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Emotional attachments to brands has become a lot more acceptable.
But many small business owners are still sceptical. 

In my opinion, one of the most significant developments in communications in the past 15 years is the widespread acceptance of the notion that ‘branding’ is important for virtually every product, service, organization and even people – not just for packaged goods products.

It hasn’t always been this way. I remember, in 2000, making a presentation to an educational products company who needed a new website.  They were still wrestling with the fact that a transition to a web-based delivery system meant they needed a better visual identity; when I started to talk about ephemeral concepts like ‘brand personality’ and ’emotional engagement’, they started to roll their eyes and I could see them dismissing me as another crackpot marketing person who was going to try to get them to spend all their money without regard for their bottom line.

“Look,” they said, “All this talk about emotional attachments to brands may be fine when you’re trying to trick people into buying your product, like if you’re trying to convince people there’s a difference between Coke and Pepsi. But people buy our product because we provide the best materials at the best price.”  In other words, when the functional benefits of a product or service are legitimate, branding is not only unneccessary but somehow distasteful.

The DotCom era changed all that

Say what you will about the dotcom boom and bust of 1999-2001, it changed the branding landscape forever. People watched as vaporware high-tech companies which had nothing but a couple of tech geniuses and a compelling brand story managed to attract an awful lot of money – and everyone had to admit that even in boardrooms, lots of purchasing decisions were being based on emotional responses.  

Throughout the 2000s, more research was done on emotional attachments to a brands and how they affect buying habits across all kinds of market sectors.  Today, most of us accept that the products we love – and buy – the most are not necessarily the ones with the optimal combination of functional benefits and low price.  We’re not only comfortable with the fact that emotional responses trigger buying decisions, but that buying certain products and services can trigger emotional responses in return.

Branding still makes some people very uneasy
– especially when it comes to their own business

These days, I don’t get much eye-rolling when I talk to clients about brand-building and emotional engagement with brands – especially when half the people in the boardroom have an iPhone in their pocket.  

But there’s still one group that remains resistant: The small business owner.  

The successful small business owner may be just as brand-aware as anyone else, with a passion for their iPhone or their Range Rover or their Sub-Zero refrigerator. But when it comes to their own business, they still feel, somehow, that to put too much effort into their brand identity – to try to attach meaning to their product or service that goes beyond purely functional benefits like being smarter, cheaper or faster than their competitors – somehow cheapens what they do for a living.

I get it: If you’ve grown your business from nothing to a $5-$10 million organization, you’ve usually spent years trying to deliver a great product, provide excellent customer service, building strong relationships with your stakeholders. In many ways, you are the brand – so when someone comes along and says that if you want to take your business to the next level, you need a ‘brand identity’ with a ‘personality’ and ’emotional resonance’, it’s natural to fear that you’ll be pushed into a brand that seems ‘fake’ and not reflective of the very real values – and value – that you stand for.

But a good brand is anything but fake – and tomorrow we’ll talk about how to build one.

Do great brand stories come from within – or from focus groups?

The other day I had lunch with a big-budget marketing consultant and we got to talking about one of his clients.

“I spent most of last week in focus groups,” he said.  “We’re rebranding and repositioning the product and looking for insights from our customers as to which way we should go.”

It got me thinking:  When you’re looking to invent, reinvent, transform or migrate your brand, should your direction come from your employees or your customers?  Should your brand be created from the inside out, or the outside in?

I’m coming down firmly on the side of branding from the inside out.

First of all, you know how I feel about focus groups:  Most people, who don’t work in marketing or communications, don’t give a whole lot of thought to their feelings about brand loyalty.  That doesn’t mean they don’t have strong and complex feelings about the brands they choose to buy, use and love – it just means they haven’t spent a lot of time analyzing how they got to these feelings.  

People go to therapy for years to understand why they’ve made various choices in their lives.  It’s a bit much to ask them to explain why they’re buying your brand of margarine, or how they’d feel about your margarine if you replaced the blue mountaintop design with a green forest design.

Not having your own vision virtually guarantees a parity product.

As a marketing ‘expert’, on the other hand, your job is to think about your product, the marketplace, the gaps in that marketplace, and more about what’s possible than your customer does.  You’re supposed to be able to make the creative leaps that non-marketing types can’t make.  Most of the time, the customer’s frame of reference is only their own limited interaction with margarine or butter-substitutes, so the best they can come up with (at least in a focus group environment) is “Well, I really don’t like X…”, not “What I’ve really always wanted is a brand of margarine that made me feel the way Godiva chocolate does, from the purchasing experience to the consumption experience…”

That doesn’t mean customers are dumb or unimaginative – it just means that when you rely on non-experts to guide your vision for a brand, you’re less likely to come up with the Big Idea that will give you a brand story that stands out.

 

You know you need some marketing.  But where do you start?

These days, most of my work is with small-but-fast-growing brands, like this and this.

I spent the first 10 years of my marketing career working with big brands, but I much prefer working with entrepreneurial companies:  They’re willing to take more risks, the limited budgets mean you have to get more creative, and there’s more room for a big vision that isn’t going to get hijacked by layers of stakeholders because you’re creating a brand from scratch with a small team of highly invested people.

The challenge in starting from scratch, however – especially when you’re working with companies who don’t have in-house marketing or communications resources, and who have never really undertaken a marketing project before – is knowing where to start.  When you’ve got a limited budget, it’s crucial to focus your resources.

So how do you do that?

The 11 questions you need to ask to arrive at a marketing strategy

Most entrepreneurial businesses don’t want to shell out $25k to a ‘consultant’ to generate some 50-page PowerPoint deck about Their Marketing Vision.  And I agree – that’s $25k they could be spending on results-oriented marketing efforts.  

Here’s how to get a good handle on what your marketing strategy should look like, in 11 handy questions.

1.  What are your top 3 business goals for the next 12 months?

All marketing initiatives need to be tied to specific business goals – with specific revenue numbers.  There’s no point in increasing retail sales if what you really need is to increase sales via sales brokers.  Answering this question will also help you arrive at a realistic marketing budget.

2.  Where do you see the business in 3-5 years?

While the answers to #1 should be highly specific (“Increase revenue on X product by X%”), the answers to this should be more ‘visioning’, like “We’d like to be the leading provider of X in X area”).  However, it’s important to keep this realistic:  If you’re currently the #10 player in a saturated market, know that 3 years probably isn’t long enough to get to the #1 spot.

3.  What are your top 3 most pressing business issues?

Are you suffering from a lack of awareness?  Not being considered in the competitive solution set?  Not being able to communicate with customers?  Operational delays?  Confused employees?  Marketing and communications can help with all of these – and sometimes it’s more effective to spend marketing dollars training and educating employees than to build a fancier website.

4.  Which of your products/services is currently making you the most money right now?

The product/service with the best margin may be the best place to start spending marketing dollars, because you’ll get more bang for your buck.  Once you’ve tested the market, you can invest in other products/services.

5.  What are your top 3 barriers to sale/sales objections right now?

Are your salespeople having trouble getting meetings?  Are they having trouble closing them?  Are potential clients having a hard time finding you, or are they worried about your credibility in the marketplace?  Do you have a great sales team but a confusing message?  Before you start undertaking television advertising, it might be best to focus on sales materials or a more coherent brand identity.

6.  What do(es) your target market(s) look like? 

This is a big one for small- and mid-sized businesses, who typically want to sell to ‘everyone’.  But when you’re just starting with marketing, the more you can segment and target narrow niches, the better results you’ll have.  It’s better to divide and conquer than to go scattershot.

7.  Do you have a ‘brand story’?

Do you know what you sell, why it’s different or better, and how it will make the lives of your customers and clients better?  In my experience, most small-but-growing businesses do have a compelling story – they wouldn’t have made it this far if they didn’t – but it’s not being clearly and consistently articulated.  Sometimes this is where an outside marketing consultant can help the most.

8.  What are your current communications assets (website, infosheets, social media, etc.)?

It’s important to understand what marketing tools you’re already using, and whether they’re working or are just placeholders.   Maybe your current website doesn’t need a huge overhaul – maybe it would be better to spruce it up a little, then focus efforts on that dormant Facebook page that already has 250 ‘likes’ and which could grow.  And don’t forget that people can count as ‘assets’:  Maybe you have a salesperson who happens to be a technology geek, who’d love to take on your social media responsibilities.

9.  What are your customers/employees/other stakeholders saying about the way you’re communicating with them right now?

The other day I talked about how great branding comes from the inside.  Employees who are on the front lines – both with customers and with management – probably have some great insight into your communications in terms of what’s working and what isn’t.  One anecdote from one strident employee shouldn’t direct your whole strategy, but if you’ve been hearing from employees and customers that, say, your website is difficult to navigate or they don’t really understand your product line, that’s probably something to consider.

10.  What does business success look like to you, 12-24 months from now?

This sounds a lot like questions #1 and #2, but it’s interesting:  If you go through these questions in this order, you’ll find that by the time you get to this question, you’ll get answers that have more to do with positioning, proposition, corporate culture, client base, etc.  Because while the answers to ‘business goals’ tend to be expressed in terms of sales and revenue, overall business success is a lot more complex.

11.  What does marketing success look like to you, 12-24 months from now?

99% of the time, marketing is a long game, especially when you’re just getting started and need to build brand identity and awareness, and test the marketplace.  Sure, the goal of marketing is, ultimately, to ‘sell more stuff’, but it can do that in a lot of ways, from driving site traffic to increasing engagement to improving customer service to improving the sales function.  So the answer to this question isn’t just “Sales should have increased by X%”, but also “Increased customer retention”, “Lower cost of customer acquisition”, etc.

 

I know, I know – another long post.  But whether you’re a marketing consultant or a new marketing client, I promise these 11 questions will get you an effective marketing strategy, faster than you thought.

 

You know, it’s amazing what you find yourself singing to a teething baby in the middle of the night.  I’ve discovered, for example, that I have a whole repertoire of 70s and 80s advertising jingles in my head.  This commercial, for example, wasn’t much to look at (well, I think adolescent boys did like looking at 0:03-0:04), but the jingle was definitely a keeper:

In fact, it was so good that Wrigley’s recently resurrected it for a new commercial.  Tragically, the spot is really kind of cringe-inducing, due to bad casting, a cliched setup (a roller coaster?  really?), and some really bad directing:

Also, am I the only one who thinks it’s a shame that they had to change “a stick of Juicy Fruit” to “a piece of Juicy Fruit”?

^{(This is a slow loris.  It’s what came up when I hit Google Images for ‘slow viral’.  Not sure what this means.)}

In 2011, Max and I tried to eat at the Boston Pizza just east of Yonge and Eglinton.  I don’t know why, with all the other restaurants in the area, we decided to go there – probably I said something like “Oh, I see these Boston Pizza places everywhere but I’ve never been in one. Let’s try it,” and Max, who’s good about stuff like that, probably said “Sure.”

We should have realized that something was wrong when we discovered that the place was almost empty, on a weekend night when all the other restaurants in the area are usually crowded.  But we were already there, we were hungry, and sometimes we’re just not that picky.  When we’d been sitting at our table for 25 minutes without anyone even taking our drinks order, however, we decided we weren’t that desperate, and we left.  The two hostesses chatting at the front desk didn’t seem surprised or disappointed about this turn of events.

In March 2012, we set out for dinner again.  But it was a Saturday night at 8pm, and all the restaurants we tried had lineups – except Boston Pizza, so we tried again. This time, we had a very nice waitress and the place seemed a little busier. We decided maybe our bad experience in 2011 was an anomaly.

But – no.  Max had pizza, about which he said: “Well, it’s edible, but Pizza Pizza delivers better and it costs a lot less.”  I had spaghetti and meatballs (yes, I know, I’m no gourmand – whatever), which could best be described as boil-in-bag.  Any Chef Boyardee product is better tasting, and about one-ninth the price. It was so bad I tweeted about it:  “The only good part about dinner at Boston Pizza was the air freshener in the bathrooms.”

A couple of Twitter followers commented (mostly along the lines of “Yeah, it’s only good if you go there for pizza and beer after a softball game or something”). My Twitter feeds directly into my Facebook page, and I got some comments there, too, such as:  “The only thing they make fresh is the pizza. Everything else is like military MREs – drop in boiling water, open bag, plate.”

Cut to August 2013.  Max and I are in Pembroke doing a grocery run for the cottage, and we pass a Boston Pizza.  “I don’t understand how a restaurant so bad could possibly have so many locations,” I said to him  (Wikipedia says there are 350 in Canada).  And because I was in that kind of a mood, I tweeted it:  “Hard to believe something so bad could be so prevalent.  #bostonpizza”.  A couple of people on Twitter and Facebook indicated their agreement, but it didn’t exactly blow up teh interwebs.

Then I promptly forgot about it. I mean, I was on vacation at the cottage and I have a 5-month-old baby – this August, I’m forgetting all kinds of things, most of which are much more important than Boston Pizza.

Imagine my surprise, then, when – a few days later – a couple of people actually mentioned it to me, in real life.  “I saw that thing about Boston Pizza,” they said.  “Didn’t you say something about them a while ago?  What the heck happened with you and Boston Pizza?” >

Here’s what I found interesting:

• None of the people who mentioned it to me in real life are hard-core social media types. In fact, I’d assumed they never really paid attention to my (or anyone else’s) status updates/tweets on a regular basis
• None of the people who mentioned it in real life had commented on it online
• It wasn’t like I’d barraged the internet with a stream of Amanda Bynes-like commentary.  Two mentions, over 18 months, was enough to make them take notice

It got me thinking…

I’m a big believer in the Feiler Faster Thesis, which says that these days, the media and its consumers can go from ‘total ignorance’ to ‘oversaturated with information’ on a given subject at lightning speed.  It was originally coined to explain changes in political media coverage vis-a-vis the 24-hour news cycle, but I think it’s a useful concept for all kinds of media, including advertising.  So as a general rule, I’d say that if you want something to ‘go viral’, it’s going to happen swiftly and then be replaced, just as swiftly, by the next viral thing.

However, my Boston Pizza experience got me thinking that perhaps there’s such a thing as the ‘slow viral’. My comments about Boston Pizza did ‘go viral’, but not quickly and not as a result of an all-out, sustained effort.  The question, to me, is:  Does a slow viral message, by virtue of its longevity, ultimately have more effect on purchasing decisions than a short-sharp-shocked viral message?  

The trouble with my ‘slow viral’ theory, of course, is that it’s absolutely unmeasurable. There are no clickthroughs, no lively comment threads, no mainstream media coverage, and connecting a social media comment of March 2012 to a purchasing decision in August 2013 is nigh-on impossible.  But I think it might be time for brands to measure social media’s effect on sales over longer periods than they have been hitherto.

NOTE: I was (pleasantly) surprised to receive a (prompt) response to my August tweet from Boston Pizza:  “Hi Sarah, happy to hear any feedback. Are you referring to specific visit? Pls email Dakinsb@bostonpizza.com.”  I’ve sent him a link to this post – I’ll let you know if I hear anything.