The Power of Branding

What word do you own in the mind of your market?

Nowadays, products are bought, not sold. In other words, people are making buying decisions on their own—without a salesperson—based on their perceptions of the products they have to choose from.

How exactly does this work? Through branding.

Branding has become synonymous with—if not a replacement for—marketing. That’s because most markets today are overcrowded and overcommunicated. People are looking for a simple way to differentiate products when making a buying decision. Most often, they’re relying on brand recognition.

In the buyer’s mind, each brand stands for something. (That is, a brand should stand for something. If it doesn’t, it’s a poorly executed or weak brand.) When buying a car, for example, Mercedes stands for prestige. Volvo for safety. BMW for driving, as in "the ultimate driving machine."

If you want to stand out in a crowded market, you must simplify your buyers’ perception of your product. You must develop and build a brand—a name that owns a single word in the mind of your market.

Do that, and over time, you’ll find the brand is far more powerful than the product itself.
Contact IDC and discover how you can leverage the power of branding to:
• Crank up revenues
• Increase market share
• Improve customer retention
• Remain top-of-mind in your market

What’s Your Customer Service Strategy?

You Need to Be Able to Define Yours in 21 Words or Less

The industrial age is long gone. In reality, the United States has had a service economy for quite some time.

In fact, every successful company today is in the service business. Even manufacturing companies are trying to offer more "value-added services" to compete.

You’re probably in the service business too. But how is your service different from and better than your competitors’? It’s a crucial question you must answer to improve your marketable position in today’s economy and to ensure that the people working for you reinforce your market position to customers every day.

Here’s why you need a succinct and definitive customer service strategy—one that you can clearly communicate to your customers and employees alike:

1. Positioning.
Just like a product, you must position your service offering in the mind of your customer. That means identifying, stating and promoting how your service uniquely addresses a certain market need or motivational factor.
2. Internal Direction.
A clearly stated service strategy lets your managers at all levels know what your business is about, what are its key operational priorities, and what they should be trying to accomplish.
3. Frontline Follow-Through.
Where service is most important—at the point of contact with the customer—a service strategy passed down by management helps your employees carry through your objectives.

Contact IDC to help you zero in on your marketable customer service strategy.

Locating and Locking On to Your Prospects

So you know they’re out there, but where exactly?
And who are they really? What are they thinking?

Pretty important questions when you want to grow your business. That’s precisely why you should consider direct marketing, even if you don’t sell direct.

The fact is, as the marketplace becomes more diverse and fragmented, and the buyer is becoming more selective, general mass-market advertising is becoming increasingly inefficient. The challenge of delivering the right message to the right people at the right time is greater than ever.

Overcoming that challenge requires an integrated marketing communications program driven by a comprehensive customer database—the kind that can only be built through direct marketing.

If you want to find out how you can locate and lock on to your prospects,
click here to contact IDC—experts in:
• Market research
• List building
• Database management
• Media management
• Electronic media
• The development and deployment of intriguing direct mail packages
—and much more

The Keys to Direct Marketing Success

You can’t drive up response rates without ’em.

First, of course, for any direct marketing program to work, there must be a need for the product or service you’re offering. Furthermore, your market must perceive it to be of real value, whether it’s something new and innovative or something that outshines the competition.

Given that, here is the top three countdown of keys to direct marketing success:

#3 - The Creative
Your direct response package must invite the recipient in, keep them involved and provoke them to act.
#2 - The Offer
It takes a lot to overcome human inertia. Even if you have a product or service your market needs, and you present it to them with brilliant creative, you won’t get them to act without a great offer.
#1 - The List
Simple. None of what’s explained above means anything if you don’t deliver your message to the right people.

And remember: You must always test!

Testing is the most fundamental discipline of all when it comes to direct marketing. It’s a "discipline" because it may appear as a waste of money. But the most successful direct marketers will tell you from experience, if you don’t test, you’re doomed to waste a lot more money on what seemed to be a "can’t miss" direct mail package.

It’s your turn to maximize the power of direct marketing.

So, How Do You Bridge the Gap Between Sales and Marketing?

Simple. Just Separate Them.

Ironically, when a company suffers from a sales and marketing disconnect, it’s usually because its sales and marketing are too close together. So close, they’re really one in the same, with the head of sales running both departments.

Typically, in a case like this, the company is going to operate with a sales-driven mentality that’s all about adding new or expanding current accounts.

So what’s wrong with that? Well, it’s fundamentally a hamster-in-the-wheel business philosophy focused on meeting short-term objectives and quenching brush fires. In other words—it’s about reacting to individual customer needs.

The more successful company anticipates and proactively responds to the overall market. It has a distinct marketing department—with its own manager—looking out beyond tomorrow’s sales quota toward unfolding or potentially new market segments and demands.

Through research and testing—right down to the individual customer level—a marketing department can identify the aggregate market’s growing needs, better enabling its company to truly differentiate its products from the competition.

Then, with such a long-term focus, this company can create the necessary step-by-step strategic marketing plan that provides sales with a road map by which it can focus its energies on achieving clearly defined sales goals.

It’s a practice made perfect only when marketing—while closely allied with sales—operates on its own, with a marketing perspective.

To put together your own comprehensive and carefully conceived marketing plan, contact the branding and business development experts at IDC.