Get Your Name Out
"Winning new clients involves a leap of faith on the customer's part. Businesses need to take the way they present themselves very seriously to assist customers in making that decision."Ben Harris New Brand Vision Companies are trying to keep their customers. The tools they employ to keep their customers include price reductions, promotions, increasing convenience, and improving their product. This process involves great sums of cash, however, because companies must recruit better employees, raise their pay to retain their current employees, and spend capital on marketing, PR, and product improvement efforts. Why do I mention this? It's because research has shown that efforts such as these do not work. Customer turn over, otherwise known as "customer churn" is on the rise. Since the reasons for customer churn are multivariate, companies are forced to spend vast intellectual capital and money to attract new customers or maintain loyalty. If only companies paid less money on keeping customers and paid more attention on why they churn in the first place. Research now shows why customer churn is ever-present. It is because our economy has transformed into an "emotional economy", one in which decisions are being made not for rational or practical reasons, but form emotional connections with their decisions. These emotions are attached when we remember how a certain product associates with a childhood memory, when our friends buy certain products, or when we speak with a company representative. To build a successful brand requires that your company acknowledge the customer emotional role in their decision-making process. Contact Robert Turner Graphic Design to find out how we can help you improve your brand process. Contact
Creating a name for yourself goes far beyond your product. You need to consider your customer, your employees, and your management style. Each of these has a stronger impact on how well you maintain customers, get new customers, or develop your product.
Don't agree? Traditional business modeling tells us that we need to spend more to get more. Marketing TodayT reports that companies have increased their marketing budgets by 20% in 2005 and that this trend will continue. Television advertising revenue has risen from $5 billion to $7 billion in the past ten years. On first read, it would seem that heavy marketing has high rewards but the truth is more notorious. A McKinsey Quarterly article tells us that despite increased spending on television ads, the number of viewers over that same period has been cut in half. The Gallup Organization research indicates that the traditional marketing model (product, price, promotion, and placement), managed by a marketing team, is obsolete. Fewer consumers maintain loyalty to a specific product or brand because the differentiation between the "four p's" of one brand to the next is marginal. This is because of the immense competition for products and services currently in the market.
What does this mean for your company? You need to confront this new economy with a business model that makes it easier for customers to choose you as opposed to bribing the customers to use you. Here's a look at what Robert Turner Graphic Design consults as part of its corporate branding strategies:
The ABCs of Branding
There are three agreed-upon factors that drive consumer decision-making: attributes, behavior, and circumstances. Each of these factors can be described on a global level, but realize when discussing branding as it pertains to the customer that each of these factors are relative to the customer.Attributes
Attributes are those aspects of a product, service, or company that a consumer likes or dislikes. Think about your decision-making process when trying to choose a car. You try to find black, you want at least 24 miles per gallon, you need a leather interior, it must have a 6-disc CD player, and so on. Each of these markers in your decision process are attributes (color, fuel economy, comfort, and convenience). There are attributes in products or services that appeal to us on many different levels which sway our purchase decisions.Behavior
A consumer's behavior is shaped by mood, upbringing, sight, smell, and taste. How a consumer "feels" about a brand determines the amount of influence that brand will have on that consumer in the future. Take for example research on the behavior of consumers toward genetically modified foods (Wansink, Brian and Junyong Kim (2001), "The Marketing Battle Over Genetically Modified Foods: False Assumptions About Consumer Behavior," American Behavioral Scientist, 44:8 (April), 1405-17.). In this study, the researchers discuss two routes for persuading the consumer to support or reject biotechnology in food.
There is a central route taken by those consumers who are intellectually motivated to understand biotechnology. Their behavior motivates them to understand it then rationally form an opinion based on factual information. The second route is a peripheral route. A consumer not motivated to accept information or unable to adequately process information regarding biotechnology will form an opinion based upon a peripheral persuasion, such as by a non-qualified opinion that biotechnology is "good" or "bad". Some consumers accept the peripheral route to persuasion simply because the amount of information regarding a brand is overwhelming. This type of consumer behavior is the most influential motivator for brand decision-making.
Circumstance
A circumstance is an environmental or logistical issue. Consumers will rationalize decisions based upon their current circumstances: the consumer makes more money opts to buy higher-ticket items; the consumer living in tropical environments chooses more rain-repellant clothing; the consumer faced with incremental increases in brand cost switches to purchasing a competitive brand at a lower cost. Take for example the current rise in gasoline prices. Consumers living in economically depressed and supply-poor communities feel a double threat from higher gasoline prices: the first because of already tight budgets and the second from gasoline prices that out-pace the national average. These consumers will begin seeking alternatives such as mass transit, car-pooling, or high fuel efficiency vehicles as a means to contend with the higher fuel prices. These consumer decisions can end up excluding certain automotive brands with which they had previously been loyal. Helping small companies understand brand and brand strategies and how to leverage brand strategies on-line is part of what we do at Robert Turner Graphic Design. We can help you analyze your branding techniques and suggest ways to kick start your company's branding strategy. If you would like more information about how Robert Turner can help you with corporate branding, then contact us now. Ask Robert Turner Graphic Design how we can help build an exciting digital portfolio your company.