Oct 20, 2011 | Branding
Building a brand takes time, resources, and determination, but more importantly, insight. Whilst it is impossible to break insight down into a checklist that is useful for all situations, picking the brains of experts is always useful, and provides if nothing else, a menu to start the thought process.
Finding the right expert is usually a problem, there are many touts, too few experts, and brand building results are cumulative, and often not obvious inside the payment cycle for the touts.
However, there is lots of pretty useful stuff around that can offer thought starters, amongst the best of them is offered by David Aaker. This post of David’s on the ways to create barriers to competition, and this one on the components of a great brand, taken together provide an excellent list of factors that demand some consideration.
Sep 23, 2011 | Communication, Customers, Innovation, Small business, Social Media
Ask a SME manager in packaged goods, “would you like a phone call from Woolworths ordering stock of your new product for every store in the country?” and you will most likely get a tear with the nodded head.
Enter the “Orabrush” story, they got the call from Walmart without any of the usual begging.
There are many hurdles for SME’s in the packaged goods industry to jump before distribution in the major retailers can be obtained, and then the problems really start, because SME’s lack the resources to move the product off shelf before the trial period runs out.
Social media has helped over the past couple of years, you now have the opportunity to reach highly targeted groups of consumers, and deliver them a message, but generally it has not helped much to get the product on shelf in the first place.
Orabrush really broke the mass market model with a product I still find odd, but great creativity and lateral thinking combined with social media has turned the product into a hit, and can now be found in Walmart stores around the world
Have a look at the Youtube ads in the link, gems.
Sep 15, 2011 | Branding, Marketing
Rubbish you say, marketing always matters.
Well, the next time you try and get some sense out of Optus or Telstra when you have anything that does not fit into an easily packaged Q&A form for someone in Bangalore who does not know Sydney from Senegal , try and tell yourself marketing does matter to them, and fall about laughing.
If it did, your issue would be treated as important to them, there would be someone who could fix the problem in easy reach, you would not have to wait hours being told your call was important to them, and then never get a return call.
Clearly in the current telco environment, demand is greater than supply, so marketing does not really matter, or so they think, customer churn is a part of the game, and annoying a few is a small price to pay in the chase for short term margin maximisation.
Marketing does not matter to them, at least for now!
However, the worm usually turns. Remember when you could not get a spot on prime time television without selling your grandmother, or a preferred position in the Herald Saturday classifieds, and had to wait weeks and sometimes months for the local bookstore to get in an obscure title you wanted?
Now, response can be virtually instantaneous, and we have become very used to instantaneous, and when we do not get it, we can pile buckets on the perpetrator via social media, just as we can promote their great service on the odd occasion it happens.
Marketing always matters, because without a customer, you have nothing.
Sep 8, 2011 | Customers, Management, Marketing, Operations, Small business
The mulitnational Heinz has been in the news a bit recently.
First, they announce a restructure, which means closing plants, and consolidating production, in this case to NZ, and to a remaining Australian plant that will get a bit of a kick-along. Wonder how long that will last?
Then the worldwide CFO Art Winkleblack took aim at the retail duopoly in Australia, citing it as a reason for the difficulties Heinz has had, and as a basis of the restructuring decisions. I bet the local sales management loved him for it, the next time they had to front Coles and Woolies!
In a short period, the challenges of the industry are laid bare, the $A making imports cheaper, the power exercised by the retail duopoly, and the necessity of manufacturing and marketing scale to counter it.
If Heinz, a global business turning over close to a billion dollars in Australia, and many more globally has these problems, put yourself in the position of the SME, with little marketing leverage, a plant that needs capital, banks that are so risk averse, and so stripped of people who understand small business they simply choose not to engage, how can the little guy hope to sustain his business?. Pure bloody mindedness and determination is about the only answer you will come up with, mixed in with a spirit of being prepared to really have a go, and screw the buggars!.
We wonder why we have more imports of packaged food products into this country than we produce, the position Heinz finds itself in demonstrates why.
Sep 7, 2011 | Collaboration, Communication, Customers, Marketing, Small business, Social Media
Chatting to a very successful distributor during the week at Sydney’s Fine Food trade show, he said he simply did not “get” facebook and Twitter as marketing tools. “I will wait till my 14 year old daughter gets interested in the business, and does it for me” he said, “but I guess I should be doing something, just too busy to think about it”
Pretty typical in my experience of SME’s and their relationships with social media, just something else to do, and no more time to do it in!
So here are a few thought starters, simple things to do with facebook to turn it from something else to do, to the most important tool ever put in your hands to engage with your customers.
- Change the “face” regularly, the picture on the landing page, the animation, put up some simple recipes of the day, week, or season, just make it interesting. Even Google changes their landing page almost daily, putting up some design that is topical for some reason .
- Have a page where visitors to your site can engage, you just become the facilitator. In the case of food marketers, a place to exchange recipes, cooking techniques, photos of finished dishes, and people enjoying them seems like a sensible idea.
- Make sure you have a spot where other platforms that may be of interest to visitors can be reached, allow them to add their own links to spots they like.
- Have good quality, relevant content, and make sure you keep it fresh.
- Have a range of incentives rolling through, these might be anything from samples and deals, to points type accumulation programs for a prize.
- Make giving easy. If we are talking food products here, and I am, create seasonal hampers and gift to a friend offers, a Xmas hamper delivered to a customers friend with seasons greetings will always go down well.
- Enable Q & A pages, and conversation streams. This may be on the page, or in a linked blog if the topics are a bit more serious. In the Australian food game, SME’s are struggling for survival in a retail oligopoly where housebrands are being pushed by retailers, and imports are growing on the back of the high $A. There is plenty to talk about, some of it commercial and perhaps not engaging for consumers, so keep it linked but separate and do not be afraid to tackle serious stuff, just be a bit careful.
- Be responsive to posts fans put up, engage in the conversations yourself, just don’t try to dominate it.
- Make sure you have a strong call to action, not too overtly commercial, but the point of it is ultimately to get a sale, so find creative ways of asking for the order.
- Ask for visitors ideas, views, and thoughts. Where better to test a new product idea, and do some focussed qualitative mrket research than with those already engaged.
- Watch and learn from what others are doing, the web is a great big learning experience. Social Media Examiner is one site that often puts up very useful information, here is a list of the top 10 SME sites from around the world they have just judged, some good pointers in there.
- And last of all, make it fun, and never let down someone who visits and engages!
This is all pretty easy stuff technically, it just takes time to plan, assemble the content, and make it happen. My distributor friend can probably get his 14 year old daughter to do it for fun, you don’t have to pay someone big bucks, you just need to engage in the conversation as you would over the back fence to your neighbour.
