Summary:
In this week’s episode of The CEO Warrior Podcast, Mike Agugliaro interviews Thom Johnson, who has been a marketer for businesses for more than thirty years. During the podcast, Mike and Thom discuss using media to effectively communicate your marketing message.
Main Questions Asked:
- What are the big problems you see in marketing?
- Can experts really save people time and money?
- What types of messages should be utilized in good media strategy today?
- How do you show trust in your brand?
- What is the difference between brand, marketing, and direct response?
- Does brand and brand messaging change? Why, and how often?
- How does someone evaluate his or her brand?
- How does having a story around a brand empower it?
- Talk about the difference between a brand and a logo.
- How do brands evaluate effectiveness versus its competitors?
- How do I keep my brand in the face of everyone who should be seeing it?
- How do you use focus groups to evaluate brands and marketing?
Key Lessons Learned:
Good Communication
- A lot is driven by anecdotal rather than strategic thinking about message delivery.
- A good communication platform incorporates two approaches:
1) Brand Messaging
- Identify a unique benefit or comparative advantage in your category that resonates with consumers and that you can deliver on.
- Develop a message in an interesting way.
- Find the ways to communicate that to consumers as a promise.
- When consumers check your promise and find that it’s true, they trust you.
- Trust is the cornerstone of any great brand.
2) Retail Messaging
- There is a parade of consumers who are buying today.
- The key is, ‘How do I capture the consumer who is buying today?’ This is usually built around incentives.
- There is a difference between having a ‘reason’ to buy and an ‘incentive’ to buy. This is the difference between branding your product and doing retail messaging around it.
Branding
- Stay true to your heritage and the unique benefit of the comparative advantage that makes you stand out against the competitive influencers in your category.
- Even though brands evolve and take on new characteristics and elements, it typically shouldn’t be a shifting thing.
- What are the things you deliver to a consumer?
- If consumers check out your promise, and it’s not true, then you have destroyed the opportunity to build a life-long relationship.
- Hang on to the heritage and drive the thing that drives the thing that makes you stand out in a competitive field.
- As a business owner, your brand is the most valuable thing you own.
Evaluating Your Brand
- Be conscious of what the competitive field looks like.
- The essence of a great brand is defining what it is and what you deliver on.
- It has to resonate with consumers. If not, then you have lost the opportunity to engage with them, even if it makes them distinctly different.
- What is motivating the consumer to transact in these categories?
- Is your brand a ‘fad,’ or is it sustainable product?
Stories Empower Brands
- A story is something that engages a consumer on an intellectual and emotional level.
Logos
- Logos capture the essence of the brand that people can relate to, and becomes the shortened version of the brand and story.
- A brand story is something the consumer can purchase in the logo, and is a way to connect to the brand.
Brand Stewards
- This is the cornerstone of great brands. It has to be earned every day.
- The brand manager is there to protect the brand and the way its formulated and delivered, as well as way the consumer and trade partner perceive it.
- Be one thing to the people you want to do repeat business with, and not all things to all people.
- Don’t dilute your brand.
Brand Evaluation Versus Competitors
- The way to evaluate is via recurring income.
- What percentage of transactions consumers have in the category do you control? This is your brand power.
- One of the metrics is how many category providers does it take to achieve 70% share of the category volume.
Action Steps
- Understand how consumers are transacting in your business, as this will define a lot of activity you should be looking at.
- Sync your message to how the transactional process is occurring.
Focus Groups
- There are two approaches when doing research:
1) Quantitative approach (numeric)
2) Qualitative approach (emotional)
The 5 Buying Styles
1. Penny Pinchers
- These are driven solely by price.
- The strategy is to present pricing at the margins you are most comfortable delivering.
- If they say no, move on, as you won’t match their strategy of buying at the lowest possible cost.
2. Conscientious Consumers
- These buyers are penny pinchers with brains, as they can be moved up incrementally on the buying scale if you can demonstrate enough benefit.
- They will self-identify by asking what they will get for the extra money.
3. The Buyers of the Best
- They don’t care about price, and only care about benefit and feature.
- Always talk benefit and point out how the product or service makes life easier.
4. Brand Loyal
- Brand loyal and tends to do the same things over and over.
- Show the buyer how what your selling matches up well with what they currently have.
5. Swayable Shopaholics
- This buyer wants to learn everything.
- They get into specific things such as technology specs.
- The strategy is to listen, as they will tell you the specs they are looking to buy.
- When they get what they want, they will transact immediately.
Final Thoughts
- Always determine what your brand is.
- Ensure you communicate it concisely and precisely to your consumer base.
- Be a great steward of your brand and protect it at all times.
Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5-star rating and review in iTunes!
Links to Resources Mentioned
tjohnson@johnsonmediagroup.com
Johnson Media Group
952-215-0015 ext 101
What are the 5 buying styles and how can you strategize for each? Find out w/ Tom Johnson @CEOwarrior https://ceowarrior.com
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