Changing The Story

We all have stories, as business owners, as individuals, as pastors… Some of these stories are great, some are horrible, but they make us who we are, our businesses what they are, and our ministries what they are. I can’t release all the information yet, but I do want to give you a glimpse into some of what’s going on. I have recently begun to unite some of the best and most innovative creatives, web-gurus, and tech savy businesses out there to form a collaborative effort to usher in a new era of marketing and strategy design. By bringing together this group of companies a client will be able to bring whatever challenge they can to us and we will be able to put them in front of the right people in the right place at the right time to build a complete and total strategy and solution that’s right for them. Our goal will be to tell your story, and allow you complete ability to tailor your company’s image and brand unlike ever before. More information to come soon!!!

Work, my life as a tent builder…

So the past few months have been some of growth and reflection unlike any that I have ever experienced. God has taken my views on so many different topics and begun to spin works in my life that I never even dreamed of. He has taken my dreams and aspirations and truly shown me that it’s not about ME but about HIM, and that it’s not about what I want to do, but what HE wants to do THRU ME. From what I want in my professional life, to what I want in my spiritual life, to what I want in my personal life, God has jacked me up. My professional life has taken a few turns over the past few months, from doing marketing for a diverse group of companies to being back in sales and consulting in the insurance industry for a small but very experienced agency. It’s been and interesting but extremely fulfilling move to say the least. I am finding that I love to be able to work with people on building their insurance and investment plans and make sure that people have the protection they need.

On top of that 2 other Christian men and I have been working and recently launched Media Procast Inc. a company that has been created to help churches broadcast their messages world wide as well as help them develop an online presence. Along side with being able to take a church that has no experience in internet podcasting and give them the necessary tools and service to bring them into the digital age, we also provide professionals and companies with podcasting and online training strategies. This company has been 2 years in the works and has the potential to blow the lid off of so many churches through out our country.

Finally, one other item that I am working on, I won’t tell you much about other than to say this… I am working on revolutionizing the way the Fredericksburg area goes about marketing and advertising strategies, and bringing together some of the best creatives both in the area and in the country to help develop strategies for some of the best businesses out there. I’ll have more information to come but what I can tell you is that it’s going to be AWESOME! If you have any connections to different creative types in the Fredericksburg area that might be interested in networking get them to drop me an email at clarkwithers@gmail.com. I have already had a tremendous amount of interest developed but I’m always looking for my next all-star.

So anyway, there’s the professional end of my life, and where it’s been headed over the past few months… Now I guess I’ll have to work on the next couple of topics… 😉 Check back soon!

Startups

Seth Godin has a great post on building a long range sustainable business on his blog… Every entraprenuer should read it here…

Viral… Look who’s talking now!

In the world of marketing and advertising there has been too much emphasis put on mass advertising. Not to say that TV or radio ads are bad, but they have to be planned correctly. From my experience TV and radio ads have a great place as a trigger to a product or brand that already has customer influence or higher brand awareness. These ads however don’t seem to be a choice in order to build brand awareness in this day and age.

With the number of brands that we are exposed to we tend to shut out anything we don’t have a personal interaction with. This is why more and more brands are taking a viral approach to marketing, and why the viral marketing field will continue to expand into the future.

As I was walking through Walmart the other day I saw something that made me laugh. They had the game RockBand set up in the young mens clothing section.

A video game POS display in the clothing section.

To create brand awareness you need to engage your audience. Find a way for them to experience you. To know exactly where you’re coming from. If you’re product is well designed, and benefits your end consumer, then you will be able to, through viral strategies, gain not only one time customers but begin relationships with customers that will build lasting value.

All this to say, if people haven’t experienced your product or your brand in some way, mass media won’t do anything but fill the airways. To truly gain a unique brand experience people must be able to reach out and touch you.

What’s your website saying…?

A website is a powerful tool. Maybe the most powerful tool a company can have. Yet many companies don’t use it to their full potential. Not only can a website provide contact to your company, and inform people about your company, but with today’s technologies a website is a way to involve your clients in your company.

Websites can provide more than just advertising to your clients but it can and very well should be used to disseminate information to your clientele base as well as allow potential clients to become involved in your company before ever walking through the door. Whether you’re an internet based business or not your website is now your best chance at advancing your company into the future.

If you were looking at using a professional company for something and you showed up to their office to find out that they were working off some card tables in an old rundown warehouse would you still use them?

That’s the same idea people get when they see a website that is disorganized, cluttered, or otherwise hard to decipher. Rather I challenge companies to work with their web designers or to find a good web designer to build a web culture that will benefit their business for the long haul. And anyone that needs to find a company to help them develop their web 2.0 firm drop me an email and I’ll help you find the perfect company to help with your online strategy.

quiet is the new loud

In the past louder was always better. When it came to advertising, and marketing, you needed to be the loudest one on the block. Don’t worry about what they’re saying. You needed to MAKE people hear you. But in this day and age there has been a dramatic paradigm shift. We are seeing companies utilize techniques that go against the grain of stereotypical advertising. People are using viral marketing and other sources of marketing to get their message out not by being the loudest one in town but by allowing everyone to carry their message for them in conversations.

So how can a whisper be louder than a scream?

In the past there were many less brands. It was like a room with a person in each corner… You were drawn to the one who could yell loud enough to get your attention. But now there are many, many, more people and they’re all yelling something at you. They each want your attention.

So who do you talk to?

My guess? You’re going talk to the one who has something worthwhile to say. You’re probably going talk to the one that all the other ones are talking about. Or the one that isn’t yelling at you but giving you a chance to tell them what you need. It’s amazing how many companies are using the loud method even now when it comes to their organizations, but the truly unique ones, the ones that are getting attention, are letting their work speak for itself. They’re letting their message travel loud and clear but it’s in a way that separates them from the pack. They don’t yell at you they carry on a conversation with you. They are communicating.

So how are you reaching? Are you yelling or whispering? Are you dominating the conversation or hearing what your clients are saying?

That cost how much?!

Pricing strategies are a tricky matter. You look online and you can come up with hundreds of different strategies utilized for pricing, and they might all be right. The most common method utilized is called the Pricing Strategy Matrix. This matrix basically has 2 things it looks at, the price of the product or service, and the level of quality. It’s quite simple as you can see here…

The beauty of this matrix is that every business can be placed somewhere in it and fit. Walmart, a low cost leader, would fall into the upper left corner while Target, known for having higher quality might fall into the upper right corner.

But what about the bottom 2? The bottom left is usually utilized when a company is in a market with very high barriers to entry, and they can charge a premium for just being able to offer the product. Some would say that companies like the USPS would have at many times fallen into this category. Although their prices aren’t outrageous you pay a premium for being able to send mail to any address in the world. Over the years however companies like FedEx and UPS have been able to push their price point up in the maxrix as they have taken some of the market away from the USPS.

Finally the premium portion of the pricing matrix is the one typically utilized for…get this… premium products! Products that although they cost more people don’t have a problem paying for them. Brand recognition, quality of the product, and heavy marketing play heavily into these products. Gucci bags, Starbucks Coffee, Rolls Royce cars, all are ideas of premium products. Although they don’t sell as many Rolls Royce as say Toyotas, they charge a higher premium and thusly even out their earnings because of it.

So what’s your pricing strategy? Where does your company or product fit on the board?

A note on branding…

Look at the number of brands we are exposed to on a daily basis here in America… Thousands of brands a day. From energy drinks to computers, stores to individuals. People have even made it a science to brand books that they write. So what is it about the allusive brand that people want? Why is it that a made up word like google, with a very easy colored font can become one of the best known brands in the world in just a few short years. Why is it that after years in the insurance industry AFLAC bursts out from the pack and gains the same brand recognition that Coke has with something as simple as a duck. (which was a failed marketing ploy used in Japan first…)

A brand brings unity to an otherwise cluttered company. Many companies even use strategic branding on different divisions, and different business units in order to gain market vitality in different segments. So how does a company build a good brand build itself. It’s my experience that a brand is no longer the way the company is but the way the company is headed. In today’s fast paced, highly technological world, brands must be distinguished from their counterparts in a split second and be able to grab the individual in a way that will make them recognizable over and over again. Once a brand is able to do that they can start to talk to us.

Working in the branding industry I see too many companies figure their company will grow then it’ll get a bigger brand, but isn’t this a backwards approach? As I’ve heard it said many times, “dress for where you’re going, not for where you’re from”. Some brands do this well. They keep their design styles clean and crisp, and thusly build themselves a place in the minds of the people they are trying to reach. They see themselves from the public’s perspective, not from theirs. How does your brand grab your public’s attention?

Marketing Mix

In marketing there is a simple theory that we use called the 4 P’s or The Marketing Mix. This basically stands for the 4 basic items that we are looking at and manipulating to make a company’s product offering viable and vendible. These 4 P’s stand for; product, pricing, placement, and promotion.

Product
The product is the most obvious one. Is the product something that the public wants, or more importantly, with the number of competing companies, wants more of. Some companies have products that they sell that would be considered commodities, or products that are nearly identical as their competitors, these could be milk, or bread. However most companies have a lot of movement they can do to produce a product that can be totally different in some ways than their competitor.

For instance look at personal computers. There are such a vast splay of products available from the very cheap, at around a few hundred dollars, to the very expensive at several thousand dollars. Yet, even with a splay as vast as this mostly all of these companies continue to survive and grow. The ones that typically don’t are usually forced out of the line not because their product was wrong but because they didn’t take the other 3 p’s into account… So what about the pricing…?

Pricing

As we said yesterday there is a definite separation between goods that can be easily differentiated and products that are more commodities in nature. One of the vast separations that we often see is the amount of price differentiation that can be utilized. As a product gets more separated in the market it is not uncommon for it to tend to go higher on the pricing scale. Many times these are products that are designed for the specific needs of a certain niche group of individuals.

Take for instance the new Venue sound system that is built by DigiDesign. This system is built directly for the needs of the application that it’s being put into. Sure it’s base cost is higher than that of many of the other sound boards out there but people are willing to pay the premium for a product that is designed to perform perfectly for the applications they are going for.

To throw another simple example at you look at Rolex. Many people find it to be a brand that is basically just an overpriced name, but take a look sometime at the way they build their watches. With laser engraved ceramic dials, hand made movements, and impeccable design Rolex has carved itself out a niche market of people that want the very best in a watch. These people wouldn’t be happy with a Timex or Casio. They want perfection, even if it means spending nearly $5000 or more on a watch. Timex on the other hand has a gigantic market and sells I’m sure thousands of times the number of watches Rolex sells every year. For every price there is a buyer for a product, but how is your product different, and does it justify it’s price?

Placement

As we take a look at the product itself and the pricing strategy that is being utilized we must also take into account the placement of the product itself. How will it be made available? Is it a service that is going to be spread through a geographic area, or a product with national or global distribution? Will it be sold in Walmart, or shipped from your website? Is it a product that needs it’s own store, or is it something that can fit in an existing retail chain? These are some of the questions that need to be asked and taken into account when deciding the placement of whatever it is your company is selling.

Something else that must be taken into account is if there is any kind of legal controls or anything of the sort. These legal regulations can control the geographic area that a service or product can be sold. Take for example insurance, as many know, I spent a year as a benefits consultant with AFLAC. During this time I was only licensed to sell in the states of Virginia and Maryland. These controls mean that I couldn’t necessarily take on clients in other states, which controlled my placement through no fault of my own.

Promotion

Finally, promotion is what many people believe marketing is and don’t realize it’s just a small part of what is currently considered the “marketing mix”. This part of the mix is pretty easy to understand. It’s the actual promotion of the product. From the branding to the methods which are used when getting the product out in front of people this is the section of the mix that is usually done by advertising, viral marketing, and P.R. work. Every product has a different marketing mix, and for every mix the promotion will many times be totally different.

Take for instance Red Bull. This is a company that took a very different look at their promotional side of their mix. They began by putting a number of trucks on the road with a giant can of Red Bull on top and they gave away free Red Bull’s to people to get the buzz going. By doing this they were able to, for less cost than most national advertising campaigns, create a much larger buzz marketing strategy, which in turn was able to gain a lot of attention from their target market. The easiest most efficient way to utilize promotions is by studying very closely your target market and from there figuring out what media sources, or viable marketing sources will target that particular market most efficiently and most effectively.

The beginning of innovation

When a brand is attempting to grow it’s less about throwing a ton of money at advertising and more about putting the systems in place to allow it to grow strong. As the baby booming generation continues to grow older and the “Xers and Yers” are beginning to grow into the work force the field of marketing has grown out of an advertising field and more of a systems field.

This systems field is a field driven by product design and innovation, strategic placement in the market place, marketing research, and sales and promotional strategies. As marketeers, we can no longer just look at a project and figure out how to throw it in front of the right people, we have to take the people and design the product in such a way that they will use it. This is a result of the ubiquity of information as well as a response to the number of companies, products, and services, that are offered to every individual in society at any moment now.

Over the next few days, months, years, I want to take a look at different objects in todays world and begin to explore how marketing innovation has changed the way these things are viewed. Hopefully these insights will interest you. I know they will me. Happy reading… First one begins Monday!