Strategy: The Price is Right - Part 2 (Action Wednesday/Price)

Hello, I’m Jim Glover, That Branding Guy, for Once a Day Marketing.  We are continuing our series on pricing strategies.  Yesterday we discussed four pricing strategies: penetration, skimming, competition and product line.  Today we will look at four additional strategies.

Many years ago pricing wasn’t utilized as a marketing ploy.  Companies practiced “cost plus” pricing, leveraging financial and accounting data to determine actual and fixed costs, then added a margin.  Or, a business may have employed “castles in the air” pricing, charging whatever the market would bear.

The factors that come into play when evaluating pricing strategies are the uniqueness of your product and what your competition is doing.

The first strategy we will discuss is called bundle.  In this scenario various products are bundled together and sold at a lower price than the individual items.  Supermarkets frequently practice this method.  They may advertise bundles of house cleaning products or milk and bread to entice customer to buy additional items.

Next is psychological pricing.  Here you determine a price that will be seen favorably in the eyes of your customers.  Would a customer be more likely to buy a $1 order of French fries or an order for $0.99?  The actual difference in price is negligible but psychologically the two price points are viewed very differently.

Then we have premium.  A high price is established to create greater perceived value for the product.  Some consumers will gravitate to a high price because they believe they are getting more for their money.

Last we have optional pricing.  This strategy may be employed by a car dealer for instance.  They offer a base model to which can be added a variety of options. Customers are given the option to add such items as stereos or leather seats to the product for a higher price.

There are numerous pricing strategies available.  Determine which are most appropriate for your product and your market.  You may want to try different pricing strategies for various target customer segments.

Pricing is the only one of the 7Ps that doesn’t cost anything to implement.  Pricing drives your revenue and eventually your profits.  It is essential to thoroughly evaluate the process of pricing and impacts to your customers.

That concludes our series on pricing.  Stop by tomorrow for Recon Thursday. To discuss an online or face-to-face service engagement and enhance the marketing and branding for your organization, contact James Glover: (505) 501-1330 or onceadaymarketing@gmail.com.  I’m Jim Glover, That Branding Guy, for Once a Day Marketing and we’ll see you next time.

Strategy: The Price is Right - Part 1 (Strategic Tuesday/Price)

Hello, I’m Jim Glover, That Branding Guy, for Once a Day Marketing.  Today we are going to dive deeper into one of the 7Ps of Marketing: Price. There are great pricing strategies you can leverage to better penetrate the market or make more profit.

Today and tomorrow I will be sharing eight different pricing strategies.  Choosing the correct one(s) is dependent on your goals.  Do you want to distribute your product in the marketplace quickly or are you establishing a position in the marketplace as a very high-end product that commands a higher price.  These are factor that you will have to take into consideration.

Pricing is driven by supply and demand.  Are there a lot of the widgets out there or not very many?  How unique is your product?  Are customers clamoring for your product or can they find something very similar right next door?  Also be attuned to what your competition is doing.

The first pricing strategy is called penetration.  Very low pricing is established to push product into the marketplace quickly.  Margins will be low, however, this strategy should drive increased volume.

Next is skimming.  A higher price is set at product launch to capture dollars from early adopters (consumers who want a product when it firsts comes out).  You are able to charge this customer a higher price because they will pay the premium to be the first ones on the block to get a new/upgraded product.  After you’ve exhausted early adopters you can offer a slightly lower price and then another customer tier will come in, and then another lower price and another tier will come in.  Keep reducing the price until you have your entire target market in the channel buying your product.

For competition pricing you decide if you want to be lower than your competition, the same as your competition or higher than your competition.  Consider gas prices.  When you’re at an intersection typically all of those gas stations have the same price.  A station across town may have a lower price because they are trying to attract customer.  Perhaps another station offers more service so their gas may be priced higher.

Lastly we will discuss product line strategy where you offer a variety of products each at a different price point.  Customers on a budget may buy the entry-level product.  Then there are middle and higher price tiers.  You are essentially offering an ala carte menu to your customers so they can choose which product they want to buy given the benefits and the budget they have available.

There are various approaches you can take with pricing.  The scientific approach is called price elasticity, determining what a marginal change in price will do with respect to how much of your product people will buy and the related profit.  On the other side is the psychology of pricing, which has no bearing on what the cost of the product is.  It’s all about what you think the market will bear with respect to your product.  You as the marketer have to determine the best pricing approach to take.

Tomorrow we’re going to talk about four more pricing strategies.

Thanks for watching.  Please join us tomorrow for Action Wednesday.  If you need branding support, please contact me to discuss an online or face to face service engagement.  That information can be found at the end of this video.  I’m Jim Glover, That Branding Guy, for Once a Day Marketing and we’ll see you next time.

Protecting Your Brand (Smart Monday/Process)

Hello, I’m Jim Glover, That Branding Guy, for Once a Day Marketing.  Today we’re going to talk about brand protection.  You’ve worked hard to build a brand, now you have to work equally hard to protect it.

Look at some of the top brands in the world such as Coca-Cola, Nike and Google.  The reason they are the top brands is these companies create trust, a sense of loyalty and confidence in their brand.  Then they protect the brand in every way possible, ensuring that nothing will diminish brand confidence in the minds of their customers.

As a brander developing your brand, you have to be the brand police.  You have to make sure you protect your brand as well.

Let’s take a look at the University of New Mexico’s Lobo football team.  In the past several years they have not done a very good job protecting the brand.  While the University of New Mexico does have great basketball, soccer, baseball and track teams, a few years ago they brought on a football coach who was not able to achieve a winning season. The team won one game in each of his three seasons and lost more than 30 games.

Let’s discuss what happened during that time.  Consider the strategic aspect of not replacing the coach sooner: ticket sales, advertising revenue, television rights and recruitment of new athletes all went down.  Fans became apathetic.

UNM did replace that coach and brought on someone with experience coaching Notre Dame.  Now the question is how long is it going to take them to regain the brand stature they had only several years before?  That’s why it’s so important to always protect your brand.

Once you have your brand perfected and your customers know what to expect from your brand, it’s your job to make sure you protect it however you can.  That may mean subtle things such as not altering your logo, tagline or fonts and colors.  Those attributes are the extended identity that they recognize.  Ensure that customer service is great, that pricing is what they want and so forth.  But once you get that brand where you want you protect it.

It may take considerable time to bounce back from serious issues like Lobos Football.  You can’t predict what that timeframe may be.  Be proactive and ensure that you are never in that situation.  When you see your brand faltering, focus attention on it immediately to correct cause of the degradation.  Then, as ways, continue to enhance the brand to the best of your abilities.

That concludes our Smart Monday.  Be sure and stop by tomorrow for Strategic Tuesday.  To discuss an online or face to face service engagement and enhance the marketing and branding for your organization, contact James Glover: (505) 501-1330 or onceadaymarketing@gmail.com.  I’m Jim Glover, That Branding Guy, for Once a Day Marketing and we’ll see you next time.

10 Eye-Opening Social Media Facts & Figures (Digital Friday/Promotion)

Hello there, I’m Jim Glover, That Branding Guy, for Once a Day Marketing.  Before we begin today I would like to encourage you again to give me more “likes,” “tweet,” share my blog with your friends and to give me more comments.  I use this information to enhance what I deliver to you as my valuable customer.

Today is Digital Friday and I wanted to bring to you some really eye-opening facts and figures about social media.

I arbitrarily identified 10 facts and figures that I thought were very interesting related to social media.  It’s funny to think that the numbers I give you will already be obsolete by the time I finish this blog. 

·         1 trillion YouTube views in 2011.

·         800 million Facebook users

·         Charlie Bit Me is the #1 viewed YouTube video with 436 million views

·         290 million Tweets on Twitter each day

·         150 million LinkedIn users

·         50 million Tumblr posts per day

·         37 million fans on Coca-Cola’s Facebook page

·         23 million follower for Lady Gaga on Twitter

·         200,000 text messages per second

·         100,000 new Word Press pages each day

The point I’m reinforcing is that social media is here to stay and theses numbers are only going to get bigger and bigger.  In fact, a year from now when we review these statistics again, the figures will probably be mind-boggling as to how vast the difference has become.  Strategically, what you have to do is figure out a way through your social media campaign to cut through the clutter and make sure you find the followers you’re looking for.

I think you’re well armed now to go out this weekend and share all your knowledge about social media with your friends.  To discuss an online or face-to-face service engagement and enhance the marketing and branding for your organization, contact James Glover: (505) 501-1330 or onceadaymarketing@gmail.com.  I’m Jim Glover, That Branding Guy, for Once a Day Marketing and we’ll see you next time.

Super Tracking Your Competition (Recon Thursday/Process)

Hello, I’m Jim Glover, That Branding Guy, for Once a Day Marketing.  It’s Recon Thursday and before we begin I want to talk a little bit about one of my favorite movies, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.  In one scene, Butch and Sundance blow up a train and suddenly a Super Posse jumps out of another train and starts tracking them across the southwest.  No matter what they do they can’t elude the posse.  They learn that the posse has the very best tracker, in fact they call him Super Tracker.

Today we are going to discuss how you can super track your competition using social media.

We have already discussed how social media inbound marketing is a great tool to develop your brand, seek out business relationships and to generate new business.  It can also be leveraged as a method to identify what your competition is doing.

Through their social media campaigns competitors are sharing strategy and tactics as to target customers, messaging, products and offers.  Tracking your competition through social media will provide a good idea of what they are doing and enable you to develop strategies around that.

There are numerous benefits of tracking your competition’s social media efforts.  First you will learn exactly where they are creating a social media presence.  You will be able to identify their target customer and whether they are utilizing physcographics of peoples’ interests or demographics of peoples’ age, marital status, education, etc.

Read the details of competitors’ content to determine their positioning in the market and brand promises to their customers.  Also take note of specific offers and promotions they are running.

The best attribute of super tracking using social media is that it is in real time.  If you sign up for a competitor’s blog, Facebook site or tweets you will to be instantly informed of the changes your competition is making in the marketplace.

If you take the time to follow the social media efforts of your competition you are going to gain a lot of knowledge that you can use to be smarter in the marketplace.  However, you have probably already guessed that social media is a two edged sword.  Your competitors are able to follow your social media and learn more about your marketing and branding as well.  You just have to be smarter than they are and use the knowledge to a greater advantage.

That concludes Recon Thursday stop by tomorrow for Digital Friday.  To discuss an online or face-to-face service engagement and enhance the marketing and branding for your organization, contact James Glover: (505) 501-1330 or onceadaymarketing@gmail.com.  I’m Jim Glover, That Branding Guy, for Once a Day Marketing and we’ll see you next time.

Fulfilling Your Brand Promise (Action Wednesday/Positioning)

Hello, I’m Jim Glover, That Branding Guy, for Once a Day Marketing.  Today is Action Wednesday and we’re going to discuss fulfilling on brand promises.

To determine whether or not you are fulfilling your brand promise, compare the expectations your customers have of your brand to their actual experience.  With respect to Once a Day Marketing, I hope you expect knowledge, strategy and inspiration to market every day.  If I am delivering that then you are a happy customer.

Look at your own company, brand and product.  Are you delivering?  Are you exceeding the expectations of your customers?  Are they having a great experience?  If not, determine why not and make the appropriate changes.

When you are meeting or exceeding your brand promise you should have many happy customers and lots of repeat business as well.  If you are noticing disgruntled or unhappy customers, it could be that you are not delivering on your promise.  Are you noticing that business is starting to fall off?

If you are seeing these symptoms, start doing some exploration.  That is your action item for today.  Do quick self assessment first.  Are you sensing any of these changes taking place?  Do you know that you are not fulfilling your brand promise?

Ask your employees.  They are in the trenches dealing with your customers and getting feedback.  Lastly, ask your customers how you are doing.  Take that answer to heart and then work to deliver consistently on that brand promise.

Let’s visit our taco stand on the plaza for an example.  The taco stand’s brand promise is that they deliver authentic food that is inexpensive and fast.  Imagine if you go there and you stand in line forever, or prices have gone up or he is now serving Chinese food.  Is he delivering on the brand promise? If the taco stand owner is not delivering on the promise customers will go somewhere else next time.

Rest assured that I will continue to work hard to fulfill my promise to deliver knowledge, strategy and inspiration to help you market every day.

That concludes Action Wednesday.  Stop by tomorrow for Recon Thursday. To discuss an online or face-to-face service engagement and enhance the marketing and branding for your organization, contact James Glover: (505) 501-1330 or onceadaymarketing@gmail.com.  I’m Jim Glover, That Branding Guy, for Once a Day Marketing and we’ll see you next time.

DurangoSpace: A Winning Idea (Strategic Tuesday/Product)

Jim Glover visited with Jasper Welch, owner of DurangoSpace, a unique coworking facility located in Durango, CO.  This is their interview.

Jim: Hello there, I’m Jim Glover, That Branding Guy, with Once a Day Marketing.  And today we are in Durango, CO at DurangoSpace which is an exciting coworking facility.  I’m here with Jasper Welch.  And Jasper, welcome.

Jasper: Welcome.  And welcome to you too. 

Jim: And the first question I have for you is what is the DurangoSpace.

Jasper: DurangoSpace is coworking and we have individuals, professionals, artists and all different kinds of people who come to work by the day or by the month.   

Jim: Like an executive suite?

Jasper: A little bit different.  We have a community of coworkers, you’ve seen a lot of them today, and they have different lines of work and rather than staying at home, being alone, or being on the road without any community, they have a community here.

Ben Hancock (testimonial insert): What I love about DurangoSpace, every time I come in here it’s a welcoming environment.  People are here to socialize, be cooperative, and help each other be more productive.

Jim: So is that the unique differentiator for the DurangoSpace that somebody working out of their home or perhaps used to be in an office environment can come in and get more camaraderie.

Jasper: Right.  And also we have all the support that they might need to do their work like high-speed internet, coffee.  All the things you’d expect at an office but maybe you don’t work in a corporation or you work by yourself or you work as a telecommuter.

Jim: What is the most unique thing about your facility would you say?

Jasper: Probably the flexibility.  All the tables and chairs are on wheels.  We can flex the space anyway our members need. 

Jim: And then as a benefit, what is the top benefit a customer might gain by being here at DurangoSpace?

Jasper: I think productivity because they can get so much done.  Sometimes they get more done than maybe they would on the road or at home.  It’s just a great productive work environment.

Jim: Thanks for being on Once A Day Marketing.  I am Jim Glover, That Branding Guy, and we’ll see you next time.