Category Archives: Game Strategies

A Brand Budget

How much should you, or must you, spend to brand your business?

The most common answer: It depends!

The cost of marketing your products and/or services, through advertising, sales, promotions, or other avenues is related to your goals and objectives. If your goals are indistinct or your objectives lack focus, the odds are that you will be wasting marketing dollars on ineffective vehicles.

For purposes of discussion, let’s assume you’ve built a convenience store off a high volume interchange on an interstate highway. It should be apparent who your target market is, so why would you advertise in a phone directory in a community 50 miles away without easy access to your place of business? While you may be able to justify the expense, in the mind of most business owners that would be wasted money.

If, on the other hand, you were able to invest that money in billboard advertising on the approaches to your exit, you are more likely to meet your objectives for sales.

What you spend to build your brand should be measurable and tied to the bottom line. If your goal is to have your brand identified with the market segment comprised of men between 24 and 35 years of age, you can quantify how many of the male species lives in your targeted area. You can also identify which media is most likely to garner a positive response from those men, and build brand loyalty.

It might take six months or six years to reach the level of penetration you desire for your brand, with many variables playing a role. If you gain acceptance through a social media community, the time span can be shortened considerably. A heftier advertising budget and well-placed commercials can also push up the acceptance.

An important consideration is to take the time to do some planning. Think about what you want to accomplish and the best method to achieve it. Allocate some funds to test the waters and measure the results. If the campaign works, build on it. If it doesn’t perform as expected, stop and think about what went wrong or could have been better. Tweak it and try again, within budget constraints. Measure the results.

If you operate blindly in spending your advertising dollars, you may wind up joining the thousands of other business owners who assert that advertising doesn’t work. It does, if done correctly. That’s what there are professionals for; to help you make the right decisions and use your marketing budget effectively.

Defining Success

As a business owner or key management person, you know your business should have a strategy for constantly adding to the bottom line. That growth strategy outlines goals and identifies the steps to be taken in achieving those objectives. In the end, this defines what you consider and will accept as success for your organization.

Larger companies generally have the resources to set these objectives through annual planning sessions or corporate retreats guided by independent third party professionals, such as Brand Irons. Smaller companies also have the ability to conduct these strategic success meetings and bring in professional guidance. The cost of these planning sessions are more than offset by the focus they bring to your corporate culture and the results they generate through higher productivity and reduced waste.

The richest value comes when your team agrees to and commits to the end result of the planning and is able to successfully implement a majority, if not all, of the objectives.

There are others, but here are five of the objectives your business should define:

Net Profit. What are your earnings projections for 2013? Subtract anticipated costs to come up with your expected net profit numbers for the year. Are those realistic and attainable numbers? Will they satisfy you and/or shareholders?
Annual Sales. Knowing what your bottom line is supposed to be, consider how sales will achieve those projections. Who is responsible for generating sales and what will they have to do to get them? Do you need more sales people?
Production. Evaluate whether the capacity exists to produce what is sold in a timely fashion, or whether there is sufficient inventory to meet demand. Take a close look at ways to streamline costs yet still deliver quality products and service to your customers and prospects.
Customer Service. How loyal are your clients to your brand(s)? Do they enjoy the experience of working with or purchasing from your organization? Do your sales personnel and front line people convey the right sense about your culture? That culture should pervade your entire organization. Does it?
Marketing Results. Whether it’s through sales, advertising, promotions, or public relations, your company’s marketing efforts should generate measurable results. What do you measure? Conversion rates for sales presentations. Client response to advertisements (sales directly tied to an ad, for instance). Increased “Likes” on your Facebook page. Phone calls asking for information or to arrange meetings. New subscribers to your newsletter. You decide what else to measure, based on what is important for generating results.

You define success measurements to better allocate resources. There’s an adage about setting goals that goes something along the lines of “If you set sail without a destination, how will you know when you get there?” sailing ship

If you place an ad in the newspaper and ask viewers to call about a special offer, you can gauge the success of the ad by how many calls you receive. Then you must ask: Were there enough calls to 1) pay for the ad? and, 2) warrant the expense in terms of sales that resulted?

However you define success for your business, make sure you take the time to think through whether that is, realistically, how you want to define your success.

Missing: Call to Action!

Far too often, advertisers neglect to include a call to action in their advertisements. What is the purpose of an ad? To get customers or prospective customers to buy your product and/or service! Pure and simple.

Be specific.
.

Author Paul G. Thomas shared a powerful message about the importance of a call to action in his book, Psychofeedback. Here’s an example he shared: Hold a pen or pencil with two fingers and tell yourself “I can drop this pen” repeatedly until you drop the pen.

Why does the pen stay in your fingers?

The message, like the call to action in your advertising, needs to be more specific. Try this phrase, “Drop it!”

Another friend, author Bob Nicoll – http://www.remembertheice.com/, shares a story that is specific to advertising. A convenience store near where he lived had a sign that encouraged patrons to “Don’t forget the ice.” Bob asked the owner how his sales of ice were. “Abysmal” or something similar was the response. When you tell people not to forget something, what do they do? Forget.

Bob asked for a marker and some paper to make new signs. His signs read, “Remember the Ice!” when he gave them to the owner. When he returned, he asked the owner how his ice sales were, and the owner replied he was having a hard time keeping it in stock.

The lesson in these stories: 1) Tell your customers and prospects what you want them to do.

Be specific. Think about the end result you want from any advertising you spend hard-earned money to put out there. Why would you spend good money and forget to ask for the sale? There are three basic actions to call your audience to do:

Come in;
Visit your website; or
Call you.

Many advertisers use the attraction of a sale to draw potential customers in to their store. Pick up a Sunday newspaper and browse through the ads to get a better idea of what I mean. “Special 2-day sale now going on” or “50-60% off all men’s shoes” or “This week’s specials” are fairly common lures to draw customers in, and the more successful ones are the ads that send a message to act now. “Buy a new Mercedes this Saturday and receive a FREE 60″ wide-screen TV,” is an example.

Ever wonder why retail stores include so many different products in their ad flyers or TV commercials? They want to attract you to come in but they’re unsure of what you really want or need or might be thinking about buying. That’s why they lump a bunch of products together to pull you in.

If you study those ads, though, the direct call to action may be too subliminal.

The call to action where an advertiser sends the consumer to the company’s website can be especially effective with the under 45 demographic. It can work for any age group, but can also be extremely narrowly targeted as well.

Success with this call to action requires that the website have the information the users are looking for in an easy-to-find location. Internet users have little patience. Remember instant gratification? If you’ve sent them to the web for a special offer, that coupon or banner must jump out at them once they land on the site you’ve given them. If not, you’ve probably lost them for good.

The intent is to get them to your site and pique their curiosity enough to get them to do some browsing on your site and learn more about your company and its products and services. The nice thing about this call to action as well is that it is easy to track the volume of traffic being generated by the site and correlate it to the placement of the message. Tracking is beneficial.

The third call to action is to generate a phone call. A professional hair salon or massage therapist, for example, may prefer that clients or potential customers call to schedule an appointment instead of walking in. Some professionals may encourage walk-in traffic, but doctors, dentists, optometrists and other medical professionals, as well as lawyers, accountants, and marketing consultants prefer a scheduled appointment to allocate sufficient time for the customer.

As you craft your advertising messages, think about the desired outcome. If you want the phone to ring, ask for it in a bold headline. If you want people checking out your website, use social media with links and make sure the address is easy to find once they’re online. If you want customers in the store, make sure they know how to find it and tell them to stop in.

Call Brand Irons at (920) 366-6334 for an appointment to clarify the call to action for your business and build your brand.

Budgets & Bullet Points

2013 Budget graphic When you are sitting down to develop an annual advertising budget, think about where you’re going to spend your hard-earned dollars. Will each dollar generate a return? How much will it cost you to acquire a new client, or to keep your existing customers?

You must measure these metrics to know if your strategies are working. If you plan on spending $20,000 on television advertising as part of your budget, you should also know what the value of a prospective client is to your business. Why? If your business is building websites and each prospect potentially represents $5,000 in business when they become a new client, that TV campaign would need to result in four new clients to cover the cost of advertising. More than four and you’ve generated a positive return on your investment (ROI).

Is it a negative ROI if you fail to land any new clients? From the bottom line perspective, probably so. From the viewpoint of the exposure you’ve generated for your business with TV spots, hardly. The bullet point becomes how effective was the message in your commercial.

And that is another bullet point. If your advertising fails to generate a positive impact on your bottom line, that should not result in the wide-ranging opinion and a deep-seated conviction that “advertising doesn’t work.” It only means it was somehow flawed.

More bullet points that impact your marketing budget when it comes to advertising:

Make sure you know your target audience for any advertising;
Verify that the delivery vehicle (TV, radio, newspaper, Internet) is effective in reaching that target market;
Find the market research that gives you reasonable assurance the audience will respond favorably to that message delivery vehicle;
Know what you’re offering but, more importantly, what the consumer is buying;
Craft a message that focuses on what’s in it for the consumer, not you;
Deliver the message by getting the audience’s attention first; and,
Finish with a strong call to action so the consumer has little doubt.

Back to my point about the effectiveness of your commercial. If you threw out a campaign or message that was missing some of the bulleted items above, chances are your results were less than what you anticipated. Add in that the commercial may have run at the wrong time for your audience or been buried on a seldom seen page of the magazine, and your results deteriorate.

We once worked with a jeweler who insisted on having the largest ad in the phone directory. We roughed out the concept and had the directory’s graphics department design an effective and attractive ad. We were good to go. When the directory hit the streets, we opened a copy to the “Jewelers” spread of pages and the ad wasn’t there! Phone directories place ads alphabetically. Our client’s ad was there, but it was on the page before the spread with all the other jewelers in town. Good effort wasted and beyond our control. Subsequent ads were mere bold-faced listings under Jewelers.

Rather than succumb to a sales representative suggesting your business belongs in their publication or on their station, take the time to think things through. Can they answer the bullet points you’ve established for your products and services to your satisfaction? If not, simply let them know that what they’re offering fails to meet the demographic profile of your target audience. They’ll understand, but not give up easily.

Another option is to use the professional consulting services of a business such as Brand Irons to help you come up with a solid profile for your customers and help you make those marketing decisions so they have a positive impact on your bottom line.

What is a Brand?

A brand is an illusion; a perception in the mind of a consumer.

Every consumer is different, so a brand can mean one thing to one person and something totally different to another.

Consider some examples:

If you drink red wine, and maybe have a glass every day, do you buy the same brand every time or do you try different reds? Do you drink a red because you heard it was good for you? Some of you may enjoy how you feel after a glass or two. All red wines are perceived to – in a branding sense – have medicinal purposes or go good with certain foods. If you, as the consumer, lock in and buy cases from a certain winery, you have bought the illusion it’s the best red wine … in your mind.

What convinced you it’s the brand to buy? Was it a commercial or advertising message? Was it an influential bartender? A good friend who also loves it? The perception that you should at least try the brand, followed by a bottle you really enjoyed, are the steps that would have created your brand loyalty.

My grandfather drove a Ford automobile. My uncle managed a fleet of vehicles for a multi-national company; all Fords. My dad drove Fords, although he was the trading sort and brought home a variety of makes and models over the years. This family history created the impression with me that Ford was the vehicle to own, so I’ve been loyal to the brand because of that perception. Three of the vehicles I’ve purchased new have been Mercury products; a former, now defunct, division of the Ford Motor Company. The kicker is that the illusion has stuck, largely because of history.

Yes, a brand is an association with a corporate product or service. Business owners will pay exorbitant fees to a big name accounting firm because of a perception, which might be that “they must be good because they charge so much.” In reality, accounting is about debits and credits so any certified public accountant (CPA) should be able to service your account as well, if not better, than the higher priced firm.

Is one brand of milk any better than the next one in the cooler? Only in perception … and probably price. Think about it. Where does the milk come from? A cow. What the cow eats may change the content of the milk, but it comes out the same way and is processed and bottled according to federal standards. And here’s a secret that applies to other products as well: Some milk processing plants bottle milk for a private label as well as for their own label.

From a business marketing perspective, the more people you can convince that your illusion – your brand – is what they should believe in, purchase, and remain loyal to as long at they need or want it, the greater will be the profits on your bottom line.

Illusions can work like magic if you create the right ones. That’s where professional help such as Brand Irons comes in, to strategize and help you create the most effective marketing for your product and services.

The Consumer Mindset

This is a topic that has always been fascinating to me as a professional business and marketing consultant. Marketing is about perception, so the mindset of consumers begs a whole series of questions.

What do consumers buy?
Why do they buy?
Why should they buy from a certain seller vs. a different one?
How do you reach the consumer when they’re ready to buy?
How do you convince or encourage them to buy when you want them to?

These questions seem simple, but the answers are rather complicated. Keep in mind that the average consumer wants to avoid being sold; they prefer to make purchases on their own terms. My hair stylist told me she finished her Christmas shopping early in 2012; she bought everything online. Her terms.

There are several factors that influence the consumer’s mindset, such as the budget (is the product or service affordable), the level of need (is it a necessity or a luxury purchase), and the deal (is it a bargain at the price offered or is it better to wait), among other variables.

Let’s start with the level of need. Remember the heirarchy of needs? It starts with basic necessities such as food, water, and shelter. If your business offers products to meet these necessities, the theory holds that your business should survive and succeed. The consumer, in most cases, wants toilet paper so you should have little competition … except there are different levels of softness, sheets per roll, and other variables. What determines the consumer’s decision to buy in this scenario?

Here’s where other factors come in. Is the consumer looking to stock up because the supply is running low? Is there a good price on their favorite brand? Are they totally out and need whatever they can find at whatever the price?

With other necessities, such as electrical power and a water supply, the consumer has little choice since the market is dominated by monopolies. Utilities provide cost savings through the control of grid systems which enable individual users to share the cost of a major development. Going “off the grid” for your energy needs is an expensive project for the same reason it is costly to develop your own water capture and filtration system.

Another aspect of the level of need is whether the purchase is vital or merely a luxury.

This can be where the budget factors come in. If a woman needs a pair of pants for work and the same slacks are available at a discount store for 30% less than at a name brand department store, where does she buy the pants? She may buy them at the department store for the “prestige factor” or save the money buying them at the discount store and saying she bought them at the other place.

As the retailer, your advertising is going to depend on which store you own or represent. The discount outlet can be effective marketing the pants as “department store quality at 1/3rd the cost” whereas the department store is likely to focus on the quality of the name brand with a message along the lines of “available exclusively at.”

Another influencers in the consumer’s mind is brand loyalty. If the woman needing pants has always purchased her work slacks at the discount store, she will most likely purchase the next pair from that store. And if she’s loyal to the department store, she will buy there despite the price difference. The deal is less a factor when the power of the brand trumps the perceived value.

So what have we learned about the consumer’s mindset?

While advertising tends to lump consumers together, the individual makes his or her own buying decisions based on their psyche, budget, personal preferences, and perceived value. As a business owner, it is essential to understand your customers as much as you possibly can so that you and your products or services, remain relevant to them and their desires.

If you’d like some assistance with some market research on your consumer’s mindsets, please contact Brand Irons.

Instant Gratification – Pros and Cons

If you’re “in to” instant gratification, you’ll need to scan down to get the pros and cons. If you’re a bit more patient, read the whole piece.

Business owners, especially those with significant advertising budgets, are scratching their heads in frustration over the generations that seem so intent on instant gratification. How do you reach someone who wants information, answers, and product “NOW”?

We’ll get to the answer, but let’s look at the pros and cons of this instant gratification mindset. It’s certainly a concept spawned by technology, so any answer has to incorporate a technological aspect. We live in an age where a person with a smart phone can look up a business online, get a phone number, and call that number right from their phone in a matter of seconds.

During the Christmas holidays, we were away from home and wanted to have dinner at a chain restaurant. I looked up the chain online, entered the city, and up popped the restaurant’s phone number. I tapped on it, called it, and learned they were not accepting reservations, which was fine. I had relatively quickly ascertained what we wanted to know. Instant gratification. I had an answer in less time than it would have taken to look up the restaurant in a phone directory.

Two points here: One is that phone directories have a limited life span due to these advances in technology, and the other is that if you have a service business such as a restaurant, it is critical that your business be smart-phone enabled, especially if you are on your own and operating independently.

Instant gratification pros:

Quicker decisions can be made;
Choices are focused on using the right key words;
Speed is easily rationalized by fast results;
Demonstrated skill in using electronics and technology; and,
Masses of information digested rapidly.

Instant gratification cons:

Quick decisions can often be rash choices;
Wrong use of key words can cause longer delays in searches;
Deliberation of potential consequences is given short shrift;
Loss of important, personal human communication skills; and,
Too much information can trivialize all of it.

Now let’s look at instant gratification from the perspective of business.

While there are still companies that make calculators, they must realize their future is finite. Smart phones have calculator applications and so do laptops and other computers. The stand-alone calculator has become a nuisance because it takes up space somewhere and you have to find it to use it when there’s one on your phone.

In order to reach the consumer market dominated by the need and desire for instant gratification, business advertising must have a technological base including a web site that has relevant content. It should also be smart phone enabled and embrace any new, emerging techology within a reasonable time frame.

Using social media effectively should also be given serious consideration. Users may search for your social media sites before deciding to use your services. Keep in mind that Facebook is less about selling your products than it is about showing your business has a social conscience. LinkedIn is more business oriented but still has social aspects that involve reciprocity. If a user endorses you, consider returning the endorsement. With Google’s other search engine, YouTube, being #2 behind Google, put some videos on a YouTube channel, including testimonials and endorsements. You also need to use Google, Yahoo, Bing, and other search engines optimally. Klout, Hulu, and a myriad of other social outlets come online regularly, so you need to be aware of social options and determine their viability for your business.

Understand that one of the most relevant methods to reach those infatuated with instant gratification remains to be word-of-mouth marketing. Flash mobs are a good example of how a message can go viral quickly. Word-of-mouth can help you reach a global market for your business, provided you’re ready to handle the potential rapid growth.

It comes back to having strategies for reaching your target audience effectively, so if you need help thinking this through and developing strategies, Brand Irons has people and resources to help.

5 Signs of Business Passion

One of the first elements I consider when meeting with a prospective new client is whether they have passion for their project or business venture. Without it, the process of creating successful business and market strategies becomes an uphill struggle that often winds up in the ditch, especially with existing companies.

Think of it this way: If your car is stuck on a hill in a foot of snow and you have to get over that hill, passion and determination must be necessary to get the job done. If you give up and tell yourself it’s futile and not worth the effort, your car (and you) will stay stuck in the snow or slide off into the ditch and stay there for days. You will be frustrated, stranded, and discouraged because you never got to your destination.

You would be amazed at how many entrepreneurs wind up that way. They have a great idea but get stuck and lack the determination and the passion to go any further, to get beyond that hurdle and achieve potential success.

The driver with passion takes the time to think through the solution to the dilemma, then acts with determination. The snow is removed from under the tires and the car may be backed up a little, but eventually a slow, steady climb gets the vehicle over the hill – maybe with a little help – and then it’s on to the next challenge.

Are you passionate about your business?

Here are symptoms that will identify the level of your passion:

You don’t consider that you have to go to “work” every day because you enjoy it;
You enjoy solving your customer’s problems and helping them in the process;
You value your employees because they seem to share your passion;
Your employees enjoy coming to work and take good care of your customers; and
You spend less time working in your business and more on how to make it better.

One of the five C’s of credit that banks consider in loaning money to business owners is Character. The major element of that character they evaluate is passion. The bank, or any investor, wants to know how passionate you are about the business, your customers, and the products and/or services you offer.

We recently counselled a client who was passionate about opening a franchise restaurant as a family-owned business. The passion was dampened when the franchise allowed another franchisee to open within the territory being considered. We opted for an independent yet similar business and the family-owned aspects of creating their own concept drove the owner’s passion to new heights. And the banker was impressed with that determination to succeed.

Keep in mind that passion is important in business, but should also be instrumental in everything else we do in life.

Stay Focused

In this age of ever-changing technology, it is more easy than ever for a business owner to lose focus. Yet it is even more important that you stay focused on your business to avoid being side-tracked.

The new insurance mandates from the federal government are a good example. Most business owners know that changes are coming, but have little comprehension of what those changes mean to them. There will be workshops and seminars and E-mails about the changes, including the implications once a more clear picture is developed. Either way, this mandated change will require time away from your business and your customers.

So how do you stay focused?

If there is someone on your team you can dedicate to learning the ropes about the insurance laws, get them on it now so they have time to gather the information and assimilate it. Their challenge is to ascertain how it will impact your business and employees, if at all.

Another option is to rely on professionals you trust who are up on the changes, such as your CPA, legal counsel, tax preparer, financial planner, or insurance agent.

The 3rd option is to spend the time to understand it yourself. Certainly the first two are better choices.

Another distraction facing business owners are employee issues. It would be a perfect world if every employee showed up on time, knew what they were supposed to do, exceeded those expectations, and spoke highly of the company all the time. If it were a perfect world.

So how do you stay focused?

It is improbable to think that employee issues won’t arise in your company, so the key is to be prepared for every eventuality. Have a professional such as legal counsel prepare an employee handbook that stipulates employment conditions, expectations, and consequences. Relegate that responsibility to your human resources department if you have one, and make sure they take time to keep you apprised of their actions. You’re the one with ultimate legal responsibility – along with your Board of Directors and others with liability.

What is critically important when it comes to these types of issues as well is how clearly you convey the company’s mission to employees and share your vision with them. The more closely they are aligned with your line of thinking, the more productive they are likely to be.

Your business plan and market strategies are also methods that enable you to remain focused on your objectives.

Cats, for example, are hunters. When they have identified potential prey, they are focused on getting that prey over everything else. They will stalk, crawl, sneak, pounce, or chase that object of desire until it’s caught. They are focused. When the prey is caught or becomes unattainable, the cats move on to other tasks.

Your business and marketing strategies identify your target consumers, what you will deliver to them, how and why. Your company should be focused on accomplishing that objective. If you lose sight or interest in that goal, it’s easy to move on to other tasks and later wonder why the business failed … or you went hungry in cat language.

Professional consultants are there to help you stay focused.

Are You Riding On The Right Trail?

Image of a typical cattle drive from Harper’s Weekly magazine, circa 1867

Is your business heading in the right direction?

Think about that for a few minutes. If you have a clear objective for where you want your business to be in 5 or 10 years, you can be relatively secure in knowing that your company is headed down the right path. Granted, economic conditions may change in three years. Government intervention may lessen in six. Market conditions could change tomorrow. The goal is to know which trail you want to ride, stay as close as possible to that route, and be ready for obstacles along the way.

The trail boss hired by ranchers in the late 19th century knew which trail he needed to use in driving the cattle to the markets in Kansas or Colorado. Depending on the season, he anticipated weather conditions such as the rains the cowboys might encounter. There were strategies in place to keep the herd healthy along the way. Heavy rains might force them to hold tight for a few extra days to let the swollen rivers subside before trying to cross. Dry weather might cause them to slow the pace but keep moving until they could find water and grazing grasses.

Your business should be prepared for the conditions it will encounter along the trail, too. A warmer than normal winter might reduce your snow blower sales, so reducing your inventory is a potential strategy to keep your expenses down. Is your sales force moving products with the highest margins? Have you analyzed whether the market has changed for that product, or the service that generates the highest profits?

Allow me to share a classic example from the optical industry that I am confident is repeated in other industries: A super sales person is at the top of her game and generating substantial commissions from the volume of sales she brings to the company. The boss (or sales manager) looks at how much this sales person is getting in commissions and believes that she’s earning way too much. She gets called in to the office and is told her territory is being reduced and/or her percentages are going to be cut back because she’s “costing the company” too much money.

Stop and think about this all-too-common scenario.

A sales representative sells your products. That creates orders which generate revenue – and profits – from the sale. The representative earns a commission for bringing business in the door. You want more sales, but at less cost to the bottom line or, as the reality points out, at the expense of the person responsible for manufacturing those sales. Ever wonder why so many sales people leave a company they appear to have been doing well for? Ask them if their percentages or territories were cut back. I’ll wager the answer will be “Yes.”

If you’ve really thought about it, the opposite scenario should be the rule. Expand your top sales representative’s territories. Give them a better percentage to generate more business … unless you don’t want more business!

The company who lost that stellar sales representative is now, two years later, wondering why their sales are down and why their competition is doing so well. Guess where she went to work as an in-demand sales representative?

Your business needs to be clear-headed and focused in its direction.

Brand Irons is one of those companies that can help you determine if you’re on the right trail. If you have a business plan, take a look at it and see if it still makes sense to be going in that direction or if a new path is worth investigating and developing. If you need a strategy for your business, it’s to your advantage to bring in an independent, third party perspective to ensure it’s appropriate for the market and to advise on which trail may be the most lucrative and profitable over the long haul.

Imagine how the buyer might react if a trail boss brought in a herd of camels to be sold at the cattle market. All that effort for naught.