Top 9 marketing mistakes

1. Centering Your Focus on Your Company, NOT On Your Prospects

2. Not Knowing Everything About Your Prospects And Their Problems

3. Not Knowing What Specific Benefits Your Product/Service Provides

4. Not Taking the Time to Qualify Your Prospects BEFORE You Spend ANY Money Marketing Your Products to Them

5. Focusing Your Marketing Communications To The Masses-Not Speaking Directly To Your Prospect

6. Not Using the Most Powerful First Line of Your Document to Attract Attention.

7. Not Giving Your Prospect a Compelling Reason to act immediately: While You Have Their Attention!

8. Not Using Testimonials in ALL Your Marketing Communications

9. Not Offering a Guarantee of Satisfaction

http://www.ultimatewealth.com/top10.htm

Marketing business sucess

7 stept for small marketing business success:

1) Narrow your marketing focus to ideal customers

2) Differentiate or compete on price

3) Create marketing materials that educate

4) Lead generate to be found instead of hunt

5) Create a lead conversion process

6) Harness technology and the Internet

7) Live by the calendar

http://www.ducttapemarketing.com/blog/

Brand equity

For this post I’ve gathered some information about the concept of brand equity, how is established analyzed, and the strategies a company can use to measure it.

The brand equity represents the value of a brand, witch is established following the next criteria:

• the level of loyalty towards the brand

• the notoriety of the name

• the perceived quality

• strong associations with the respective brand

• other possession of the brand: patents, registered marks, relations in the distribution channels

The value of a brand establishes the positive differentiation that the name of the brand has over the clients reactions with the product and service in discussion (Philip Kotler, Gary Armstrong, Principiile Marketingului (editiaTeora, Bucuresti, 2005, p.421)

The brand equity refers to an intangible good that depends of the consumer associations. There are 3 perspectives from witch this concept can be analyzed:

• Financial perspective. A method of evaluating the brand equity is determining the premium price witch a brand has for a generic product

• Brand extensions: A successful brand can be us for launching additional brands related to that one.

• Starting with the consumer. A powerful brand encourages the positive attitude of the consumer over the product

Peter H. Farquhar, in his work from 1989, Managing Brand Equity, stated that a powerful brand has to pass through 3 stages:

• Introduction – launching of a quality product with the strategy of using the brand for launching other products. The positive reaction of the consumer is important

• Elaboration – the attempt of making the brand easy for the consumer to remind of end developing a repetitive use. Also the consumer needs to remember easily the positive evaluation he made

• Fortifying – the brand has to have a positive image, build in time, for straitening the position he has in the mind of the consumer.

In the case of a company with many products, we can approach a variety of strategies:

• Single brand identity – a separated brand for each product. For example, Procter & Gamble has many brands: Tide, Cheer, Bold etc.

• Umbrella – all the products are under the same brand. Example: Sony

• Multi-brand categories V8 – different brands for different categories of product.

• Family of names – different brands under a larger brand. Example, Nestle uses Nescafe, Nesquik and Nestea for beverages.

Brand equity is an important factor in a brand strategy for many products. Some methods for evaluating the value of a brand:

• Brand-Price-Trade-Off (BPTO) premium – many brands are shown and the consumer chooses one of them. Afterwards the prices are modified and the consumer makes a new choice. the purpose of this method is to obtain a relative value of the brand. For example, Coca-Cola scored 5% more than Pepsi.

• Brand vs. functional value one. For – a brand has a functional element and an emotional or associativeidentifying the functional value very often the “conjoint analysis” method is use. For determining the emotional value we can use the studies related with the brand association or the sensory emotional studies

• Researched value vs. accountant’s value – another way refers to the added financial brand value in comparison with similar products. A way to measure it is EVA (economic value added).

Essential in the attempt to increase the brand equity is knowing the brand in details.

Sources:
http://www.olimpiadelecomunicarii.ro/Dictionar/
http://www.netmba.com/marketing/marca/equity/
http://www.dobney.com/Research/Marca_equity_research.htm
http://www.public-relations.ro/vocabular.htm