Once a Day Marketing

Monday, January 16, 2017

How Product Lifecycle Influences Marketing (Knowledge)

Hello, I’m Jim Glover, "That Branding Guy" for Once a Day Marketing™. Today we are discussing the classic product life cycle introduced by Raymond Vernon in the 60's and how it still impacts marketing in 2017.

Products evolve a lot like people. They are born, grow, mature, age and then pass on. There are four stages to the classic product life cycle: introduction, growth, maturity and decline.

During Introduction an idea is transformed into a product that is introduced into the market place. Production and marketing costs are initially high at the outset and profits may be low.

Next is Growth. Branding and marketing are driving a sales increase, consumers are gaining awareness and adopting the product; the company is beginning to make a profit.

In the Maturity phase the product is established in the market place. Sales are still climbing but profits are declining because competitors have now entered the market. Other companies latch on to the original product and emulate it, resulting in reduced market share. In this phase, before the product slides into decline, marketers have an opportunity to remarket the product by focusing on differentiators that make the customer feel great about using it.

During the Decline stage, when sales and profits are falling off, a business has to evaluate whether they want to reinvent the product or retire it and bring a new innovation into the market place.

You can alter your marketing strategy anywhere during the stages based on the marketing mix that is required at that time. At introduction perhaps you employ more promotion strategies and later on move into leveraging pricing strategies.

Remember that the life cycle is different for every product. Some offerings may see sales rise rapidly and then decline while others may be slower to rise and fall. You have to be the expert in analyzing your own product life cycle to determine the marketing strategies that are the best fit for each phase.

Once a Day Marketing™ inspires clients to brand bold. Visit our website at www.onceadaymarketing.com. Contact James Glover at (505) 501-1330 or email glover@onceadaymarketing.com. Listen to Ask Those Branding Guys™ every Monday at 11:00am (MDT) streaming live on SantaFe.com KVSF 101.5 FM.

Tuesday, January 10, 2017

Los Lunas - Great Results of a Community Brand (Strategy)

Listen to our featured Ask Those Branding Guys radio show podcast: Los Lunas: A Community That Works

Hello, I’m Jim Glover, That Branding Guy, for Once a Day Marketing™. On our radio show Ask Those Branding Guys, we discussed branding and marketing of a New Mexico community.

Joining us on-air was Ralph L. Mims, Economic Development Manager for the Village of Los Lunas, New Mexico. Los Lunas is located 20 miles south of Albuquerque and has been cultivating their community brand over the past five years.

As Economic Development Manager, Ralph’s mission is to attract businesses from various sectors to bring high paying jobs to the community. He and Los Lunas leadership understand the need for place making and have done an outstanding job developing infrastructure such as the Rail Runner station and new freeway interchange. The interchange features the logo and brand tagline Small Community, Big Possibilities and is resulting in 20,000 daily positive impressions being created in the minds of visitors of freeway commuters.

Ralph shared that one of the keys to success in Economic Development is for the community to be proactive and visible. Creating a cohesive community brand set Los Lunas apart as a unique village and differentiates them from the county and surrounding area. Using the Economic Development sub-brand A Community That Works he attends tradeshows and shares the assets of Los Lunas to prospective businesses. Ralph’s goal is to make Los Lunas the state leader in creating jobs to keep young people in New Mexico.

In the five years following the creation and use of the community brand, Los Lunas has achieved a host of accomplishments including new retailers, restaurants and housing. The community’s latest efforts include:

Facebook’s seventh data center. Economic impact includes thousands of construction jobs and spillover into housing, retail, restaurants and suppliers. It has also created global awareness for Los Lunas.

Los Lunas Logistic Rail Park leveraging a BNSF rail line spur. With the addition of rail-dependent businesses Ralph is projecting the creation of 5,000 jobs in central New Mexico.

Niagara Bottling Company’s new plant moving into 166,000 square feet of space and initially creating 25 new jobs.

The community brand has propelled Los Lunas forward and has assisted in establishing their reputation as a small, progressive community and a great place to live and work.

Enjoy the show!

Monday, January 9, 2017

Being #1 in the Minds of Your Customers (Knowledge)

Hello, I’m Jim Glover, "That Branding Guy" for Once a Day Marketing™. Today we are talking about being #1 in the minds of your customers and why it is so important for your business.

When customers decide to make a purchase, they tend to buy the product that commands the top place in their minds when they are at the point of sale. It’s more than mindshare, it's the fact that the product benefit is clearly understood and commands the #1 recall position. Being #2 may sound impressive but it won't generate top sales.

As you move forward with your branding efforts it is imperative that you become #1 in the minds of your target customers in some dimension of the purchase. Work hard to establish this unique positioning and don't try to be all things to all people.

Be different, creative and unique in your marketing approach and use a variety of tools that may include video, virtual reality and high quality photography. When you make a great impression on a potential customer, they will recall your brand more readily when it’s time to make a purchase.

To learn more about brand positioning, click on the link to watch this Once a Day Marketing video: Being #1 in Your Customer's Mind

Tuesday, January 3, 2017

Build a Marketing Plan for the New Year (Knowledge)

Once a Day Marketing™ featured video blog: Developing Your Marketing Action Plan

Hello, I’m Jim Glover, "That Branding Guy" at Once a Day Marketing™. Today we are discussing the importance of creating a good marketing action plan.

The marketing action plan (MAP) is a valuable tool to identify the important marketing action items for your brand. What we love about a MAP is that it centralizes all of the tasks in one place. Using this tool enables you to prioritize which items to accomplish first and which will be completed later.

Let’s take a look at the elements of a good marketing action plan. Each item in the plan should be actionable, measureable and assigned an owner. We use project management software, such as FastTrack, to maintain our MAP and break tasks down into three categories; short term, intermediate and long term.

Working with key members of your team, create a column for tasks and describe each task in as much detail as required. Then add a column for the expected result of each item; access actual results against this at the end of the campaign. Next, use a column to identify the responsible party. This is the individual in your organization who is the champion of the task and owns its timely completion. List start and finish dates for each item. Include budget or costs where applicable so you know the amount of resources to allocate toward the task.

When the marketing action plan is complete, share it with the appropriate individuals in your organization and review it regularly to establish progress and measure results. When your team members have input into developing the marketing action plan and have committed to a timeline for completion, hold responsible individuals accountable for on time execution of tasks. When team members have measurable and time-bound objective they will understand expectations.

Build your marketing action plan today! The very first task on the plan should be to brand every single day by following Once a Day Marketing.