Bob Grant

As a  b2b Boston brand and marketing agency we are often asked  to help companies to create a positioning statement. This positioning statement will help to define your company, your product, and your service to your target audience. A positioning statement, makes a clear declaration as to why you are different than your competitors.

A positioning statement has a very important job to do. It is to break through the clutter created by the unending and constant bombardment of messages penetrating our brain. More information has been produced in the last 30 years than the previous 5000. Yet our brains can’t cope with all of this information overload. It seeks simplicity and clarity. The goal of the positioning statement is to state simply and clearly why your product, your service, your company, is different and preferable from your competitor.

The first step in creating your positioning statement is to understand the buying preferences of your audience.  You are not competing for the minds and souls of everyone on the planet (unless you’re Apple or Google), but only the audience who may have an interest in your specific product or service. Once you understand the buyer’s preferences, you can help create a message that will engage that audience emotionally and strategically to create a purchase. The positioning statement will be straightforward with attainable goals while ensuring the company is able to make progress.  It will effectively set the product off from its competition by being inspirational and significant to the target audience to which it is meant to engage.

By Bob Grant

Integrated marketing is a strategic business process  to bring all forms of communication together into one concise campaign. Advertising, sales, direct marketing, interactive, and digital marketing, etc. All work together in a cohesive approach for a united goal. It includes planning, execution, and a means for measuring the results of the campaign or corporate branding.

A very important first step of any integrated marketing strategy is the situation analysis. Situation analysis researches the potential of the industry and markets. Starting within the company, determine your company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

Situation analysis takes into account the market environment and any foreseeable trends in the market such as size and potential for growth to which the company is positioning itself. Budgets, strategies, objectives are all part of the evaluation process.

Evaluating  the major competitors, the market share and the comparison of the products are part of this strategy. Finding out a competitor’s strengths and weaknesses, their market shares and sales trends help to inform a company’s position in the market.

Researching the needs and behaviors of the target audience is also part of the situation analysis. Who are you targeting and what is their buyer persona? How will your company reach this target audience? Survey customers, and research the media to understand how to  reach each type of buyer persona and to create specific brand messages that influence them to make a buying decision. In today’s B2B market, the media is more expansive. You need to reach online and offline trade publications including bloggers who talk about your market or your prospects market, and online B2B directories, social media networks; etc.

First and foremost in order for your integrated marketing communications to be effective you need develop a solid brand strategy on which your integrated marketing communications plan can be built.

by Bob Grant

Ah, the old battle: which is more important the copy or the design?

Any great copywriter and any talented designer know they need each other. If you are presenting a b2b brand strategy, you have to present both: stunning artwork with compelling copy. You’ve got to make a presentation so amazing that each can work independently of each other. If a person only saw the tagline they would immediately know what company or product it is from, likewise, if they saw the graphic, they would be able to recite the words that go along with the campaign. It is a marriage made in advertising heaven.

If done correctly, both will be able to grab and hold a person’s attention. That beautiful or inspiring graphic will make a person stop and stare; the words will cut right to a person’s core and make them think long after they’ve stopped reading.

Marrying the two in a campaign, finding that perfect shot with those perfect words is what a great b2b marketing agency is all about.

by Bob Grant

While B2C branding encompasses that emotional feeling consumers experience when seeing a business’ logo or slogan, there is a different way of marketing that brand when it comes to getting this reaction from business to business.

B2B branding has its own unique marketing efforts, however, with the help of social networking, well-constructed, targeted email campaigns, press releases, and new product announcements, marketing your brand to another business is yielding excellent results.

A few well thought out email messages to a smaller targeted group works well, and monthly e-news distribution to your customer base keeps you customers informed and keeps your company on top of mind. Capturing emails at trade shows or when visitors download a white paper, request a quote, or contact you from your website, are excellent ways to build your email database.

Rating high in the search engines, whether organic or paid, to generate web traffic is becoming the standard of any marketing strategy. Through SEO and SEM businesses are vying for that top spot in the search. Once there, they have the ability to drive any business looking for information to their website. Building content on your website and positioning yourself as the thought leader in your industry will help drive search engine ranking.

Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are also proving to be extremely valuable in helping a business with their B2B branding. Businesses making connections with their audience whether it’s a consumer or another business can be achieved through social media marketing. Since these sites are so popular many businesses are joining and taking full advantage of this marketing tool.

No longer are businesses interested in simply spouting their message and hoping another business will bite. it takes a well formulated integrated marketing communication plan that includes offline and online digital marketing to grow and sustain a business in the b2b marketplace.

by Bob Grant

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet” This famous line by BillyShakespeare comes to mind after reading John Colapinto’s recent engaging New Yorker article “Famous Names” on David Placek and his company Lexicon.

In the world of business, marketing, and advertising we pay a great deal of attention and money to how companies, products and services are named. Brand names are important.  Brand names help us remember and help us associate a good or bad experience with a product, service, or company.

But where do successful brand names come from? Colapinto illustrates how David Placek and his company came up with the name BlackBerry for Research In Motion. Placek’s staffers interviewed commuters riding the ferry from Sausalito to San Francisco. The company also conducted mind mapping brainstorm sessions, generating hundreds of word associations. They dismissed words that contained mail or email references as not being joyous enough. One word that made the final cut was blackberry.  Lexicon’s word smiths and linguists felt black evoked the color of high-tech devices, and the oval keys looked like drupelets of a blackberry.

Colapinto points out that not all successful brand names are professionally developed. He notes that Google came out of a misspelling of googol, which is defined as the number 10 raised to the 100^th power. I suppose that it was one way of expressing infinity.  Coca-Cola was devised by an accountant who thought the two C’s looked good in advertisements.  Many companies, from Hewlett Packard to Grant Marketing simply name the company or product after the founder. However, naming is just the first step.

This brings us back to Shakespeare’s question, “What’s in a name?” Bernd Schmitt, marketing professor at Columbia Business School, asks in the New Yorker article, “Would Amazon be just as successful if it was called Nile?”  The answer is likely, yes, just as a rose by any other name would likely smell as sweet.

What makes BlackBerry, Amazon, and thousands of other brand names successful is not just the name itself, but the product and company that stands behind that brand name, and the brand strategy and marketing strategy that brings that product to the minds of the consumers who will buy the product.

BlackBerry is successful because of the technology that made it easy for consumers, many of whom were business people who needed to rely on instant communication with their associates and customers. The BlackBerry name set it apart from the generic names of cell phones or mobile phones, and made the device a brand that stood alone. Alone that is until competition from I Phones, Androids, and the like.

Whether a brand name is developed by name branding professionals like Lexicon, or from the mind of a business owner, an accountant, or company research department, there are a few fundamental steps a company should perform before bringing the brand name to market.

1. Have the name, along with some other name possibilities, reviewed and critiqued within the company
2. Connect the brand name to some kind of association with the product, no matter how vague. Recall the “Blackberry” explanation.
3. Test the name through focus groups or survey of existing and prospective customers
4. Research the name through a trademark search to be sure there are no conflicts with existing names that would be close in appearance, application, and would cause confusion.

Once a brand name is determined, then move forward developing a brand and marketing strategy that will make that name resonate in its marketplace like Google, Amazon, Apple, and BlackBerry.

by Bob Grant

All indications are that American manufacturing is coming back and will lead us out of our economic doldrums.  According to a recent study by the Boston Consulting Group wages are rising in China, and although significantly lower that US wages, when combined with other production costs and shipping the China advantage drops to single digits. This has encouraged manufacturers like Caterpillar, and NCR to bring back manufacturing operations to the US. While China and other countries will continue to manufacture many products used in the US, we will see lot more products “Made in the USA” in the next five years according to Boston Consulting Group.

According to a study by Global Spec,  20 of 23 industries expect higher sales in 2011 including paper, printing and textiles,  packaging machinery, chemicals, plastics and rubber, medical equipment and instrumentation.

Manufacturing companies of all sizes should be evaluating their sales and marketing strategies to take advantage of this new opportunity. According to the Global Spec study 75% of engineers and purchasing agents will spend three or more hours per week for work related purposes. These individuals spend time viewing supplier websites, online catalogs. They also do searches on general search engines, read e-newsletters, and subscribe to online events like webinars.

How can manufacturing marketers prepare and take advantage of this potential new business?

1.     Develop an online marketing plan – with the continuing increase of engineers and buyers using the Internet for research and locating vendors for products and services, be sure to develop an online marketing plan and strategy, including e-mail marketing, webinars, and social media.

2.     Build content on your website – Engineers and buyers will visit company websites that make their jobs easier. They are looking for resources to make decisions. If you have a catalog, make it online searchable. If you have engineering information, place it on your website. The more  specific content you have on your website will also help make it more popular with search engines, which will give your site more favorable positions for  certain keywords and phrases.

3.     Track activity for ROI – At a minimum, add Google Analytics to your website, so that you can track how vistors located your website and which pages converted them to leads. There are also other programs that can identify visitors and keep track of subsequent visits. Programs are also available for tracking phone calls from your website.

If you need help with any of these suggestions, contact us.

By Bob Grant

The recent article by Michael Barbaro in the New York Times about hundreds of condo owners suing Donald Trump because they bought into the lie that Trump actually stood behind and owned some “Trump” properties that the condo owners purchased. In fact Trump merely licensed the use of his name and brand to sell these properties.

This is not at all unusual as many famous people license their name and identity to sell products. Need I say, “Buyer beware.”? While it is certainly the responsibility of the consumer to investigate whether or not there is a sincere and valid connection between the brand and the product, product manufacturers have a responsibility to offer honest branding.

Consumers need to be more knowledgeable about branding. Branding goes back to the days when cattle ranchers branded their cattle so that you could tell which cattle belonged to the “W” Ranch and which belonged to the “XY” Ranch.  If you bought  “W” Ranch beef, you could count on it that it came from the “W” Ranch.

This brings to mind the whole notion of good brands, and bad brands and how they can easily shift from bad to good or good to bad. Remember when Tiger Woods was a good brand? American Express, Buick, and the very game of golf wanted to be linked to Tiger Woods. Then a little mishap with the misses, and the Tiger Woods brand quickly turns into the “untouchable.”

By Bob Grant

Condominium complexes that promote themselves as being Trump properties, when they are such in name only, do a disservice to the consumers who buy them, the real estate investors, and Donald Trump himself. As news leaks out, and condo owners feel duped and bring suit, all of a sudden the Trump brand itself begins to be tarnished.

Good brands are developed and stay healthy when their unique evidence of distinction and the ability to deliver on their promises to the consumers who purchase their products supports them.  Brands are developed from within an organization, company, or even a person. It is the very essence and quality of that entity that creates its brand.  The Tiger Woods brand was a good brand, when Tiger was playing golf like no other golfer before him, and Donald Trump was a good brand when he first developed a real estate empire in New York. They have not been able to maintain their uniqueness since.

Companies and organizations are the same. They need to constantly be vigilant of their brands and protective of that brand so that they continue to serve consumers with honest and dependable services and products, and prevent their good brands from going bad.

By Bob Grant

Integrated marketing expert, Professor Don E. Schultz, in a recent article in Marketing Management magazine describes quite accurately the importance of the value of brand as an asset.  He points out that the value of the brand makes up 48% of Coca-Cola’s enterprise value and 37% of that of Google. However, the point of his article is that marketing and brand managers do not understand that relationship which makes it difficult for them to get the support of financial officers to back brand and marketing initiatives. From my experience it is just the opposite.

While I don’t doubt for a second that big brand companies like Coca-Cola, Google, IBM and Apple  senior financial management totally understand the value of brand and I imagine that they are in sync with their marketing and brand managers. However, in smaller and less brand visible companies, it is my experience that the marketing and brand managers understand the financial benefits of the company brand and struggle to convince the financial managers to support brand initiatives.

Mr. Schultz does point out that short-term fiscal year accounting systems work against support for long-term brand funding. This may be why financial managers of small to medium size companies find it difficult to justify expenditures on brand development.

I would be interested in hearing from others about who has the better understanding of the company’s brand value.  Is it the marketing and brand managers, or is it financial managers?