policy.

I preach the principal.

I believe it's particularly vital for a small businesses to find a niche that they can own and focus their resources and attention on that niche exclusively.

Mostly people nod agreement, then ignore this advice.

There are two reasons, I think.

First, they aren't patient enough. Understandably, they are cash poor. We know the biggest concern of start-up businesses is cash flow. If you can help a business generate cash flow, you are considered an angel. Never mind where the customers come from or how they are acquired or how loyal they may be or how fragmented their needs may be, if they represent immediate cash they're welcome.

So business owners try a coupon mailing. If the first one "doesn't work" in generating immediate customer activity, they abandon it and begin listening to the radio salesperson, or the list broker with a sure-fire traffic generator. Flitting from one medium to the next, from one message to a second, from one offer to another, whatever income is produced by unfocused promotions is funneled to another medium promising better results.

The second reason entrepreneurs won't focus is because they might miss some business. Their attitude is that if they do not address "the masses",  they will leave money on the table. It's not greed so much as fear that they may be missing a great and on-going opportunity if they narrow their focus.

If you focus upon a specific market segment, fashion your brand and message to meet needs in that segment, you can build a brand and a business that will thrive long-term because it "means something" to customers and the people to whom your customers will refer their associates.

Selecting the market segment(s) you will serve may be tricky. There are three criteria I believe a segment must meet to be viable

1.       Is it large enough to accommodate another player?

2.       Are the members of the segment willing and able to buy what you're selling?

3.       Can you readily identify those populating the segment?

It's worth exploring niche marketing as a major strategy. Just be patient and never fear.

Martin Jelsema
Signature Strategies
Helping smaller businesses profit from the power of branding

303-242-5975

What do you meme by that?

A meme is a universal symbol that immediately conveys meaning no matter the culture or context of the symbol's origin.  It can be an icon, a word or phrase, a tune, a fashion, a color, etc..

It's actually an idea and its associated attributes, crystallized into a symbol that evokes a cultural response.

Several examples:

Red Cross for the organization and it's purpose
the military directive, "charge!"
The eagle representing the USA
Mortar & pestle standing for pharmacy
the circle/slash depicting "no".

The term was first coined by an English geneticist, Richard Dawkins, in the mid-seventies. It wasn't until the 1990's that the concept was adopted by several pioneers in the marketing communications business.

The use of memes, i.e., symbols, have been in use in marketing since the first craftsman carved his or her initials on the bottom of a pot and the trademark was born.

But the definition and study of memes in the marketing arena is recent. Two books, Geoff Ayling's Rapid Response Advertising and Jay Conrad Levinson's Guerrilla Creativity, speak to better marketing through memes. Primarily, they concentrate on messaging and marketing. (Levinson’s book draws heavily from Ayling’s.)

The implications for branding have not been isolated by either, nor by anyone else I'm aware of. So, here goes:

The first thought might be to adapt an existing meme to represent your own business. Lots of entrepreneurs do this, usually with the aid of an advertising media salesperson. They choose a piece of clipart that represents, say "pharmacy". In their directory ads, on their coupons, in their mailings, the RX symbol or the mortar & pestle becomes the dominant visual. This does identify the product category, but it does not differentiate the pharmacy from competitors.

So in general, familiar, frequently-used memes are not effective branding elements.

However, it is possible to adapt an existing meme with favorable attributes and associations that are not thought of in the context of your product category. This utilizes a definition of creativity: the combining of two or more disparate elements to make something new.

An example might be the use of the word "Doctor" in the context of auto repair - The Car Doctor.

You can claim the meme as your own in its new context, but beware of imitators. Once you've created the link between a meme and your product category, others will follow.

So you had better establish your meme-based brand quickly and forcefully.

More on memes in branding in future blogs.

Martin Jelsema
Signature Strategies
Helping smaller businesses profit from the power of branding

303-242-5975

www.signaturestrategies.com

Positioning a really new product

I received a comment to a recent blog (Customers, not you, position your company) asking how to position an unproven new product or service in a new product category with little competition.

Great question many entrepreneurs will face, but few will realize or take advantage of this very unique and important opportunity.

Usually when there's "no competition" it means there's no one filling a spot in a new category.

There's plenty of competition. People have been devising ways to solve a problem or satisfy a need that this new product will do better. But people have been coping. Now they're offered a better way, a more powerful way, a less expensive way, a faster way, or at least a more novel way to gain the satisfaction they are striving to acheive.

So you position your new offering against the old way of doing things.

Geoffrey A. Moore in the book, Crossing the Chasm, gives us a specific model to position a truly new product. It was written specifically for hi-tech product introductions, but I've used it with modifications as a basis for low-tech launches as well. Incidentally, I recommend this book as a strategy primer for any new product launch even though it was written over 15-years ago. Anyway,

Geoffrey provides the following formula for developing a position for unique products. You just fill in the blanks.

• For (target customers)
  Who are dissatisfied with (current market alternative)
  Our product is a (new product category)
  That provides (key problem-solving capability)
  Unlike (the product alternative)
  We have assembled (key product benefits)

A product category is key to positioning. You compete within one. You position your product to the competitors in your product category. It's important to know your category. And if you're first in a particular category, you have a distinct advantage.

In fact, unless and until you really foul up, you own that category. So if you truly have a unique product that doesn't belong in an existing product category, your position is that you own that category. Act like a leader and customers will follow, provided the product serves a purpose, solves a problem or fulfills a desire.

Martin Jelsema
Signature Strategies
Helping smaller companies profit from the power of branding

www.signaturestrategies.biz

Taglines and platitudes

Taglines, slogans, positioning statements, or whatever you want to call them, are usually five-to-eight-word phrases that are supposed to differentiate your business, product, service or event from your competition.

Y2K Marketing, a network of no-nonsense marketing consultants founded by Richard Harshaw and Edward Earle, have a great way to evaluate taglines.

After hearing or reading a tagline for the first time, if your reaction is "Well, I should hope so!", you're hearing or seeing a platitude, not an effective tagline.

I mentioned a moving company in a recent blog with whose tagline is "the caring moving company". Isn't your reaction to that line, "well, I should hope so!"? That's a platitude.

Effective taglines are difficult to craft. That's why so many turned out by wordsmiths sound good but mean nothing.

But taglines can be evocative, define a context, or express an idea if it's based on the central core of your organization. There's where you should start. Once you've captured the essence of your organization in a tagline, subject it to the "well, I should hope so" test.

If you discover your best efforts result in a platitude, I suggest you look to your business core. Perhaps it needs to be rethought and revamped to reflect a truly differentiated offering.

Martin Jelsema
Signature Strategies
Helping smaller businesses profit from the power of branding

www.signaturestrategies.biz

If K-Mart is now Sear Essentials, what is Sears?

Sear purchased K-Mart and decided to change its name. Good Idea.

But then they fell into the Line Extension Trap.

That's the trap Al Ries and Jack Trout warned everyone about in their pioneering book, Positioning, the Battlefield for Your Mind. When you take your name and apply it with a modifier to a different, possibly related, product or service, that's line extension.

The danger is dilution, and it's two-fold: First, it dilutes the original brand and the position it has fought hard to establish. Second, it tends to dilute the loyalty gleaned for the original brand. The result is the original and the extension share the sales once enjoyed by the original.

Sears has done a fine job to introducing new product lines and store concepts in the past: Craftsman, Die-Hard, The Great Indoors. But they went against their success formula with Sears  Essentials.

Will other customers come to the same conclusion I did - that I should shop at Sears Essential for essentials and shop at Sears for non-essentials?

This is a case of poor branding that attempts to solve one problem while creating a larger one.

I agree the K-Mart name needed to be purged if it were to become a viable chain. It was carrying too much baggage.

I also agree that there should be some means of associating the new acquisition with the Sears tradition. But NOT by line extension.

Here's how I'd have solved the problem.

I'd go into the rich history and heritage of Sears and...

I'd have named it Roebucks.

Martin Jelsema
Signature Strategies
Helping smaller companies profit from the power of branding

www.signaturestrategies.biz

Customers, not you, position your company

If you've been in business for a while, that business has been "pigeon-holed" by the folks who know something about your company.

They do it based on their observations and experiences, and they compare them with similar observations and experiences with your competitors. They judge you, rank you, classify you, accept or dismiss you on the basis of their perceptions.

This process is called "positioning". The idea of positioning, first espoused by All Ries and Jack Trout in the 1970's, is how people collectively determine the likelihood of doing business with you.

Positioning is what people "do" to brands. That is they judge, rank and classify them. "Coke is number one", "Rolex is the highest quality watch you can buy", "Wal-Mart is the least expensive", "Volvo is the safest car".

For many brands with a history, the company has made a determined effort to position their business or product favorably and to establish the brand as a unique (differentiated) offering.

As Ries and Trout put it they, "establish a lasting relationship between a positive attribute and the brand in the collective minds of your target market members." That attribute is the differentiator: first, oldest, most innovative, safest, least expensive, sweetest, most versatile, most durable, etc.

Most companies position their offerings consciously and deliberately. As long as the offering delivers on the differentiating attribute, the attribute is important to the market, and the position is not already taken by a strong competitor, the offering can become positioned in the market's mind as the company planned and profits follow.

However, there are many examples of businesses attempting to position their offering without the credentials. The result is the market scoffing and positioning the product as being deceitful. I offer Qwest's "Spirit of Service" advertising campaign flying in the face of customer experience as a prime example.

Thus, prior to attempting to influence a market to accept the position you prefer them to have, make sure you can deliver better than your competitors can. And most importantly, deliver at least as good as your market’s expectations.

Martin Jelsema
Signature Strategies
Helping smaller companies profit from the power of branding

Long memories trump current efforts

People are continually classifying, and looking for ways to reinforce their already-in-cement opinions about the products and businesses they have been exposed to. They form and stick to their perceptions even as the years pass.

A company may have established a poor reputation some time ago. Then, realizing their image is impacting sales, management decides to change its ways and people's impression of the company.

Well, the original impression will linger with a large percentage of the target market no matter how good they become. Dislodging an impression borders on the futile.

They may decide to sell the business. The new owner may announce it's now "under new management". But if  the location, the decor, the offerings are the same or similar, the old brand impressions will linger and taint the new. That's just the way people are.

What to do? In many cases the smart thing to do is start over. Kill the original brand. Distance yourself from it. If you're in retail, find another location. This may sound drastic and expensive, but it's the most economical solution in the long run.

And this time, differentiate and position your business by "branding smart from the start".

Martin Jelsema
Signature Strategies
Helping smaller companies profit from the power of branding

Differentiation is not a tactic.

It's not a media selection. It's not a specific appeal. It's not a copywriting technique.

To really differentiate a company and their offerings from their competitors, they must identify and adopt a meaningful (to customers) and desirable position. It must be unique as well.

Then comes the vital part: they must make that differentiator the core of their business. All activities must surround and support the difference.

Some who've set good examples:

FedEx : their entire business was structured around the differentiator - overnight deliveries, guaranteed.

Hallmark: "When you care enough to send the very best" is the watchword in product design, TV commercials, store promotions and everything else they're associated with.

Home Depot: "You can do it. We can help." That slogan reflects the position of being helpful. So Home Depot has weekend classes and demonstrations. They hire knowledgeable and personable trades people to answer questions, counsel customers and configure projects. They give us confidence that, with their help, we can do it.

One could define the differentiator as the "corporate culture" expressed through words, image and deed. It begins as the corporate vision and is then translated and transformed into the BRAND and the brand promise by keeping true to the position.

At every decision point, the first consideration should be, "How will this decision affect or reflect the brand?". This is true in every department and every function, from establishing employee benefits to setting delivery schedules.

Stay true to the brand, its position and promise.

Martin Jelsema

Signature Strategies
Helping smaller companies profit from the power of branding