Tag Archives: marketing strategy

The Skinny on…Talking with a Reporter

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MicrophoneQuestionsLargeIf you are proactive with media relations or public relations, you will be talking with a reporter. And, sometimes, even if you aren’t, you will be getting a call, especially if a crisis or issue arises about your company or industry.

The key to talking with a reporter is to always give accurate responses.

You have to –
Be knowledgeable about the issue.
Don’t mistake the reporter for the audience. The reporter is the conduit to your audience.
Support your statements with facts, statistics, comparisons or personal experiences.
Listen carefully to the question. Always answer questions honestly.

If you –
Don’t want a statement quoted, don’t make it. There’s no such thing as “off the record.”
Are asked a question that contains negative language; don’t repeat it in your answer.
Don’t know an answer, say so. Don’t speculate.
Can’t answer a question, never say “no comment.” Always give a valid reason for not answering.
Don’t answer “what if” questions. Say that you don’t speculate and bridge to the real issues.
And remember – A direct question deserves a direct answer.

Email Marketing – Easy To Do And On Your Budget

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Are you using email marketing? You should be! It’s an effective business tool to incorporate in your customer-relationship strategy for communicating and interacting with customers. You must maintain a dialogue with your customers to improve their experience with your company and to keep them loyal to your brand, products and services.

Email is far less expensive on a cost-per-contact basis than other advertising options, such as banner ads, print advertising and telemarketing. It’s fast, inexpensive and easy to use as a marketing strategy. It’ll keep customers engaged, even when they’re not buying.

Reviewing emails is part of your customers’ daily routine and allows them to immediately act on your delivered messages. With many of your customers now using smartphones and tablets, they get your message when and where they want it. One of the greatest benefits of email marketing is that your message is delivered very quickly. Reader response times are generally within 48 hours.

Email marketing builds brand awareness. Keeping visible to your customers continues to build relationships and interaction with your customers. This assures that when they are ready to buy, they will think of your company.

It’s important to remember that a successful email campaign requires that you create a message that is compelling to those who receive it. Create the desire to have them open your email with a strong, informative and want-to-know-more subject line. Show your customers that you care about them. You need to craft clear messages to customers, based on criteria around their needs. If you do, you’ll see real, measurable results – right away – in building customer relationships, without investing a lot of your time and money.

For your existing customers, send them service reminders, special offers, updates about new products or services and expert information on topics of interest. It’s a great way to stay in front of current customers and reconnect with your customers that haven’t purchased from you in a while. For your prospective customers, let them know who you are, what your business is all about, what you stand for, what you offer, how you work and the products or services you offer.

With email marketing, you can create marketing campaigns consisting of a series of emails to reinforce your message. It costs little to maintain your email-marketing program. Email creates an interactive connection and helps to nurture customer relations.

You’ll be able to track your click-to-open rates, and send automated messages to new subscribers. Your email campaign’s effectiveness can be easily measured when you use a good email template system and software. By being able to quantify the success while in progress, you can adjust your strategies to improve results. It can also drive traffic to your website. Using links embedded in your messages, customers can quickly be directed to your website.

If managed properly, email marketing is very effective. First, you have to build a contact list of people who want to hear from you – called permission marketing. This will ensure that you are not spamming anyone. If you get your customers’ permission, your marketing efforts are better targeted and help ensure that your emails get through to those on your list.

A well-planned, email-marketing campaign is a win-win marketing strategy. What more could you want? Once it’s set up, it’s easy to do and on your budget!

Great Product Names are Powerful

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Great product names are a powerful force in branding and marketing. They differentiate a company from its competitors, make an emotional connection with customers and help build a highly favored brand.

A strong product name is the result of a powerful brand positioning strategy. The key is to find a fresh way to connect with your customers, redefine and own the conversation in your industry and engage people on as many levels as possible. The best product names represent the ultimate process of scaling these ideas down into a word or few words that compels customer interest, emotion, reaction, response and loyalty.

Creating a Great Product Name
Successful product names may appear to have been created by the swipe of a hand. But, of course they aren’t. To develop names that are dynamic, effective and that will fully leverage a brand’s potential, the right process needs to take place. A process that is clear, insightful, logical and focused will lead to a name that is a powerful component of your brand strategy.

Many companies use computer-generated words garnered by software naming packages. While this can play a role, it is important to remember that the work that the computer does is purely mechanical. It can give you lists of words meeting certain specifications, but it takes a person to sort the information and the potential of words that are generated.

Another method is using a linguistically savvy professional equipped with a few basic principles. The name creator will use an analytical and structured approach to successfully create a name that works well and is commercially viable for your product name.

That product name must imply certain values that the buyer shares. It should be short, vigorous, mean nothing negative, have no hyphens and be easily pronounceable. The name must not be easy to misspell or it will quickly destroy its identity. It must be memorable, easy to graphically illustrate and legally available. And, it’s very important that there are no unintended meanings of the word that can work against business goals or international marketing.

It will take several phases to develop a powerful and lasting product family name.

Phase 1: Competitive Analysis and Assessment
A thorough competitive analysis through primary and / or secondary research is the essential first step. This helps to decide where to go with the position, branding and naming of your product name. Quantifying the tone and strength of competitive company product names is also needed for naming effectively.

Phase 2: Positioning
The next step is to define your brand positioning. The more specific and nuanced your positioning is, the more effective the name will be. All great product names work in concert with the positioning of the businesses they represent. The best positioning finds a way to reinvigorate or change the conversation that a company has been having with its customers.

Phase 3: Name Development
Next comes name development and deciding what the name should do for your marketing, branding and advertising efforts. Making this decision allows you to narrow your name search to a certain category of names.

When considering potential names for your product, it is vital that the project be kept as objective as possible. Dissecting potential names is not easy. Only through objectivity are you able to determine why a name will work or not work, weigh the pros and cons of one name versus another by appearance, distinction, depth, energy, humanity, positioning, sound, force and estimated trademark potential.

The name created should be short, easily pronounced, unique within your industry, legally available, should not lend itself easily to abbreviations, should be flexible and expandable, will not age quickly, embraces your company’s personality and fits within the company’s brand portfolio.

Phase 4: Trademark Prescreening
Your list of name candidates should be prescreened to make sure no time is wasted considering a name that does not have a good chance of being available for registration.

Phase 5: Testing
Once the list is cleaned for availability, a focus group should be conducted to gather opinions, beliefs and attitudes about proposed names. This will help test assumptions and narrow the names down to a few.

Phase 6: Evaluation and Creative
At the end of the naming project, you should flesh out the brand, marketing and creative strengths of the remaining viable names. This will allow you to choose the best one.

Phase 7: Name Implementation
At this stage, you will choose the name. Once you have the name, content and images need to be developed to pinpoint the most effective, perfectly nuanced personality with which to present your new product name.

Every naming project is unique. It is all about informed and inspired execution.