Five reasons to stay on-brand

The 100 Best Global Brands 2016 were recently announced by Interbrand, and Apple topped the list with a value of 178 billion USD. A brand is certainly a huge asset for a company, if not the biggest. Unfortunately, some brands are not treated with the respect they deserve.

Here are five good reasons why to stay on-brand:

1. Recognition

Brand recognition will affect customers’ choice when ready for purchase. Staying true to your brand attributes, such as color, logos, images, tag lines, etc., enables your brand to be recognized even without mentioning the brand name.

“Because you’re worth it” is one catchy slogan that has maintained international recognition for almost 45 years.

2. Identity

Brand attributes that are easily distinguishable from those of other brands prevent confusion with competitor brands.  Consequent use of strong brand attributes inhibits dilution of the brand’s identity. A quality brand with a weak identity even risks being exploited by similar brands.

Hygiene products such as soaps, deodorants, or shampoo are subject to strong competition and it is difficult for one brand to stick. Colgate has managed to distinguish their brand identity from competition through brand personality attributes such as ruggedness, competence, and excitement.

3. Position

Brand positioning offers an opportunity to create a market place for your brand. A successful positioning helps customers distinguish a brand’s promise from those of other brands and provides reasons to why select this particular brand over others.

Harley Davidson, with brand values such as rituals, masculinity, and toughness, broke their brand promise when launching a perfume.

4. Assurance

A brand is commonly associated with a certain quality. Maintaining integrity of the brand protects its reputation and supports assurance of delivering a consistent customer experience.

A brand is a way to set expectations. McDonald’s Big Mac burger is expected to taste the same anywhere in the world, despite slight changes to the recipe.

5. Launchpad

A well-known brand makes it easier to launch new products. A product of an unknown brand constitutes a risk for the customer. A well-known brand is already associated with a certain quality and can benefit from its reputation. A brand with a good reputation saves the customer’s time and energy.

The strength of customer association to the brand value determines the extendability of the brand. Polo Ralph Lauren, the well-known clothing company, successfully extended its brand to home furnishing.

Driving brand awareness is expensive, but it is almost impossible to make sales without it. To avoid brand failure, the brand must be constantly and consistently communicated.

Be successful in social media

As many of you, I assume, I have attended various seminars on how to succeed in marketing using social media, however, without getting much out of them. Hence, I didn’t have very high expectations on the seminar that was given by Albert Lannerstad either. I was wrong. In addition to sharing great tips, he presented several examples on successful, and some less successful, use of social media as a channel for marketing communication:

Social media should be used as an invitation to communication, so one thing to consider is if you are prepared for a dialogue. Two organizations that have managed to create a dialogue with their customers are Vingresor and Idre fjäll. One less good example is the Facebook initiative ”We call ourselves...” where a company asks for suggestions on what to call the people working there, and got several negative suggestions such as ”slaves”, etc.

Another thing to consider is the aim with the presence in a particular forum or medium. With a clear aim with their presence on Facebook, Skövde University College provides tips and good to know information to their followers. A less good example is Wikiairport by Swedavia that lacked vision, and eventually had to close down web site. 


What to write about needs to be sorted out. Skövde University College, for example, got 12 ”likes” when informing about a price they won, 20 ”likes” when wishing everyone a happy Easter, and 40 ”likes” when informing about that the sun shining on campus and invited everyone to come and socialize. Hallonlakritsskalle also puts a lot of effort on what they are writing about and have more than 300 000 followers. What to offer one’s followers and the benefits with following you in your digital forum need to be obvious. The ”costs” with your presence are user benefits, creativity, and how the content is presented. Gröna Lund ”launched” their opening hours with the call ” Print it out! Frame it! Use it as background on your cell phone! Laminate and put it up on the fridge! Do what you want really – anyway, this is an overview of our opening times 2012!”.

Another way of using social media is in customer support, giving you the possibility to turn difficult situations. Assistancia provides a forum for discussing their services, Dustin allows product ratings on their web site, and SEB answers customer questions on their Facebook site.

Customers want acknowledgement and somewhere to socialize. To meet this, Scania and Fiskars provide communities where their customers can show themselves off.

Key to a successful use of social media in your marketing communication is to focus on customer incentive.

Push up the price

I attended a seminar by Karin Klerfeldt the other day. She talked about taking proper charge and learning the business process and gave these valuable tips.

-Can we raise the price? she asked and answered her own question.

-Yes, a general conclusion is that you can raise the price about 20% - if they can sell! So how is it done?

·      Make a beneficial offer

·      There needs to be a market for you offer

·      Sell!

Some will think that it's too expensive, while others know you and your skills and are willing to pay. There are lots of different pricing strategies, but the most important questions you have to ask yourself are "how much do I want" and "how much do I want to earn." Write it down!

Either you can sell on high volume at a low price or on lower volume at a higher price, but you cannot do both. To stand out, you can not be somewhere in the middle. Entrepreneurs who dare to push up their prices will be tomorrow's winners. As an entrepreneur it is easy to get stuck in a low-price trap, especially if you shoot from the hip when they set prices and do not dare to raise the prices for fear of losing the customer.

It should be easy to sell and easy to buy:

·      Make a price list

·      Put together a package solution

·      Get yourself some business confidence

Forget the cold leads! When you get an idea for a potential business:

·      Schedule a customer visits with someone who might benefit from your idea

·      Make a sketch of your offer

·      Ask Questions

o   Is this the right person for the decision and who sits on the budget?

o   Is there room in the budget?

o   What is the time frame?

Follow-up with a tactics email within 24 hours (I’m pleased to hear that you feel we can do this together... I was thinking about what you said about...). Then:

·      Visit your customer

·      Present your offer

·      Go for closure

Follow up with an order confirmations immediately after your visit. This should contain a summary of what has been determined.

·     Invoice 

The motivating leader

It is asked a lot of today's leaders: they need to have subject knowledge, be able to manage collaborations and work relations, be strong in action and able to manage changes. In addition, they should be coaching and motivating in their leaderships. But, what is it that drives a person? How do you get an employee to perform. A small business is not always able to attract employees with so-called external driving forces such as fine educations, high salaries and exciting career opportunities. So, how do you motivate your staff long term? How do you access a person's internal driving forces?
Today I attended a seminar by Richard Rejsjö. He believes that one should begin by asking "if you could do what ever you want, what would you do". Perhaps the answer would be "then I'd be a writer." Then he suggests you ask the question "why" three times to get to the core. The answers might be "because it's free," "because I can work from home" and “then I would not feel the stress of picking up or leaving my children at daycare at a certain time point". For this employee maybe flexible working hours could be the solution. For another employee perhaps responsibility is the key driving force. The solution for that person can be an own area of responsibility.
However, what do you do if an employee has no motivation at all and underachieve? To begin with, you have to analyze if the situation is temporary and if so, if you can help and assist the employee for a period. If the situation is of a more constant nature, perhaps you should look over the employee's duties in whole. Perhaps there are other tasks at the company that would fit better. Maybe there is more suitable work at another company. Punishment has never proved successful as a driveing force. Instead, it is important to highlight the positive features of the employee. Important is also as a leaders to lead by example.

Be true to your company profile

One company profile is not more “right” than the other; they are just different and may be appropriate for different target customers. For example, a closer look at two different style magazines will make this very obvious. Let’s compare People StyleWatch and Vogue.
At a fast glance, the cover of People StyleWatch appears very busy. I assume that this is a strategy to give the impression of being the one magazine in which you may find everything. On the cover you are informed that the magazine will include information on where to shop for the best bargains, secret beauty tips will be revealed and you will be educated in how to shape your body the best way.
The cover of Vogue has a more unadorned appearance and gives an impression of that this magazine will only convey the best of the very best. This magazine will bring you a selection of the top brands, how to look good in every life situation and articles on stylish celebrities that you can identify with. The strategy here, I assume, is to attract an audience with a greater purchasing power.
These two magazines are true to their profile; every cover, issue after issue, year after year will give a similar expressions. As a result the reader audiences of these magazines differ. Bearing this in mind, it is important to analyze your brand with regards to who you are, what you supply and for whom, and what your benefits are. Most important of all is to generate a company profile that conveys this and stay true to your profile for long-term customer identification for your brand in the target group.

Effects of price adjustments

This is the time of year, at least in the western part of the world, when we are looking over our price lists for the upcoming year. We either increase our product prices to cover for increased costs or decrease our prices in order to be more competitive. Either way, it is important to know how a price adjustment will affect your profit.
Imagine you have a product with a list price of 1000 EUR, a cost price of 800 EUR and of which you sell a volume of 100 units. This will generate a turnover of 100000 EUR with a profit of 20000 EUR from that particular product. A decrease in the list price with 10%, by adjusting your list price downwards or giving a discount, will affect your turnover in that way that you have to sell 12 more units to reach the same turnover. However, for you to gain the same profit on this product you have to double your sales.
If you instead decide to increase your list price with 10% you can sell 9 units less and still obtain the same turnover. With a 10% list price increase you only need 2/3 of your current sales to gain the same profit.
You can go in for being the cheapest on the market and hope to by this way generate a greater sales volume. This strategy will make a smaller business very vulnerable. In tough times of decreased sales due to customer budget austerity, a small business will be left with significantly reduced profit. For a small business it is of more importance to keep good margins in order to cope with sales fluctuations.
Whatever strategy, it is important to keep in mind how a price adjustment will affect your turnover and profit.

Message for success

I am not very interested in cars and do not know much about car brands. Marketing from the automobile industry towards me must therefore be crystal clear. In fact, I am a potential customer. By comparing two car brands with their backbone in the Swedish automobile industry, Volvo and SAAB, makes the importance of a distinct message to succeed very obvious.
With Volvo, I get a family car with an emphasis on safety. I know that from many years of a distinct and consistent marketing message from Volvo. But what do I get when buying a SAAB? Do I get a war machine like SAAB Jas 39 Gripen? Do I get a truck like the ones formerly produced by SAAB Scania? I have no associations to SAAB cars. Who is driving a SAAB? Is it a car that brings me high quality-to-price ratio or is it a car that makes me feel luxurious when driving it? I don't know. To me it's just a car that takes me from A to B. However, I want more than that. I want my car to be an extension of my personality. A sporty outdoor lifestyle would perhaps fit well with Jeep, whereas a Porsche gives more a feel of career and performance.
Personally, I drive a Toyota Yaris. It's small, economic, fun and it never gives up - just like me. ;-)

Everybody wants a reference

How usual is it to chose a carpenter right out of the phone book? Not very usual, I assume. Instead you start by asking around for references. Your customers probably do the same to find their way to your business. So why not start taking networking seriously?
Compared to an advertizing campaign, word of mouth (WOM) is a cheep way of marketing your products. Compared to cold phone calls it most certainly is more effective. Some companies rely entirely of WOM. Aussie Haircare is one example of the power of WOM. The initial marketing of their hair styling products was carried out largely through referral marketing in various online communities.
One way to network is to join forces with other professionals with similar or complementary products to your without being competing. For example, if you are an instrument supplier you could ally yourself with a supplier of consumables suitable to use with your instrument. Another way is to network within a society where your potential customers may be members.
In advance your networking event, prepare a short presentation about yourself, your company, who your customers are and your advantages compared to the competition. When you are asked about what you are doing, don’t just tell what you sell. Instead, explain when your products are needed and by whom. This way you facilitate for your reference to remember what you have to offer and when your products or services are needed. In this way, your reference will more likely come to think of you when he or she meets one of your potential customers.

Less is more

A company that is often mentioned when talking about successful marketing is IKEA. Independent on world location, IKEA stands for Swedishness and has a well communicated company history and traditions. The distinctiveness in their marketing communication has subsequently built them a strong brand.
Branding should be based on corporate identity, profile and image. You can’t be everything for everyone. Important to consider is what you are (products, facts) and for whom (when are your products needed), how you will communicate your identity (profile) and what marketing channels you will use for this communication (where are your customers susceptible for your message).
Company profile needs to reflect the company’s values, be communicated from inside the company and out and be well implemented internally in the organization. Branding needs to be credible, consistent and long-term.
Keep the message simple and clear. It is said before but worth mentioning again and again; less is more.

Walk the extra mile

On my way back from a meeting in Germany I became aware of the fact that the airport in Munich was hit by an electronic meltdown and hence all luggage was let behind. Subsequently, upon arrival to Stockholm I took a taxi home without my bag. Although I knew that this was nobody's fault, I was annoyed by this obstacle. However, my luggage was on the next flight to Stockholm and deliverd to my door the same evening. They could have chosen to wait until the day after and delivered my bag during office hours, but they didn't. Due to this excellent service I will continue to fly with Star Alliance also in the future.
In my work, I frequently care of visitors from various parts of the world. For dinner I often take our guests to Domtrappkällaren, a local restaurant in Uppsala. Usually the waiter gives a short presentation on the history of the facilities and on the food to be served. While waiting for the dishes, small appetizers are served in advance what's ordered. Complimentary as a little extra. I have chosen to return to this place with my company again and again.
Companies that have chosen to walk the extra mile and to give that little extra to its customers tend to increase the number of regular customers. These customers tend to be more tolerant and understanding when they run into troubles with your products. To a greater extent will they also stick with you as a supplier during more difficult times.

Authenticity and transparency

Consumers tend to have an increased interest in authenticity with an increased need for transparency. With the increased range of products, it is hard for the consumers to decide what is authentic. Marketing is not working as it used to. Therefore we need to change our focus on marketing from “what consumer needs” to “what consumer wants”. Distinctive brands need something more – sensory marketing. Advertizing campaigns has become less important. Instead, quality-to-price ratio has increased in importance. There is a shift from lowest price competition to quality-to-price ratio. Also the story of tradition and origin is important. Advertize with your heart, not your brain.

Become a star negotiator

The most common mistake in negotiations is to be unprepared and initiate with the lowest (if selling)/highest (if buying) acceptable outcome. I once had the opportunity to listen to a seminar by Karin Klerfelt and here are her tips for us to become star negotiators.
1. Initiative; If coming from your opponent, buy yourself time by asking if you can get back later, for example at 2 pm. If coming from you, be prepared.
2. Preparations; Set goals at 3 different levels - best, okay and worst outcome. This gives you space for negotiation.
3. Greeting; Build a good atmosphere by sending a “I want us to reach an agreement” message to your opponent. All your expressions (spoken language, vocal, body language, etc) need to send this message.
4. Introduction; What are the rules – how long will the negotiation take part? Take acceptance!
5. Demands; Ask the opponent. Practice your lines/questions before the meeting. What is the goal, budget, is there any other person that has the final mandate, etc?
6. Agreement; List of demands from opponent needs to be prepared. See to that you reach win-win for both partners. Give and take! This is a human mechanism called “reciprocal action”. Money is not everything, instead of giving a discount you may add a supplementary product. Be flexible!
7. Finnish; Settle the agreement. First make sure to have real eye contact and then summarize what you have agreed upon. To summarize is what drives the meeting forward.
8. Follow up; Important to follow up with the opponent in between negotiation events. This is when you build your relationship before next event.

0.5 – 5.0 method

I once had a sales coach that taught me a method to base customers visit or sales calls on. He called it the 0.5 – 5.0 method and it works so that you follow a scheme to eventually get an acceptance, for example on an order. Subsequently you continue with conducting a needs assessment or a presentation of the company and the products.

0.5 Waking the interest – Have you ever had this problem with…?
1.0 Aim and objective – Then I have this solution for you.
2.0 General problem picture in third person – I’m often in contact with customers who have a demand for…
3.0 Our solution, the product – For these type of customers we have this solution…
4.0 References – Our customers are…and for them it is important that…
5.0 Acceptance question – Is this important for you, too?

The method is off cause not applicable to all customer situations. Sometimes for example, only 2.0 – 5.0 are applicable to the situation. As my sales coach pointed out “our customer shall enjoy doing business with us, not only meet with us”.

Don’t take no for an answer

-Can I help you?
In 99 of 100 possible cases the answer you get from asking this question will be “no, thanks”. This is not the answer you like to get when exhibiting at that congress you spent a lot of time and money to be present at. Instead, try starting with a question to which the answer is not yes or no. Try starting with questions like “where are you from”, “what type of business are you in”, what is you research interest”, “what do you think about this interesting product”, or similar questions that demands more of an answer than simply a yes or a no.
I was in a clothing store once just browsing around. Instead of giving me the “can I help you” question the clerk turned to me with a pair of trousers in her hands.
-What do you think about these? she asked me. Just got them in this morning.
She instantly gained my interest and now she had the opportunity to show me something additional.
At a different occasion I was trying on a shirt at a department store when a shop assistant came up to me.
-You do look good in that color, she said. That shirt suits you very well.
I ended up buying the shirt.
My colleague told me about when he was admiring a coat in a clothing store once. The salesman approached him.
-Do you think you’re worth it? he asked.
That question has only one answer and that answer is yes. My colleague went straight out of the store to withdraw money from the cash machine whereupon he went straight back in to get the coat.

Sensory marketing

Today's major information flow and constant lack of time requires new ways of communicating. Functional benefits are no longer enough. It has become increasingly important to communicate the brand through the company's values, material selections (not only in products but also in packaging and brochures), product design and the design of the graphic profile (visual identity). I read Bertil Hultén’s book Sensory Marketing (ISBN: 9789147087105) with great interest. Fascinated, I read about companies working to create the brand's soul with the help of signature scents, signature sound, design and figurative marks, taste strategies and choice of materials. For example, to add weight to technology products signals quality. Some companies work with the same face or the same jingle voice year after year and I dare say that most of us know the signature sound of the ice-cream truck. Shops and hotels are working with signature fragrances, furnishings and lighting to create a company identity.
How can you apply this to a company whose products mainly are exported? Start by clarifying what the company stands for and what values there are in the company. Based on this, think about how to convey this through the company web site, marketing material, product packaging, etc. Review the company logo, paper quality in printed material, packaging design, colors and graphic images in the marketing material, design of the website, etc.
To signal quality, trust and responsibility you can for example select an FSC certified paper and environmentally friendly print production. Select signature colors and work only with a few in your marketing communication, preferably the same as in the company logo, review the choice of images, fonts and layouts and ensure that it strictly abides the selected graphic profile. By this you create a company identity through the selected colors, design, form and images (visual) and a feeling of quality through the selection of paper quality and design of printed material (feel). Visual and audio impressions can for example be conveyed through a video on the company website and that presents the company or its products. As an added value, you can offer something that is specific to the country or place where the business is located, to your customers to eat or drink at visits or congresses (taste and smell). Company values are communicated through all the things you do and all the choices you make.

Dare focusing

How many times a week, if not daily, do you not get calls from sales persons who convincingly tell you how many their magazine actually reaches out to and what effect an ad in that same journal would have on your sales. I once got a call from one of Sweden's leading tabloid newspapers. The salesman informed me correctly that many of our existing and potential customers on the Swedish market actually read this paper. With that being said, he wanted me to know what true potential an ad in this tabloid would have for us on finding new buyers of our products on the Swedish market.
As a marketing manager at a company that provides tools for scientists within a niched field of research, my question back to him was if he really believed that our customers would be receptive to the message in an ad from us in the tabloids? My experience is that it would have been wasted money. For a message to come through, it is important to find the right medium in which the recipient is most likely to be receptive to the information. A scientific journal is a more appropriate forum in our case. For us, where the recipient most likely do not even read the printed edition, but instead scans the electronic version of the same for what is published in his or her own field of research, an ad in the printed edition would probably pass unnoticed.
The same way you evaluate where to spend your money best, you should evaluate how to spend your time most effectively. The reasons for a potential customers to choose a different technology than the one you have to offer is important information for you not to waste time on so-called cold leads. It is equally important to be aware of how the products fit the user needs and why customers choose to work with your products, as it is to know why in other customer situations the products fit less. Resources are always a limitation. Hence it is important to decide how to spend them, in terms of time and money, to get the biggest bang for the buck.

The distribution network

For small and medium-sized enterprises with less possibilities of establishing own sales offices worldwide, it is instead important to build up a good distribution network of dealers and agents. Ideally would be to find distributors who are dedicated to the supplier's own products and can devote all resources to the sales of these. That is not always the case. So how do you choose the right partners?
There are a lot of different distributors out there. There are large ones with a broad product range, small dedicated to a specific product category, major catalog companies with minimal customer contact and smaller companies with more focus on being out at customer sites.
The large, reaching broad has not always proven to be the best. Neither has the small niched ones shown to be the most appropriate. The ones that usually succeed as distributors are the ones that have a clear profile towards the customer, who do not have a too wide range of products, which have the right customer profile in their CRM systems, who have similar products as the supplier and hence can offer them in packages, so called product bundling.
After having worked myself some years for a distributor on the Swedish market, I cannot stress enough the importance of the supplier keeping good contact with the distributor. Of great significance for the inspiration is also the opportunity to receive training from the supplier. When the dealers have a good relationship with you as the supplier, have knowledge of your products and their market positioning, are familiar with the product's unique selling points versus the competition, have good knowledge of the product's customer profile, and feel comfortable with the sales of your products, only then you have a good chance of succeeding with your distribution network.

Competing on price or quality

It's not unusual to end up in a price discussion in a customer contact. It is important therefore to in advance have thought about what is included in product pricing. What do the customer pay for? Anyone can offer a low price, but can your competitors offer what you have?
It is common to speak of "quality-to price ratio”. As a customer you may strive for the lowest price, but it can be expensive to buy cheaply. You do not want to pay a high price for a product that keeps mediocre quality, but it is conceivable to sometimes cut down on quality and instead go for a cheaper product. However, no one wants to buy a product with such low quality that one cannot get the expected out of the product. This can lead to a need of byuing a new or more expensive product and then it becomes expensive to buy cheaply. Although it sounds like the obvious, it is important to clarify this for the customer.
A product may possess a higher price due to the fact that it is based on reagents or components of higher quality and hence are more expensive in purchase.
Maybe your quality system requires more resources than your competitor’s and hence the product is safer for the customer to use. You might be more accessible to the customer than your competitors are. You may have specialized knowledge and therefore can provide better service and support around the products than competitors can. If this is important for the client and included in the price, the customer will most likely see it as getting high value in exchange for the money paid and that the product holds a high "quality-to-price ratio”.

Creating a go in the sales force

I do not think you can exhort the sales force to great deeds by just putting up sales targets. In fact, I do not think the sales targets create a go in the sales force at all. This go has to come from the team members themselves. Is there nothing you can do as a manager? There certainly is!
It may sound unbelievable, but what is often overlooked is proactivity and making plans for the year's marketing activities. Go through previous years' sales and sales trends over the past few years. Based on this a budget proposal is made, and sales strategies to achieve the goals decided. Go through what marketing activities should be implemented, what congresses to be present at, and if there is any particular product or product area that needs a little extra push during the year.
When budget is set, go through this with all team members as well as the strategies with which it is thought that sales target is to be achieved. Then you decide together with each individual employee the individual goals and what is expected back in the form of reports and presentations. Everyone's responsibilities are peaces in the organization puzzle and the tasks and activities related to the responsibilities included in the marketing plan and in the strategies you put together to achieve the sales targets.
It is important to clarify personal responsibilities and the distribution of responsibilities between the team members. By distribution of responsibilities within the group and give mandate to carry out the work in the best way everybody will feel involved in the group’s work and be able to implement one’s tasks without stepping on each others’ toes. Everyone knows what to do, who does what, when it should be done and how it should be reported. But is distinctness sufficient? It will take you a long way, I would say, but if you want to take the team all the way you have to spice up the work with joy. Add in some fun activities during the year, perhaps a reward for achieving certain milestones, or make something together in the marketing group outside working hours. Put up a ship’s bell that you can ring in when you receive a larger order or an order from a customer you worked on for a long time. Distinct distribution of responsibilities and job satisfaction will create a go in the sales force.

Competency training nourishes creativity

Working with sales is a way of life. You can never become a skilled sales rep without feeling passion for business. The salesman’s profession is a creative profession. Attending sales meetings or sales trainings is inspiring and nurtures the creativity. In my opinion all staff with some sort of customer contact should have the opportunity to repeated sales and marketing trainings. However, these courses and conferences are expensive and the resources limited.
A good idea is to create your own trainings at the company. Decide for example, to meet once a month for an hour sales talk. Decide an agenda for the meeting. Someone might present a book in sales and marketing which he or she read, you may be discussing an assignment you had from the last meeting, you can listen to sales training courses on CDs, or just discuss different sales situations or something that happened on your market. At some point you can simply analyze yourself as salespersons or members of the team with any suitable method.
If you felt drained of inspiration before the sales meeting, you will come out with new inspiration afterwards. Do not be surprised if you get so inspired that you challenge yourselves to different sales tasks. Maybe you decide you should contact 10 new potential clients a week for a month, conduct a product training at customer site or something else challenging, but still achievable and that can generate future sales.