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This article explores the limitations of current approaches to setting marketing budgets and explains a different approach that simplifies the task and gets to the heart of the issue: determining where – not how much – to spend on marketing.

Content: Article | Authors: Mike Bradbury, Neal Kissel | Source: Marakon Associates | Subject: Marketing / Sales

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Bill Schley, author of Why Johnny Can’t Brand (Portfolio, November 2005), says branding “is not what you say but what you do.” But what a company does is already, well, what it does! To brand, in a corporate sense, is no more a verb than “to gorgeous.” A brand is a result, not a tactic. One cannot go about branding an organization or a product … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Fast Company | Subjects: Brand, Marketing / Sales

Companies everywhere are struggling to differentiate their offerings. They dream of establishing an unassailable market position for their solutions, a position that will enable them to capture a lion’s share of the customer’s mind and wallet.

But to their frustration, no matter how enticingly and expertly their portraits of the solutions are painted-to customers, their solutions and their competitor’s solutions usually end up looking amazingly alike.

There … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Jeff Thull | Source: MarketingProfs | Subject: Marketing / Sales

The consumer mind has a logical and emotional part to it, and if you don’t speak to both, you will lose them, especially when they’re hungry, tired, angry, or lonely.

We’re living in an age of anxiety. People have less leisure time. When they’re not hungry, tired, angry, or lonely, the emotional side will win the debate with the logical part of the brain 80% of … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: BusinessWeek | Subjects: Customer Related, Marketing / Sales

BizMiner provides fee-based industry analysis on 16,000 lines of business in over 3,000 US locations – perfect for business plans, marketing research, benchmarking and valuations.

Content: Online Resource | Source: The Brandow Company | Subjects: Industry Specific, Market Research

First Research delivers critical knowledge sales tools to equip sales and marketing professionals with the targeted understanding needed to engage key prospects and deepen customer relationships.

Our Industry Profiles are designed to deliver the industry knowledge and industry analysis that generates an understanding of the challenges and opportunities facing your prospects and customers. Our easy-to-use, easy-to-comprehend Industry Profiles and market research give you an advantage over … [ Read more ]

Content: Online Resource | Source: First Research Inc. | Subjects: Industry Specific, Market Research

Pricing is becoming more science than art. But because the science is complex, most managers rely heavily on art-or instinct. As a result, they almost always miss the pricing sweet spot. A powerful, fact-driven tool called the profit parabola can help managers monitor competitors’ prices, learn how their pricing affects their own position, respond intelligently to competitors’ moves, and test incrementally or radically different pricing … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Marin Gjaja, Peter Stanger, Wouter-Jan Schouten | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: Marketing / Sales, Pricing

P&G’s Tremor division claims to have cracked the code on measurable word of mouth using a concoction of old metrics, new approaches and a heavy dose of secret sauce.

Content: Article | Author: Samar Farah | Source: CMO Magazine | Subject: Marketing / Sales

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For convenience, companies organized along product lines often segment customers by what they buy. This approach, however, risks alienating customers in two ways: Customers who happen to be in more than one segment get bombarded with multiple, uncoordinated offers. And big spenders in one product category who start buying in a second category are justifiably miffed if they’re treated as strangers.

Content: Quotation | Source: CMO Magazine | Subject: Marketing / Sales

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In the business world’s hall of fame a special place is reserved for Al Ries. He is without any doubt one of the most prominent gurus of strategic thinking. Regretfully, Ries’s continued influence is becoming today a considerable danger to successful brand building and brand management.

Content: Article | Author: Dan Herman, Ph.D. | Source: CEO Refresher | Subject: Marketing / Sales

The primary function of brands is to reduce our anxiety in making choices. The very fact we are anxious indicates that we have freedom to choose. The more we sense we know about a product, the less anxiety we feel. When we know less about a product, then our uncertainty rises. The axiom is demonstrated by the correlation that exists between … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: TheWorkingManager.com | Subjects: Brand, Marketing / Sales

Brands have become increasingly fragile and difficult to sustain. Failure to invest in the right mix of activities at the right time risks eroding the brand. On the other hand, those companies that anticipate and avoid the common investment traps can reap superior growth in brand value over a long period of time.

Content: Article | Authors: Adrian J. Slywotzky, Andrew Pierce | Source: Mercer Management Journal | Subject: Marketing / Sales

In their simplest form, brands are the manifestation…of some type of relationship between the buyer and the seller…A “brand relationship” is some type of bond – financial, physical, or emotional -that brings the brand seller and buyer together. Thus, the relationship can be either deep or shallow. Rational or irrational. Long term or short term. Or any combination in between.

Content: Quotation | Source: TheWorkingManager.com | Subjects: Brand, Marketing / Sales

Effective brand building requires making relevant and compelling connections to deeply rooted human emotions or profound cultural forces. Brands that establish themselves within the larger incredibly complex fabric that we call life will set themselves apart in a more meaningful way. Great brands understand the need to respect both the physical and emotional needs of consumers…Great brands transcend great products. They respect … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: TheWorkingManager.com | Subjects: Brand, Marketing / Sales

The celebrity endorsement, driven more by gut feel than hard data, remains a bit of a black box for ROI-focused marketers.

Content: Article | Author: Christopher Caggiano | Source: CMO Magazine | Subjects: Advertising, Marketing / Sales | Industry: Advertising

The goal of a segmentation system is to identify groups in which the customers are as much alike as possible and greatly differentiated from customers in other segments. If the segmentation system is well designed, members of a segment have similar interests, attitudes and behaviors, and they will respond similarly to elements of the marketing mix such as pricing, promotion, and sales channel. All consumer … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Carla Hendricks | Source: E.J. Barry Company | Subject: Marketing / Sales