Brand Development is More Than a Marketing Plan

As a marketing process expert, let me share the steps involved in developing a brand. It’s a simple process, but requires thorough thinking to be successful.

Step One

The Marketing Plan

This contains all the product information (features, benefits, value proposition), competitive analysis, target market and market feasibility.

Step Two

The Creative Brief

A lot of people in the industry think this is part of the marketing plan. It is a secondary, and critical, document to augment the marketing plan. This is the document that prepares you for the customer approach or what used to be called Advertising. It answers the consumer’s question, “why do I want this product.” Properly executed, the creative brief can save you money when discussing the execution with your creative agency. No one knows the product as well as you.

Step Three

The Media Buy

Simply stated, how you reach your audience. There is a plethora of tools available online and with media planners to develop this plan. The challenge comes with the multitude of channels. The web has made this task very difficult. You will need to do a lot of homework to maximize your budget. Old and new media should be in your mix.

Step Four

The Financial Plan

Put your excitement about your product aside and remember your running a business. Everything should be based from a business perspective. As they say on the show Shark Tank, it’s all about “money”. A solid, and realistic, financial plan can help you secure funding and help you learn the realities of launching a new product. Most importantly, can you make money (profit)?

Step A

The Production Schedule

The entire process is driven by a schedule. Time can be your biggest asset or enemy. A production schedule will provide motivation and accountability. It should be realistic and fluid.

Branding is not one task, but a process. With due diligence, you can achieve developing a recognized brand in your category or even create a new category. These steps will also benefit the rebranding of an existing product.

Good Luck!

Do Things Really Change

As a strong advocate for change, there seems to be a cosmic force that just repurposes certain mechanisms, adapted to the current time, that we can’t deny. I read where Facebook is losing the tween and teen demographic. This makes sense, as the article explained this group doesn’t want Mom, Aunt, Grandma to see private posts to their friends. My mind immediately jumped to why this will not be a loss for Facebook.

Once this demographic jumps to whatever they find suits their social network desires, Facebook will just buy it. After all, that’s what you do when you have more money than god. You buy the competition. It’s analogous to when the big three Detroit auto makers predominated the car industry. They would buy their competition and either absorb them or shut them down (possibly this still occurs, but I have no proof; just think GM Evo). 

More closely related to our industry,  some of you may remember when a media buy consisted of several independent newspapers, radio and television stations. Then, conglomerates started buying them up and you could place your ads from one source and selecting the “media group” from the rate card. Today, this situation is now applicable to web marketing. Only the medium has changed, from print/broadcast to digital. Your ad purchase will select web or social media properties from Google, Facebook, Yahoo!, Twitter or whoever else appears with a group of digital channels.

The media procurement process has not changed, only the channels. The old adage, “the more things change, the more they stay the same,” applies here.

Note: I know media buying groups have never faded away and still exist for all current marketing channels. My Blog comparative is directed to direct buys.

Traditional Media

For some reason, recently, I'm coming across articles concerning traditional media. This makes me happy, not because I can't accept change, on the contrary I'm a change agent. It's because we aren't driving flying cars yet. Meaning, who can really predict the future?

Many moons ago, I attended GRUPA, the International print show. It was when CD-ROMs were growing as the new media, generating software to replace printed databases. During one presentation, the speaker said, "Print is not dead." He held up a CD-ROM (presumable software) and said, "with everyone of these [disk] comes one of these," and he slammed down a 400 page printed manual. The manual was how to use the software. Fast forward in years - check Amazon for the number of books for learning software. Print is not dead, yet.

The most beneficial marketing campaign is still a mix of media channels and the best media mix reaches your customer target with an effective ROI. I still received a plethora of catalogs, this past Christmas season. There's nothing like sitting by the fireplace, looking at dreamy pictures of desirable items. It still prompts me to go online and BUY.

I firmly believe you need some forms of traditional advertising to draw people to your website. Enjoy the short article: Never Say Die.