Mindshare Marketing

The next step to building a powerful brand is self-evaluation. We have determined the customers, but who is the company? Every company has an internal culture, the way it conducts business and views itself. Understanding who you are is the first step in communicating with others.

Branding is a way of simplifying communication. Rather than illustrate every feature of a calorie-free, caramel-colored, caffeinated, carbonated beverage we just call it “Diet Coke.” Managers worked hard to define what “Coke” is and where it fits in the market; the diet version requires less energy because it builds on the existing Coke brand. But, and there is always a “but,” even the Coke brand had to start somewhere.

Here is a quick exercise:

In 10 words, describe your business. Don’t waste time explaining what you think your company does; explain who your company is. Are you “a group of people who want to change the world?” Or are you “business school graduates with too much time on your hands?” Maybe you are “recent retirees looking for low-risk, high-return commodity investment opportunities.” This exercise might seem a bit silly, but it helps immensely in the branding process.

Knowing who you are helps you understand how your customers will see you. Your 10-word description is your first brand. Any company name or logo you have will be seen as an abbreviation of this description. The real challenge is aligning your business goals with your business image.

What 10 words describe your business?

Having segmented the market with the aid of psychographics, we have a truly differentiated product offering. But what if this is not enough? If a product stays in the market long enough, imitators are sure to follow. Here are three ways to continue differentiating your product from the competition:

1. Leverage your company’s background – Is your firm located in an out-of-the-way area that makes it unique? Use that as a product attribute – Coors distinguishes its beer as using Rocky Mountain water.
2. Use a new market category – When you segmented the market, did you create a new product or a new product category? Make your new line a market to itself – New Zealand-based Icebreaker didn’t just create a new kind of wool clothing, it invented the Merino category.
3. Go where the competition won’t – Find out what your competitors are afraid of and use it to your advantage. Advertise in ways you know the “other guy” would never consider – Burger King’s “creepy king” was a risky advertising maneuver, but it gave BK a unique position as the edgy fast-food brand.

There are several other strategies you can use to differentiate your offering. Most of them depend on who you are and what you do. Take a few moments to look deeply at your product, why you offer it, and who your competition is. Knowing both yourself and your opponent will help breed innovative strategies to gain market share.

What strategies have you used to differentiate yourself from others in the past?

Everyone in marketing talks about segmentation, I just wanted to join the club. However, I think of segmentation very differently than most people. You create segments in the market by identifying demographics (age, sex, race) and geographic norms (population density) and how they relate to one another. This gives you a good idea about how and how not to market to your customer. Trying to advertise a $900 video game system in a low-income area of town would not be very successful.

There is a third dimension of segmentation that is increasingly coming into play in today’s market: psychographics. Knowing who and where people are is a great predictor of their buying behavior. Knowing why they fit those criteria is just as important. Because I have already talked at length about what psychographics are, I can move on to explaining why they are so important.

The marketplace has so much clutter that it is difficult to define a truly unique product. A new ski jacket is just that, a new product in an already saturated category. Varying its price points enables you to target a few different segments, but not in any meaningful way to protect from competition. Changing design characteristics to better match why certain people buy ski jackets will help set you apart from the rest of the marketing static.

Consider for a moment …

I own a ski jacket, but I have never been skiing. I bought the jacket because it was both warm and fashionable. However, it has several features that I don’t understand and know I will never use. There are others like me in the market that, for the sake of argument, we can identify as the “want-to-bes.”

The want-to-bes want to fit in with the skiing trend, but also want a functional coat. Rather than wasting expensive technical innovations on this segment, we design a new product that satisfies these two criteria. The new coat looks the same on the outside, is just as warm on the inside, but can be made of lighter material (no need to stand up to the rigors of skiing) at a lower cost to the company. Positioning the product as ski apparel for the non-skier – the advertising potential is endless – allows us to target only the want-to-bes while still selling our high-performance gear to existing segments.

Psychographics allow further segmentation of the market. Anyone with financial experience can see the potential gains of creating lower-cost (or higher-profit) product lines. Psychographic information is a powerful tool in the hand of a capable marketer.

Have you ever used psychographics to segment your market?