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Paradigm Shift from Marketing P’s to Marketing C’s
The rise of social media and latest advancements in online networking has changed the face of the marketing communications and its methods of interaction. It’s about time for marketing to evolve and adopt new methods of communication. The market is filled with enough clutter to confuse the audience. A marketer needs to device a way to be heard; loud, crisp and clear. As this is the customer’s age; the four P’s of marketing have given way to the four C’s of Marketing Communication. Product, Place, Price and Promotion has paved the way for Content, Context, Connectivity and Community. Even the most successful marketers need to make a conscious effort to:
Build relevant Content: Customers do not want false promises, they demand quality over quantity. They want to know, what’s in it for them. One must approach marketing as a natural flow of conversation unlike the traditional method of a vigorous way to sell. The customers need to feel respected. This change has been brought about by many organizations by providing an ‘Ask us’ or ‘How to’ pieces of information via blogs or by setting up an online help desk. This builds a one to one relationship with the customers despite of physical absence of both parties.
Talk in the right Context: Advancement in technology has provided both, the brand and the customer with enormous amount of information. Thus, it is important for the marketer to say something that stands out of the clutter and makes sense to the customer as well. What the marketer says has to be well filtered and slimmed down to a very precise target audience. The communication should be an output of well compared updated information (for instance latest trends) which when presented to the customer is well received. The introduction and growth of blogs has set in a trend of providing frequent first hand information thus ensuring authenticity and expertise hence quality. Twitter is an excellent example of this.
Make a Connection: John Nesbitt in his book Megatrends (1982) used a term call ‘high tech, high touch’. It focused on the interaction of machine vs. man in a typical workplace. It meant allowing technology to be a medium of allowing people interested to get in touch whenever, wherever. With the rise of social media there exists immense opportunity online to connect, interact and engage your customers on a sustained basis.
Create a Community: We are all parts of some or the other community since birth. The world of wired community is formed on the basis of shared ideas, common interests, achieving a singular goal etc. Prospective consumers, suppliers, clients, buyers, sellers etc have started building online communities on these lines and thus it has become easier for each one of them to get in touch with the other concerned community and get the best bargains. This has also enabled rapid transaction and transfer of information.A conversation on a Twitter blog, a chain of conversation on a Facebook picture or wall and websites like Ebay, LinkedIn have advocated this principle directly or indirectly and are succeeding through it.
Hence, making customers part of your community makes them feel belonged responsible and well informed.
Making strategic partnerships work. Like with an advertising agency.
It will be helpful to keep these points in mind while you’re in a strategic partnership. Like with an advertising agency.
Customise your communication strategy: It is unlikely that they will change their business processes, but you can sometimes tweak your own methods to make it easier for them to deal with you. You could contact them and say that you respect their work and foresee a profitable long term relationship. You could ask them what role you could play to help save time and to turn the page over past partnership frustrations.
The big company might play spoilsport: The amount of time and energy that big companies can take for a start-up can be a headache, primarily because big companies often are slow to get things done, even though the rewards may seem great at first. They’re generally averse to working with start-ups. It is only wise to proceed with caution and make sure the relationship is progressing as expected.
Transformational Yes, Transactional No: Plan your approach with your strategic partners in a transformational manner. This results in a team approach to mutual benefits as opposed to a transactional method that is based on just money exchanging hands. It is pivotal to communicate concerns to both parties. And it is an open secret that to achieve success, a common culture has to be agreed upon. This includes terms of payment, quality and quantity of work and performance issues. Continue reading
Motivating employees without money
It is not possible for every company to monetarily reward their employees every time. Thus, the question arises: How do you motivate employees without money, or at least inexpensively? You will be pleased to hear that it is not rocket science. Others have done it, so can you. Plan your employee motivational strategy keeping these in mind:
Appreciation works: Congratulating your employees and saying a simple thank you for a job well done is not only good manners, it also happens to be a very effective motivational strategy. Surveys across companies have shown that most employees consider appreciation as an important ingredient to their job satisfaction. You could go about this in a variety of ways. It could be a hand-written note or maybe it’s getting thanked in front of the group. There are infinite ways in which you can show appreciation; just use your imagination.
Recognising efforts: Your employees are the engine that drives your organisation. They put in hard hours to make sure that the company’s objectives are achieved. Just letting them know that you are aware that they are working hard is always a good strategy. The fact is, almost everybody likes to be recognised for what they have done. Tell them that you liked what you saw. Again, there are various ways in which you could do so including publishing their achievement in the company newsletter or intranet.
Break the monotony: Often repetition and boredom are the root cause of any slump in performance. Try giving a new assignment that fits an employee’s areas of interest and skill, even if those skills are different than their normal work-related ones. This might just be a timely break, post which they could return to their top levels of efficiency. Continue reading
The Importance of Branding
Branding cannot be reduced to a sign and a product, a mere graphic touch. It is the creative process which results in a brand and product association. It gives meaning and purpose to the product. Hence, brand is more than just a logo. It communicates to its potential consumers. It casts the thoughts and feelings of not only the product and company but mainly the buying public to ascertain whether the company has what the consumer is looking for.
If the consumers are not following the brand it means that there is a problem with your brand communication. As your brand is not reaching its potential audience. So you have to understand that you need to change your brand perception and get the right message across. A few factors to emphasize on:
Evolve your brand into the digital world.Today, everything is accessible. Internet and digital media makes it very simple. Today whether you are big brand or a small brand you can reach out to people through this medium. Especially the youth. Hence, you should concentrate on working on the digital medium.
Give your brand a foundation and framework.It’s the foundation of your company and product. It has to be well planned. The foundation has to have a framework and outline on the concept and meaning it stands for. The, who, what and why are the keys elements which takes the brand far and makes the brand a solid brand.
Brands are informative. Brands help the consumers distinguish between the various offerings that are available by various companies. This choice helps the standard of product to be high. Therefore, your brand has to fulfill what it promises to sustain its existence in the market.If your brand fulfills its promise, the consumers would recognize the brand making their decision simpler. Your brand should assure quality. Once the brand is used, consumers automatically equate this experience with quality. A good experience makes good brand recall and various experiences by consumers are compare on the basis of quality standards.
Accept that you’re not in control of your brand. As the owner you might have your own brand identity. But it is your audience that determines your actual brand image. Branding is an enduring evolution of marketing, research and perceptions, so you should make time and listen to your audience and understand what they understand of your brand. As you need to know where is your scope of improvement and how you can please them. If your audience have dissimilar outlook of you than what you propose, then its time you need to recuperate and revitalize your brand.
Keep those interpersonal relationships and engagements. The best interactions are born from one-on-one conversations between executives, employees, suppliers, and customers.
Posted in Branding & Strategy
Tagged brand advertising, brand building, brand consultants, brand identity, brand management, brand marketing, brand strategy, branding, branding agency, branding companies, branding ideas, branding marketing, branding strategy, corporate branding, digital branding, online branding
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