Brands are funny things. You can’t just go to the store and pick up a pound of brand. There’s no brand app to download. You can’t go to the Brand Store and buy brands to make your organization more appealing to your customers.
Brands have to be created, and you might be surprised to find out that you’re not the one doing the creating, at least, not the only one.
A brand is a relationship, formed and shaped by all the emotions and ideas that the customer associates with a product or service that create a distinct customer experience. The stronger and more unique the customer experience is, the more robust the brand becomes.
A brand is a co-authored experience—a mutual relationship that lives between the customer and the brand.
The company sets the intention of the brand, and customers interpret their own meanings based on their experiences.
The ultimate definition of your brand is determined and owned by your customers when they evaluate their experiences with you.
How Customers Perceive Your Brand
Your customers’ perceptions of your brand are far more multi-dimensional than you ever imagined.
Everything is in there, including all things real or perceived, rational or emotional, physical or sensory, thought or felt, whether in form or function, planned or unplanned.
You could say a brand is all the good advertising you run, all the bad advertising you regret, your best and worst customer service stories—virtually everything that your enterprise does and the public’s perception of those actions.
This includes the good, the bad, and the ugly. Collectively, this conglomerate determines the customer experience and, therefore, the marketplace’s perception of your brand.
You do not control your brand. You can control what your brand does, but how your brand is perceived is entirely up to your customers.
Your brand’s messaging and actions define the parameters of your customers’ experiences, but your customers come to you with their own frameworks of education, experience, and emotion which influence how they interpret your brand and feel about your organization. The combination of your actions and your customers’ perceptions is your brand.
What is a Cult Brand?
Cult Brands have mastered the art of building meaningful, long-term relationships with their customers. Cult Brands exist in every industry.
Successful brands need to be consistent. Cult Brands need to be consistently amazing.
Cult Brands understand that their brands belong to the customers, and only the customer’s voice counts.
Rather than engaging in a meaningless attempt to dictate to the customer what they should want, a successful Cult Brand embraces its customers by anticipating their basic human and spiritual needs. As a consequence, Cult Brands achieve a level of customer loyalty unprecedented in traditional business.
Cult Brands—companies with unusually high levels of brand loyalty—have learned to serve a special group of customers. Harley riders, Mac users, Parrot Heads, Trekkies, MINI drivers, and the like represent a core group of people at the heart of each brand. We call this special breed of customers Brand Lovers.
Embracing Your Brand Lovers
Brand Lovers aren’t born. They’re made. Cult Brands are deliberately, continually engaged in building strong, meaningful relationships with their best customers. While brands that have the Merchant Mindset chase the next sale, Cult Brands chase the next conversation.
Cult Brands look for ways that they can play an integral role in their best customers’ lives. They embrace their customers like members of a loving family, providing a safe community for them to be who they really are. These brands are bold and courageous—often disliked by many, but loved by a precious few.
A Precious Few Is More Than Enough
A small legion of Brand Lovers will do more for the growth and sustainability of your business than all the transactional customers in the world. Not convinced? We’ve found that Pareto’s Law (the 80/20 Principle) generally holds true. As little as 20 percent of your customers can drive roughly 80 percent of profitability.
For many businesses, it costs five times more to acquire a new customer than keep an old one. Most importantly, the customers who love you the most—your Brand Lovers—spread the word and create new customers for you (just ask anyone who owns a Mac or an iPad).
Before you can embrace your Brand Lovers, you need to know who they are. Are all of your customers contributing equally to your profits? It’s unlikely. There are certain customers who choose you more often and purchase from you over a longer period of time (customer retention). These precious few are the lifeblood of your business.
Do you know who your best customers are? Without this knowledge, you can take yourself out of business or your competitors will do it for you. With this knowledge, you’ll be able to start cultivating brand loyalty and transforming your company into a Cult Brand with all the power and profitability that comes with that position.
Develop a Brand Lover Strategy For Your Business
As we’ve seen, there are many different types of marketing strategies. Naturally, different marketing strategies are appropriate for different businesses at different times and in different marketing conditions.
In our firm, we mainly focus on brand loyalty strategies because we have found (with the help of our clients) that this strategic focus works well in up and down markets. By focusing on your best customers, you continuously learn about your business is especially for and find ways to better serve these special customers.
These Brand Lover Strategies, as we call them, helps you differentiate your brand and make your competition irrelevant while guiding your business towards greater profitability. Put simply, it works.
Marketing is the practice of allocating resources to gain awareness and consideration from future customers for purchase of a product or service. Marketing is about creating customers.
A brand is a relationship, formed and shaped by all the emotions and ideas that the customer associates with a product or service that create a distinct customer experience.
A brand is a co-authored experience—a mutual relationship that lives between the customer and the brand. Branding is the process of cultivating relationships with your customers on tangible (logos) and intangible (emotions) levels.
Brand loyalty occurs when your branding efforts are effective. Your customers develop an emotional bond with your brand. They become loyal to your products and services. (Degrees of loyalty vary, of course. See “Brand Loyalty Continuum” section here.)
Why Building Brand Loyalty Is Important
When you help develop a strong bond between your brand and your customer, magic occurs. You can naturally increase customer retention. Frequency of purchase often goes up. You command a greater share of wallet from your customers as you become more meaningful to them and more worthy of a business relationship.
If you’re successful at building brand loyalty, your customers will help you grow your business themselves, helping you harness the power of word of mouth.
Do you need another reason? It can actually makes your business practices more fun and engaging as you’ll be building relationships with real human beings. It can make you feel more human too!
Attend Our New Marketing Seminar on Brand Loyalty
Building brand loyalty rarely happens by accident. Cult Brands are skilled at creating customer evangelists, but you don’t have to be a Cult Brand to reap the benefits of brand loyalty. You can model the marketing and branding strategies of Cult Brands by understanding the psychology of your customers: what drivers the behavior behind customer loyalty.
We’ll be exploring this topic in greater detail at our next Winter Marketing Seminar on December 6th at the Ritz-Carlton Orlando. This intimate seminar, “How to Build Brand Loyalty: The Art of Getting Your Customers to Love You,” will explore ways your brand can develop stronger emotional connections with your customers.
You’ll meet other like-minded marketers and exchange ideas to help you grow your businesses in this fast-changing marketplace.
Former Chief Marketing Officer of PetSmart, Ken Banks, will also be sharing how your company can develop a more resonant brand and reach more customers by understanding the four “Buying Styles” your customers have.
For some people, the word “Cult” is enough to make the hair on the back of their neck stand up. Thoughts of Jim Jones and David Koresh spring easily to mind. These renowned cult leaders certainly had their followers, but they didn’t lead them anywhere good.
It’s important to understand that there are both benign and destructive cults: benign cults don’t harm their followers; destructive cults do. The fanatical devotion exhibited by Apple aficionados and Harley owners exhibit behavior that is certainly cult-like, but no one is harmed as a result of their affections.
Benign cults build their members up; destructive cults tear their members down.
We turn to Rick Ross , one of the nation’s leading experts on cults, for a more in-depth explanation. For over twenty years, Rick Ross has studied cult groups and has helped rescue family members trapped inside cult compounds.
Destructive Cults
Ross describes destructive cults as “groups with an absolute authoritarian figure at the top of a pyramid scheme of authority where there is virtually no accountability for that leader.” This is where you see the Jim Jones type of dynamic at play: the leader is a super-star who has absolute control.
Cult Brands are different because it’s not at all necessary for people to know who’s in charge for them to form a relationship with the brand. Lots of people know Steve Jobs was at the core of Apple’s success, but the average customer doesn’t know who is at the helm of IKEA, Whole Foods, or even Harley-Davidson.
Destructive cults hurt, harm, manipulate, and often brainwash their members. The leader of a destructive cult really doesn’t care about the well being of its members. In fact, such leaders openly exploit and abuse their members, usually for their own personal benefit.
Benign Cults
Benign cults have one trait in common with their negative counterparts: the intensity with which the cult members are attached to the object of their affection. Ross describes a benign cult as “any group of people that are intensely devoted to a person, place, or thing,” but where the relationship between the follower and the cult is harmless, benign, or even positive.
Benign cults are never destructive. They don’t harm or injure their followers either physically or mentally. Benign cults have leaders who are accountable to the group, and the leaders value the feedback of their followers.
Benign cults are inclusive. They welcome anyone who wants to belong. There’s no price of admission—you don’t need to live in Key West to be a Parrothead: simply being enthusiastic about the brand is enough. This is an important point of differentiation from destructive cults, which are exclusive, shutting out anyone who doesn’t fit a specific set of criteria.
The important thing about benign cults is that they help fill the emotional wants and needs of their followers in a positive way. There are clear, easily identifiable, objectively observable benefits that are derived from membership in a benign cult.
Why People Join Brand Cults
Watch this presentation to get a better understanding of why loyal customers often gather together:
An exclusive focus on the short-term bottom line is the hallmark of brands that will never be great. We call this the merchant mindset.
As long as your operation is too tightly focused on generating the next transaction, from the perspective of building brand loyalty, you’re headed in the wrong direction.
Let Go of the Merchant Mindset if You Want to be a Cult Brand
It’s good to be a Cult Brand, very good, indeed. But we’re not going to kid you: Transforming your organization means making some fundamental changes, starting with the way you think about your company and your customers.
Just as there are certain traits, qualities, and practices that unite Cult Brands, there are pervasive unifying tendencies that define companies that aren’t nearly as successful.
The big one—the stumbling block that sits directly in the middle of the path to greatness—is known as the Merchant Mindset.
(Star Trek fans, we can make this easy for you. Everything we’re about to say in this next section can be summed up with a Star Trek reference. The Merchant Mindset = The Ferengi.)
Winning the Battle, But Losing the Brand Loyalty War
There are people who will tell you that brand loyalty is a myth, a lie, a sheer figment of the capitalist imagination. These people (we hesitate to call them experts, because that implies a certain level of value in what they have to say) will tell you to do whatever it takes to squeeze one more sale out of your customer.
If that means cutting prices, cut prices. If lower prices necessitate lower quality, so be it. Customer service and support are expensive endeavors—operate both at bare-bones levels so you can be as profitable as possible. Nothing is off the table when you’re battling for the next sale.
This is all really, really bad advice. Sun Tzu said it best: “If a battle cannot be won, do not fight it.”
If you’re battling for the next transaction, you may win the day, but in the long term, you will lose everything. Customers who will choose you based on price will leave you for the same reason.
Kmart is standing on that battlefield right now. The retailer is notoriously famous for their cost-cutting strategies. Historically, they invest less in the shopping experience than any of their competitors, and it shows in their stores.
Kmart (and Sears, their parent company) are ranked #7 on 24/7 Wall St’s “Worst Companies To Work For” in 2013 list in part due to their low compensation and miniscule raises.
This cost cutting has resulted in prices that are comparable with Walmart. Yet, in market after market, customers have demonstrated that they’re willing to drive past Kmart to shop at Walmart, even if that decision added as much as 20 miles to their trip!
Kmart has the Merchant Mindset. Walmart doesn’t.
Businesses with passion and heart build relationships with their customers. There are decision-making factors that far exceed price, selection, and location.
A company like Walmart has been masterful at connecting with customers and offering them an intangible benefit they can’t get anywhere else.
Walmart made the customer its boss: this was founder Sam Walton’s personal philosophy and it’s been a fundamental principle guiding the company as it’s grown. Today, Walmart is the world’s leading retailer.
Kmart, on the other hand, isn’t. The brand’s market share has dropped off precipitously, going down faster than a Winnebago over the side of the Grand Canyon.
The Cult Brand Alternative
A pivotal moment happens in the life of a company when its leadership realizes that the Merchant Mindset is no longer serving the best interests of the brand and the long-term value of the business.
It takes courage, vision, and dedication in order to successfully change how your business operates. History has proven that it’s a worthwhile investment.
Cult Brands have mastered the art of building meaningful, long-term relationships with their customers. Cult Brands exist in every industry. The list of Cult Brands includes companies that have absolutely nothing to do with computers or smartphones:
Did you notice: In each of these examples, we explained to you what the Cult Brands do. In every instance, the explanation was very likely totally unnecessary. You don’t need us to tell you what these Cult Brands do. They are generally so well known that both their branding and offerings have become part of our cultural knowledge.
Simply saying these Cult Brand names tends to evoke an understanding of the visuals and values associated with the brand. This is an understanding that transcends all of the barriers humanity uses to categorize itself into groups: socio-economic, cultural, even language.
Cult Brands aren’t born: they’re made. They all started life in relative obscurity. Steve Jobs planted the seed that eventually became Apple by selling computers he hadn’t built yet in order to raise the money to pay for the parts he needed to build the computers.
The first year that Harley-Davidson was in business, they sold three motorcycles.
Ingvar Kamprad, the founder of IKEA, went into business with a handful of matches he’d bought cheaply in Stockholm.
John Deere started with a single steel plow in Illinois.
Lots of companies have humble beginnings, yet few make the journey to greatness.
The Benefits of Being A Cult Brand
Being a Cult Brand gives businesses significant competitive advantages:
Cult Brands are perceived as being the high-value option within their industry; generally, they are the standard that their competitors are judged against.
Cult Brands tend to command premium prices, which has an obvious positive impact on profitability.
Cult Brands attract new customers at a higher rate than their competitors, and they keep those customers for a longer period of time.
Customers tend to do more business, more frequently, with Cult Brands, and they enthusiastically recommend the brand to their family and friends.
Cult Brands are the brands customers buy “automatically”: in many cases, they are not only the default option, they are the only option in the minds of their customers. Cult Brands command such fanatical loyalty that when, for whatever reason, they are not available, a customer might wait rather than switch to another brand.
Cult Brands Have Staying Power
Do you remember Beanie Babies? What about Mortal Kombat or TickleMe Elmo? Do Furbies ring any bells? What about America Online?
There’s a difference between fads and Cult Brands. People often get the two confused, but they’re really two very distinct phenomena.
Fads are short-lived bursts of extreme consumer enthusiasm, generally for a specific product or product line. Fads are typically youth-oriented, appealing mainly to teenagers and young adults. Fads have short lifespans, ranging from a few weeks to a handful of years.
Cult Brands enjoy sustained extreme consumer enthusiasm. This enthusiasm is not tied to a specific product or product line, but instead tends to extend to the entire organization, including their iconography and messaging.
Brand Lovers of Cult Brands can be any age. The appeal of Cult Brands endures. Many Cult Brands have been in existence for more than 40 years.
Cult Brands Are Not Infallible, But They Know How To Recover
We’ve spent a lot of time talking about what Cult Brands are, but it’s very important to understand what Cult Brands are not. Cult Brands are not perfect. To err is human, and business is fundamentally a human enterprise.
Every brand we talk about on this blog, and look to as an example of how to do things right, has also done things wrong—in some cases, really, really wrong.
Harley-Davidson is a great example. If you’re not a biker, you might think that Harley has always been a major player in the heavyweight motorcycle industry, and that they’ve always had the sterling (or perhaps chrome!) reputation that they enjoy today. But nothing could be further from the truth.
The sixties were a tumultuous time for America, and they were a terrible time for Harley-Davidson. There was a veritable flood of Japanese motorcycles entering the marketplace, featuring low prices and superior quality. At the exact same time, Harley motors, as a result of a cost-cutting sourcing decision, were becoming notorious for their poor performance and unreliability.
This was not a sustainable situation. Harley-Davidson was headed for that Great Big Junkyard in the Sky, but luckily for bikers everywhere, the brand had a strong core of Brand Lovers who were willing to step up and try to save the company they loved.
CEO Vaughn Beals, joined by a dozen of his colleagues, went all in to save Harley-Davidson. Their $81.5-million leveraged buyout was a bold move, and a big gamble. Would they be able to make the changes the brand had to make in order to recover the customer enthusiasm that had been lost?
You know the answer to this question. Today, Harley-Davidson is a dominant player in the heavyweight motorcycle industry. They control more than half of the domestic marketplace, and a third of the global. The company’s current valuation is $12.4 billion. Not a bad return on $81.5 million.
The Seven Golden Rules of Cult Brands
How did Harley-Davidson’s leadership team create this turnaround? They followed the Seven Rules of Cult Brands. We’ll be illuminating those Seven Rules in the weeks ahead. So stay tuned.
Many independent retailers worry about big competitors who have significantly larger marketing budgets. Unfortunately, these fears are well-founded. Studies show people purchase a higher percentage of their merchandise from big box retailers. Despite the emergence of these mega businesses, however, many small retailers continue to thrive in this competitive marketplace. The key to survival, we have found, is knowing your best customers better than any other retailer in your market.
As a small store owner, you can concentrate on small details that big box retailers cannot. Superb customer service is the biggest intangible asset for independent retailers. People like to shop where they feel comfortable and where they feel the owner truly cares about their wants and needs. It is the least expensive change to make in order to take on the larger chain stores.
Dave’s Soda & Pet City is an independent pet supply retailer with seven locations. While its not easy to compete with the big boys like Petsmart and Petco, Dave has always found time to show love to his best customers. People value when others share stories with them or listen to their stories; and this is why Dave created his community involvement programs where Dave’s Soda & Pet City joins the local community in activities where stories abound and real relationships are formed.
2) Follow your own unique product and service path
Offer your customers products and services that your competition does not. You’re going to need a strategy to overcome the lower prices and wider selection that large retailers provide. Get creative.
Dave’s Soda & Pet City accomplishes this by partnering up with brands who only sell to independent retailers. This gives the store unique products that his big competitors don’t carry. In addition to this strategy, Dave started his own brand of products that are now available nationally for other independents shops to carry. Combining this innovative retail marketing strategy with a personal touch (Dave has a company of very nice people) creates a strong relationship between his brand and his customers.
3) Train your associates to better serve your customers
Hire employees that you plan on treating fairly and you like working with. If you want your associates to take care of your customers start by taking care of them. Give your team motivation and pay attention to their needs. Help your staff become proficient in their respective departments and make sure they are readily available to meet your customers’ needs. If your employees can provide this, your customers will have an extra incentive to continue doing business with you.
Consumers often make mistakes with their pets and are very upset to learn that they could have harmed their little loved ones. This requires Dave to always hire associates who will be kind to his customers and teach them the right way — to ensure that they will take care of his customer’s beloved pets. When you’re in a business that is emotional as buying goods for your best friend, it’s important to have associates who care deeply for the store and for the customer’s needs.
The Untold Story of David and Goliath
As an aside on the theme of David and Goliath, author Malcolm Gladwell shares his insights into the classic tale of the underdog:
No one wants to own a mediocre brand, but few businesses take the steps necessary to become a dominant brand. Brands that don’t actively work to differentiate are generally defined and controlled by their competitors. In a cluttered marketplace of indistinguishable brands, developing a strong position in the heart of the customer is extremely challenging.
In the world of retail brands, you either grow or die—there’s no in-between. In most cases, the winner of this game for the customer’s heart takes all, leaving the rest of the competition struggling for minor market share.
In order to develop a strong position in the marketplace, brands have to understand three key ingredients for developing a strong retail marketing strategy: relevance, growth potential, and category leadership.
Retail Marketing Strategy #1: Be Relevant To Your Customers
Key Question: How important is your brand’s promise to its customer?
Everything (including your advertising) must create value for your customer. Anything that does not create value weakens your relevance in the customer’s life. When the customer no longer finds value in your promise, the relevance dies and the customer does business with your competitor.
This is what happened to K-Mart as Walmart became more relevant by having what the customer wanted (deep inventory), when the customer wanted it (open 24-hours a day), at the price the customer wanted to pay (low price always, always). Combining these merchant-champion qualities with “real people” advertising of their associates and customers, and the resulting relevance factor was beyond anyone in their category.
Even today it is hard for other retailers to be as relevant in the customer’s life as Walmart is for the general public. This is simple to see when you consider the fact that 35 million people choose to shop at Walmart every day. Many studies showed that customers drove right past K-Mart in order to get to Walmart. The power of a relevant brand!
Retail Marketing Strategy #2: Capitalize on Growth Potential
Key Question: How does your brand help customers grow?
A powerful brand helps its customers achieve growth. As people are always evolving, they tend to favor those who help them along their life’s journey to grow and gain what they want. This is a crucial point: your brand has to give your customers a potential to grow from the interaction with the brand in a personal way. If the individual does not derive any growth from the interaction with the brand, the business enterprise failed at all levels—they didn’t have the foresight to think through the problem all the way to the customer.
It is important to remember that each of your customers is attracted to your brand for their own reason, not yours. Most marketing managers start by looking at their business rather than the customer who is growing from this interaction.
The successful retailer Build-a-Bear is a clear example of how to offer growth potential to each customer. By designing the experience of building a bear as a workshop, each customer is able to create his or her own unique teddy bear, giving it a name, a birth certificate and registering it to the creator’s name. Customers describe the experience as “personally enriching,” as they are allowed to create their new best friend. Build-A-Bear earns twice the national average per square foot of mall retail space. It pays to help your customer grow.
Retail Marketing Strategy #3: Go For Category Leadership
Key Question: How dominant is your brand’s position in its given category?
Southwest Airlines summarizes this idea best when their former leader, Herb Kelleher, said, “I will tell your our strategic plan, its called doing something.” As crazy as this sounds, most companies don’t do anything to establish category leadership.
Most brands, by default, choose the tried-and-true path and take their place in the rankings by simply doing what they have always done. In order to develop brand leadership, you have to own your category. There is no way around it; there can’t be anyone else that serve your specific customers better than you do. Great brands always stand alone.
Leading the pack is not easy, and it’s not for every business. Creating market dominance means constant attention to the customer by taking meaningful action. Great brands are in a constant conversation with their customers, associates, and partners. At each point in the chain they strive to add value and stand apart from their competitors with a strong retail marketing strategy.
Savvy marketers from major retail brands and small business owners alike are in constant need of new ideas and methods for attracting customers and building brand loyalty. There are always better go-to-market strategies available and new practices for improving business metrics.
The Cult Branding Company, a brand loyalty research firm, just unveiled Marketing Courses for executives and entrepreneurs. The Cult Branding Company is the brainchild of BJ Bueno, marketing strategist, brand loyalty expert, and author of “The Power of Cult Branding” (Crown Business) and “Customers First” (McGraw-Hill).
For over a decade, Bueno has been educating the marketing community on innovative methods for generating consumer insights, building brand loyalty, and formulating effective go-to-market strategies. His online Marketing Courses offers top business advice for professional marketers and independent business owners, sharing the knowledge and insights used by leading brands like Apple, Harley-Davidson, IKEA, Southwest Airlines, Zappos.com, and Amazon.com.
“When I saw the information Bueno was offering in his marketing courses, I got a shiver up my back,” explained David Ratner, owner of the retail chain Dave’s Soda and Pet City in Massachusetts. “What if my competitors read this and follow BJ’s advice? I don’t care what size business you run, you could and should follow the guidance of his courses. As I went through the material, I kept thinking of ways to get my customers to tell me how to improve.”
Bueno’s Marketing Courses provide timely professional training to help marketers learn how to attract more profitable customers, differentiate a brand from its competitors, and cultivate legions of loyal customers that love a brand.
“Our firm’s time is invested in serving our larger clients,” Bueno explains, “but we wanted to be able to support other marketers and small business owners in their efforts to grow their businesses. We designed our Marketing Courses specifically for marketers and entrepreneurs looking for new ideas and ways of building brand loyalty.”
Each Marketing Course offered by The Cult Branding Company can be completed within four hours and can be accessed from any computer or tablet.
As a student of sleight-of-hand magic, I value the number 52. Here we bring you 52 types of marketing strategies and tactics you can use to bring new customers to your business and grow your brand.
In order for businesses to win market share and stay relevant they need to consider many types of marketing strategies. Each marketing strategy can communicate to a target market the benefits and features of a product.
Marketing strategies can also communicate an overall value to their customers. In many cases, this is the core of building equity or good will in your target markets. Apple, for example, has invested in creating commercials for television, billboards, and magazines that showcase their products in such a way that their customers feel an affinity towards Apple’s products.
52 Types of Marketing Strategies In Use Today:
Cause Marketing
Finding a causes both your customers and your company cares about can create magic for your business. This requires internal knowledge about what your organisation cares about and who they want to help in the world. A good example of this is Toms Shoes. Instead of doing the traditional “buy one get one free” promotion, Toms built a strong customer following and reputation for giving back by giving away a free pair of shoes to someone in need for every shoe purchase made by their customers.
Close Range Marketing (CRM)
Use Wifi or bluetooth to send promotional messages of their products and services to their customers’ smartphones and tablets at close proximity. Close Range Marketing is also known as Proximity Marketing.
Relationship Marketing
Many companies focus on building relationships with their customers instead of always exclusive trying to sell them something (transactional marketing). Customers who love your brand more will also spend more money with your brand. Many traditional retailers have found this to be true. Walgreens has seen that customers who buy from all of their purchasing channels (store, web, mobile, etc) buy up to six times more than the average customer that only buys in their store.
Transactional Marketing
Driving sales can be challenging, especially for retailers that have to consistently sell products in high volume to consumers. In order to stay with the demands of investors, retailers have to encourage consumers to buy using coupons, discounts, liquidations, and sales events. High volume big-box retailers like Target are constantly running promotional events in order to get interested consumers into their stores.
Scarcity Marketing
In some markets it’s important to control how much product is available at one time. In many cases this is done because of the difficulty of acquiring raw materials or higher quality of the product. A company may choose to make their products accessible to only a few customers. Rolls-Royce’s release of their Chinese edition car called Phantom sold quickly. While the cost of the car was higher than most cars the scarcity drove the desire and the price.
Word of Mouth Marketing
Word-of-mouth Marketing is the passing of information from person to person by oral communication. Customers are very excited to share with the world the brands they love. Many consumers find meaning in sharing stories of their favorite products and services. Word of Mouth is one of the ancient ways people learned about what to purchase. Modern marketers have learned how to create authentic word of mouth for their companies and the products they represent.
Call to Action (CTA) Marketing
CTA Marketing refers to methods of converting web traffic into leads or sales on websites using text, graphics, or other elements of web design. Conversion strategies help improve the percentage of online visitors who become customers or who join the mailing list.
Viral Marketing
Cult Brand marketers are constantly creating new business ideas that keep their products in the heart and minds of the global consumer. Each time a new product is created, customers have to be given a reason to dream about their future purchase. Sometimes marketers of Cult Brands hit on something so great that people can’t help but share with others. Getting your customers talking about your products and services is very important to growing awareness for your business.
Diversity Marketing
Develop a customized marketing plan by analyzing different customer segments based on cultural differences including tastes, expectations, beliefs, world views, and specific needs.
Undercover Marketing
Sometimes not telling everyone everything can become a great source of buzz. Think of a movie trailer that got you very excited to go see the movie. While not showing all the aspects of the movie, the advertiser can create enough intrigue to drive viewers to want to see more.
Mass Marketing
Major corporations need to drive large numbers of purchasing of their products in order to survive and grow. While mass marketing may seem like a shotgun approach to marketing this is far from the truth. Big businesses spend big money in understanding big data–thats a lot of bigs!) This gives them an insight to where to place media for their potential national customers who buy their products and services. Walmart is an example of an effective mass market retailer. As the number one retailer in the world, they are very smart about their mass marketing efforts, often giving their customers a feeling of locality and warmth.
Seasonal Marketing
Seasonal events offers a great way to meet new consumers. Sometimes these events can be actual changes of weather or national holidays. For a retailer like Hallmark, Valentine’s Day represents a large portion of their business. By tuning into the various seasons that are important to your customers you can become more relevant in their lives.
PR Marketing
One of the most important marketing strategies is public relations. Many effective marketers work with the media to bring awareness to their products and the benefits their products offer. Also, in many cases where things go wrong, a good PR marketing strategy is vital. When Apple’s founder Steve Jobs was alive, Apple held a major press conference to announce every new product. This tradition is now continued by their new Apple CEO and CMO.
Online Marketing
As commerce has propagated to the Internet, a new form of marketing has emerged. From online banners to those annoying pop ups, online marketers have attempted to get their customers attention any way they can. Most online strategic marketing efforts today are a mix of growth hacking strategies ( A/B testing taken to the max) and a variety of awareness tactics that drive attention. A very effective online marketer is the insurance company Geico who simply asks their users to enter their zip code for an instant quote on a better savings.
Email Marketing
As soon as customers migrated into the online world, Internet marketers have attempted to collect and organize emails for potential prospects. Many business-to-business marketers depend on email marketing as a primary way to connect with customers. At industry tradeshows, IBM consultants can often be seen exchanging email information with their prospects.
Evangelism Marketing
Develop raving fan customers (what we call Brand Lovers) who become advocates of your brand or product, and who represent the brand as if it was part of their own identity.
Event Marketing
Creating events is a great way to drive sales. Customers often need a reason to shop and events can often offer the perfect reason. Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade has become part of American culture by connecting two events together that consumers love: Thanksgiving and shopping.
Offline Marketing
With mass adoption of the Internet, many companies are finding new ways of integrating offline marketing with new technologies to create more engaging customer experiences. The Coca-Cola company has create vending machines that invite customers to hug them. This continues to tie the Coca-Cola brand to the core emotion of happiness, but also invite customers to experience the real product offline.
Outbound Marketing
Sometimes it’s important for companies to let their potential customers know they exist. By developing a list of prospects a company can begin to reach out to their individual target groups in order to find new customers. When Microsoft was selling their accounting software they often used outbound marketing to identify potential targets before trying to call the companies for an in-person meeting.
Direct Marketing
Communicate directly with customers and prospects through mail, email, texts, fliers and other promotional material.
Inbound Marketing
Companies often have customers calling them for various reasons. This can present a great opportunity to sell customers additional products and services they currently don’t have. When business customers call to check their balances, the business bank Chase often takes the opportunity to ask if they are interest in a credit line, a 401 k plan, or a variety of other services the bank offers.
Freebie Marketing
Promote free give aways or sell your products and services sold at low rates to boost the sales of other related products or services.
Newsletter Marketing
A fun way to promote a business is to write a newsletter that highlights some of the newsworthy things that have happened for the organization. The Motley Fool have been sharing their investment insights with their community for many years. These newsletters create a sense of inclusion and participation with their members and has provided a key driver for their incredible growth.
Article Marketing
In industries where expertise is highly valued, articles can offer a powerful tool to showcase your knowledge and expertise. Some innovations are shared in the form of articles or white papers where technical information needs to be convey to specialized buyers. Amazon.com has dedicated part of their site for white papers on technical know-how on cloud computing. This is a very sophisticated form of marketing for specialized buyers.
Content Marketing
Write and publish content to educate potential customers about your products and services. For the appropriate businesses, this can be an effective means of influencing them without using direct selling methods.
Tradeshow Marketing
Many products have to be experienced to be bought. There are very few customers that will buy a new automobile without doing a great deal of research and test-driving the car first. Tradeshows are industry gatherings where customers are invited to come sample all that the industry has to offer. To introduce their new lines of products, Ford Motor Company spends a great deal of time setting up and operating their booth at the international consumer auto shows each year. These auto trade shows give reporters and consumers a chance to experience cars first hand.
Search Marketing
These days, when consumers have questions they often don’t ask their friends; they go straight for Google. In fact, Google is so good at answering our questions that millions of people daily search for their answers on this leading Internet search site. One does not have to look far to see the power of search marketing. Google has shaped the industry for many years now and has helped hundred of retailers grow their businesses. While many businesses used to advertise in their local yellow pages, as less and less consumer consult their local physical directory, this channel becomes increasingly less effective each year.
Digital Marketing
Advertise and promote your products and services to customers using a range of digital devices including computers, smartphones, and tablets. Internet Marketing is an essential practice in Digital Marketing. Once a target market has been clearly identified, it is possible to work in conjunction with the USPS or a professional mail carrier that knows where your customers live. Direct marketing can be an effective way to reach consumers right where they live at home. While there is often a negative side to this approach (consumers don’t want to be bothered with a flurry of mail), many smart companies execute direct marketing well. Catalog retailer L.L. Bean, for example, created direct marketing programs that their customers looks forward to receiving.
Niche Marketing
Finding a niche and filling it could be described as the secret recipe for growth in over-crowded marketplaces. Take the shoe business, for example. There is a great demand for shoes in the world and so many top companies have evolved to satisfy most of the immediate shoe needs in the marketplace. The shoe space might seem crowded, but shoe manufacturing company Vans noticed an underserved customer: the skater. By focusing on this niche market Vans has developed a thriving business.
Drip Marketing
Drip marketing is a communication strategy that sends, or “drips,” a pre-written set of messages to customers or prospects over time. These messages often take the form of email marketing, although other media outlets can also be used as well.
Community Marketing
Engage an audience of existing customers in an active dialogue, speaking to the needs and wants of this particular customer group. Instead of focusing on generating the next transaction, community marketing promotes greater loyalty and higher levels of engagement within an existing brand community. Learn how to build brand communities here. Community marketing can also lead to word of mouth marketing.
Social Media Marketing
Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter offer a unique opportunity for savvy businesses willing to invest in customer engagement. Social media marketing is still in its infancy but is growing up rather quickly. Companies like Southwest Airlines have departments of over 30 people whose primary responsibility is to actively engage with customers on social media.
Cross-Media Marketing
Provide customers information through multiple channels like email, physical mail, websites, and print and online advertisements to cross promote your products and services.
B2B Marketing
Business-to-business marketing is a marketing practice of individuals or organizations (including commercial businesses, governments, and other institutions). It allows businesses to sell products or services to other companies or organizations that in turn resell the same products or services, use them to augment their own products or services, or use them to support their internal operations. International Business Machines is a well known B2B marketer. IBM’s business has grown because taking a very intelligent approach at marketing their products to other business and governments around the world.
Promotional Marketing
Promotional marketing is a business marketing strategy designed to stimulate a customer to take action towards a buying decision. Promotional marketing is a technique that includes various incentives to buy, such as:
Contests: We all enjoy winning something for free. Contests offer an attractive marketing vehicle for small business to acquire new clients and create awareness.
Coupons: According to CMS, a leading coupon processing agent, marketers issued 302 billion coupons in 2007, a 6% increase over the previous year. Over 76% of the population use coupons, according to the Promotion Marketing Association (PMA) Coupon Council. Coupons still work and provide an affordable marketing strategy for small business.
Sampling: Try before you buy. Giving away product might appear profit-limiting, but consider how giving your customers a small taste can lead to a big purchase. Retail genius Publix supermarkets share samples of their award-winning key lime pie not because people question the goodness of the pie but to get their customers to buy more.
Ambush Marketing
Advertiser use this marketing strategy to associate with specific events and brands without paying sponsorship fees. This allows the business to capitalize on these events or leverage the brand equity of the other business, which has the potential effect of loweringthe value of the original event.
B2C Marketing
The ultimate goal of B2C marketing (business-to-consumer marketing) is to convert shoppers into buyers as aggressively and consistently as possible. B2C marketers employ merchandising activities like coupons, displays, store fronts (both real and online) and special offers to entice the target market to buy. B2C marketing campaigns are focused on a transaction, are shorter in duration, and need to capture the customer’s interest immediately. These campaigns often offer special deals, discounts, or vouchers that can be used both online and in the store.
Cloud Marketing
In this new form of marketing, all marketing resources and assets are brought online so customers (or affiliates) can develop, modify, use, and share them. Consider how Amazon.com gets customers to buy digital books, movies, and televisions shows in a digital library that is accessible in the customer’s online account or on their digital device like their Kindle Fire.
Mobile Marketing
Marketing on or with a mobile device, such as a smart phone. Mobile marketing can provide customers with time and location sensitive, personalized information that promotes goods, services, and ideas. Here is a recent example of mobile marketing in action.
Alliance Marketing
A joint venture is formed between two or more businesses to pool resources in an effort to promote and sell products and services.
Reverse Marketing
In reverse marketing, the idea is to get the customer to seek out the business rather than marketers seeking the customer. Usually, this is done through traditional means of advertising, such as television advertisements, print magazine advertisements, and online media. While traditional marketing mainly deals with the seller finding the right set of customers and targeting them, reverse marketing focuses on the customer approaching potential sellers who may be able to offer the desired product.
In 2004, Dove launched the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty focusing on the natural beauty of women rather than advertising their product. This campaign caused their sales to soar above $1 Billion and caused Dove to re-create their brand around this strategy. Although successful, this campaign caused a lot of controversy and discussion due to what people saw as an advertisement with a contradictory message.
Telemarketing
I know what you are thinking, you hate telemarketers. You are not alone in your feelings. However, telemarketing can play an important part of selling your products to consumers and it must not be overlooked as many companies rely on it to connect with customers. Telemarketing (sometimes known as inside sales, or telesales in the UK and Ireland) is a method of direct marketing in which a salesperson solicits prospective customers to buy products or services, either over the phone or through a subsequent face to face or Web conferencing appointment scheduled during the call. Telemarketing can also include recorded sales pitches programmed to be played over the phone via automatic dialing. Telemarketing has come under fire in recent years, being viewed as an annoyance by many.
Free Sample Marketing
Unlike Freebie Marketing, this is not dependent on complementary marketing, but rather consists of giving away a free sample of the product to influence the consumer to make the purchase.
Direct Mail Marketing
A channel-agnostic form of advertising that allows businesses and nonprofits organizations to communicate directly with the customer, with advertising techniques that can include text messaging, email, interactive consumer websites, online display ads, fliers, catalog distribution, promotional letters, and outdoor advertising. Direct marketing messages emphasize a focus on the customer, data, and accountability. Characteristics that distinguish direct marketing are:
Marketing messages are addressed directly to the customer(s). Direct marketing relies on being able to address the members of a target market. Addressability comes in a variety of forms including email addresses, mobile phone numbers, Web browser cookies, fax numbers, and postal addresses.
Direct marketing seeks to drive a specific “call to action.” For example, an advertisement may ask the prospect to call a free phone number or click on a link to a website.
Direct marketing emphasizes trackable, measurable responses from customers regardless of medium.
Direct marketing is practiced by businesses of all sizes—from the smallest start-up to the leaders in the Fortune 500. A well-executed direct advertising campaign can prove a positive return on investment by showing how many potential customers responded to a clear call-to-action. General advertising eschews calls-for-action in favor of messages that try to build prospects’ emotional awareness or engagement with a brand. Even well-designed general advertisements rarely can prove their impact on the organization’s bottom line.
Database Marketing
Database Marketing is a form of direct marketing using databases of customers or potential customers to generate personalized messages in order to promote a product or service for marketing purposes. The method of communication can be any addressable medium, as in direct marketing.The distinction between direct marketing and database marketing stems primarily from the attention paid to the analysis of data. Database marketing emphasizes the use of statistical techniques to develop models of customer behavior, which are then used to select customers for communications. As a consequence, database marketers also tend to be heavy users of data warehouses, because having a greater amount of data about customers increase the likelihood that a more accurate model can be built.
There are two main types of marketing databases: (1) consumer databases and (2) business databases. Consumer databases are primarily geared towards companies that sell to consumers, often abbreviated as [business-to-consumer] (B2C) or BtoC. Business marketing databases are often much more advanced in the information that they can provide. This is mainly because business databases aren’t restricted by the same privacy laws as consumer databases.
Personalized Marketing
Personalized marketing (also called personalization, and sometimes called one-to-one marketing) is an extreme form of product differentiation. Whereas product differentiation tries to differentiate a product from competing ones, personalization tries to make a unique product offering for each customer. Nike ID is a popular brand that has developed a strong business around this personalization marketing concept.
Affinity Marketing
Create strategic partnerships that are mutually beneficial by forming alliances with complementary brands. Also known as partnership marketing, with this strategy, one brands generates sales while the other creates new customers and builds brand awareness.
Cult-tural Marketing
The proposition of cult marketing holds reign upon the notion that a way to convert—ahem, excite … OK, convert—consumers is by using timeless human behavioral drives found in religious cults. Heck, fellow acolytes, nothing is more permission-, buzz- and one-to-one-based than “a central ideology with a parallel social universe rich with customs.” Cult marketing is a bright spot in the list of newfangled marketing templates, one that applies timeless social-science principles in a powerful way. To the list of newfangled marketing buzzwords, let’s add the term cult.
Humanistic Marketing
Human needs are “a state of felt deprivation.” They distinguish between physical needs (food, shelter, safety, clothing), social needs (belonging and affection), and individual needs (knowledge, self-expression). Needs are a relatively narrow set of non-cultural states of felt deprivation.
Guerrilla Marketing
Grass root, untraditional, and low-budget methods that found involve creativity, big crowds of people, and the element of surprise to market or promote a product, service, brand, event, or new launch.
Brand Lover Marketing
Brand Lover Marketing is a marketing concept that is intended to replace the idea of traditional brand marketing. Brands are running out of juice and Brand Lovers are what is needed to rescue brands. But what builds loyalty that goes beyond reason? What makes a truly great brand stand out? Brand Lovers bring brands to life. For a brand to elevate itself into the “Cult Brand” category, it has to give customers a feeling of belonging while generating strong feelings of love for its customers. Creating loyalty beyond reason requires emotional connections that generate the highest levels of love and a sense of belonging for your brand.
Contact us to discuss how you can better prepare for what’s ahead. We can help you identify ways for your organization to tap into the power of cult branding, create value, and ultimately thrust your performance.
