Brand association is also achievable with packaging design.  The square foil wrappers of Durex condoms for example make you associate the packaging with sex.

When the retail shelf is full of similar products, packaging can connect to other strong drivers for the purchasing decision achieving more by association than an above the line advertising campaign alone.

Good packaging can create competitive advantage by emphasising the brand, the brand’s USP’s, or increasing the life of the product.

In terms of advertising reach, the packaging of a brand will penetrate into the consumer’s home and remain in the consciousness for however long until it’s consumed or completes its lifecycle.

Packaging must actually cover several areas of the advertising communication function.  It has to focus heavily on A.I.D.A. by gaining the attention of the consumer in an often crowded environment with other similar products vying to be seen and bought.

Packaging must also then persuade the consumer that it’s advertising will match the contents (effectively explaining why it should be picked up and purchased).

Some brands struggle with this concept and opt for a nice easy transparent window where the consumer can see the contents.

Of course brands can also find that difficult which is why when you think about it, the stickers on the transparent packet of meat in the supermarket (sirloin steaks for example) is always covering the less attractive area of the meat (a strip of fat or gristle for example).

Packaging can connect other benefits to the brand product such as recipes for its use.  They form a reason to buy that product over similar.

Another aspect to incorporate (just when brands thought it was challenging enough to communicate their messaging on such a tiny space), is the ever-increasing demand for information from the modern consumer linked as it is with regulations from government (nutritional information, health warnings, source of origin, full ingredients etc).

Packaging must also say whether it is recyclable and how.  Packaging design can create the USP necessary to gain mass awareness similar to advertising, by improving functionality.

For example don’t packets of tea still contain tea dust..?  Packs of sugar still leak, well, sugar..?

Think of that bottle of olive oil that drips down the side of the bottle after pouring..?  Imagine how many units that first manufacturer sold who created the packaging of a second lip inside the bottle which eradicates drips?

Coca-Cola designed their glass bottle in such a way that it is instantly recognisable, even in the dark.  With the sense of touch alone, we can distinguish a bottle of coke.

Some of their adverts don’t even say anything, they just show a bottle.  The advertising is just showing you what the packaging looks like (quite amusing).  Certainly on the shelf then that image is easily seen.

Packaging has to keep its contents safe.  Consumers don’t want to get home with chocolates for a loved one that are all jumbled up or melted.

So, you need a careful box with hollows for each chocolate’s shape.  The Happy Egg company has to keep the eggs from being broken long before they can advertise why their eggs are happy and the competitors aren’t.

Once that is mastered, packaging can get down to the job of communicating brand messaging.  While packaging often has no home in the media budget, if you don’t ask your agency to produce effective packaging communications, you will waste millions of budget on above-the-line advertising just to get the same level of sales.

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Glossary:

USP – Unique Selling Point

Required reference:

YouCom Media News, Nov 2018, London, ‘Packaging Sex.’

The post Packaging Sex appeared first on YouCom.

Brands often turn to agencies for user experience testing, finding that something as simple as where a ‘buy’ button or ‘next’ button is positioned, can make all the difference between a 12 percent click-through rate and a 90 percent click-through rate.

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) covering the psychological aspects of human-computer interaction, state in their standard ISO 9241 that “user experience includes all the users’ emotions, beliefs, preferences, perceptions, physical and psychological responses, behaviours and accomplishments that occur before, during and after use.”

This demonstrates a point that many factors can influence your customer’s user experience. These factors can broadly be placed into three categories; a user’s state and previous experience; the properties of whatever system they’re engaged with (Website etc), and the usage context (the situation in how they are engaging).

When User Experience testing analyses representative users and reveals their working environments, their interactions and emotional reactions, the brand has a better chance of creating the perfect system environment for achieving more sales/engagement with their customers.

The perception of the customer experience with your brand (offline as well as online), will affect your brand image.

That user experience can be broadcast off your radar creating a negative spiral of a decreasing customer base.

User experience can also change over time, new factors can appear which mean a certain function of your website or store no longer connects with customers and breaks the careful steps of the customer journey creating a disconnect.

Often where that ‘break’ is can be very difficult to identify.  All senior management know is sales are down and a clear reason why isn’t forthcoming.  This is where some form of user experience testing is required on a periodic basis.

Website can fail with broken links, confusing phrases, poorly positioned ‘next’ buttons, long registration forms, phrases in headings, headlines and tags which don’t give immediate understanding to value and journey.

User Experience testing will discover which content is better suited to which customer segment you wish to target.

User Experience analysis will determine how to make content easy to find (good internal links from landing pages), which design layout generates greater click-through percentages and what leads to a faster page load (even what is the minimum page load time required for customers).

YouCom Media UX has found the following factors ensure continued customer website interaction;

• The Content Factor: the right, good quality content will generate AIDA
• The Navigation Factor: Careful positioning of buttons, next step commands, scroll bars, clearly identified journey paths to shorten the customer journey
• The Speed Factor: Fast downloading, fast page loading, choosing the right content that achieves that goal
• The Daisy Factor: A Daisy will only last a day or two without new water or sunshine. Google’s search spiders and customers will begin to find your website user experience less relevant to results the longer there is no new content or updated information

User Experience testing is affordable and vital.  It can be all-encompassing or target specific areas which you feel are creating a problem.  Contact Kelly in Account Services to learn more.

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Glossary:

AIDA – Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action

UX – User Experience

Required reference:

YouCom Media News, July 2018, London, ‘User Experience.’

The post User Experience appeared first on YouCom.

The decision-making process is complex and led to a whole large module of marketing under the heading buyer behaviour.  Many buying decisions are made when the customers don’t know the real reason for their purchase.

Many decisions are made unconsciously or emotively. Some reasons for buyer behaviour are logical and reasoned. Others are emotional decisions.

Brands over time learn the ‘best’ way to sell their products or service but only the best brands likely to remain the longest as market leaders, understand that this way fluctuates over time.

For example, Pepsi sell their product as a brand image representing a lifestyle of young, hip, trendy, cool, fresh, different. They appeal to the emotional decision of buyer behaviour. They do not sell their product as ‘logical’ or as a performance product.

A good advertising agency will research the client and understand this, as well as identifying when that brand may need to change their understanding of the key market buyer behaviour.

Pepsi has learnt that their key customer is influenced by the emotional decision for though they may say they buy “because it tastes better than Coca-Cola”, that may not be true (logical) and instead they are buying “because it’s Pepsi”.

Consumers attach their own personal value to a brand. The Pedowitz group state that personal value has two times as much impact on buyer behaviour as business value does.

They also agree that as much as 68 percent of consumers for your product who identify a personal value with your brand will pay a higher price for it. It is therefore a good investment to build the personal value via a good advertising campaign as you are able to increase the GM to recover it.

When brands advertising campaigns fail to attach the personal value to their brand product, the Pedowitz group show only 8.5 percent of buyers would pay the higher price. Most would simply choose the competitor product.

Emotion, created by the personal value attributed to a brand product, precedes the customer’s conscious decision and materialises in conjunction with the rational decision-making thought process.

Therefore, the highest value of ROI for an advertising campaign lies in how much personal value (and emotion) a brand can attach to consumer buyer behaviour. Probably one reason why there are so much cat videos online…

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Glossary:

GM – Gross Margin

ROI – Return on Investment

Required reference:

YouCom Media News, Jun 2018, London, ‘Buyer Behaviour 2.’

The post Buyer Behaviour 2 appeared first on YouCom.

ROI is an analysis of what is invested, how it is invested and what you gain from that investment. Marketing managers and brands who run marketing plans without full ROI analysis risk diminished or negative ROI as a result of lack of change.

Many big-name brands are guilty of falling into complacency.  Proctor & Gamble on the other hand challenges its marketing executives to ‘build on their learnings’.  They are asked to show what they have learnt from the marketplace.  They then build those learnings into the next marketing plan and ROI inevitably goes up.

ROI analyses the profit generated from an integrated marketing communications plan as a percentage of the budget taken to produce it.

That profit can be in the form of extra sales generated from the marketing activity or may be something less tangible (but still measurable) such as brand awareness.

If increasing awareness is the advertisers goal (brand marketing) then the agency will calculate the correlation between brand awareness and market share.

If market research shows the brand’s awareness has increased, market share can be said to follow.

Each of these marketing tools within the communication mix will have specific ROI analysis methods;

Advertising    

Includes ATL channels such as Television; Radio; Print and BTL channels such as OOH advertising.  This also includes online such as PPC marketing; display advertising, remarketing and retargeting.

Personal Selling   

Sales force; Tele-marketing staff; affiliate marketing

Public relations   

Editorials; Advertorials; Newsletters; Viral Marketing; Press Releases

Sponsorship   

Advertising via celebrities; TV shows; products; services; events

Event Marketing

Exhibitions; virtual exhibitions; webinars; conferences; roadshows

Direct Mail   

post DM; email DM; Circulars; Leaflets; Inserts

Directories   

print directories; online directories; link-building; review marketing

Retail  

In-Store POS; Website (SEO)

Promotions  

Incentives; Rewards; Data-marketing loyalty cards; Content marketing

Merchandising   

QR Codes; Augmented reality apps; Virtual Tours; Package advertising

Each communication channel has the ability to measure the ROI from the activity.  Some channels such as business directories are now highly ROI focused and therefore becoming a performance marketing channel rather than a brand marketing one.

In 2013, YouCom Media created a specialist business directory advertising team to bring our Japanese ROI focus to the channel.  This Direct Response team were the first business directory specialist agency staff in Europe to deliver pay-per-call advertising for Yell.com at a time when all advertisers had to pay for 12-month advance tenancy advertising.

ROI was measured by every call and click resulting from the advertising.

The lifetime value of a customer acquisition can be difficult to calculate.  But the short-term ROI isn’t.  Event marketing for example divides the profit from sales orders by the total cost of the exhibition.  Sometimes definitive sales orders aren’t known, or aren’t enough to produce positive ROI, but then it is possible to identify potential sales orders using a conversion rate for the sales enquires gained at the exhibition.

This is one way we produce pay-per-lead advertising campaigns at YouCom Media.

Some marketing managers (and some agencies) claim that certain channels cannot be measured for ROI.  Social media is often seen as just such a channel.

But all channels can be measured if the marketing staff are inventive enough.

Social media has a wealth of data, follower numbers and frequency / recency studies can be made, propensity modelling applied, social sentiment correlated to sales etc.

Marketing managers must always remember that any activity made by a business has to show tangible added value to the bottom line.

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Glossary:

ATL- Above the line

BTL – Below the line

DM – Direct Mail

OOH – Out of home

POS – Point of Sale

PPC – Pay per click

ROI – Return on Investment

SEO – Search Engine Optimisation

Required reference:

YouCom Media News, April 2018, London, ‘Media ROI.’

The post Media ROI appeared first on YouCom.

So, a product with a larger market share will deliver better ROI than a product with a smaller market share.

There are exceptions when a small brand can generate higher ROI than those with greater brand presence, but it is not the average.  The stronger the brand, the better it performs.

This of course means brands who have reached the top and are the market leader, will need to become very aggressive, very quickly if they see a competitor eroding that market share.

One strategy to eliminate the competition is loss-leading.  A large brand will have several key product brands underneath it and the deep pockets that higher advertising ROI brings.

This allows the brand to run one of its lines as a loss leader, under-cutting the new competitor to price it out of the market.  Once the competition has been eliminated, it can then raise its price again to a profitable level.

Brand Marketing managers need to give thought to ‘analysis of competitor response’.  A good example is the brand Filofax.  It dominated the market for years and the short-term retaliatory plans it probably once had, became forgotten.  Consequently, when other products suddenly appeared, they lost rapid share.

Brand marketing needs to communicate a brand’s core values.  BMW drivers aren’t buying a car, they are buying ‘the ultimate driving machine’.

Mars eaters are not buying a confectionary snack, they are buying something to energise for work. Rest and play’.

The IT manager buying an IBM data system is not buying a tool to store the company’s servers, he is buying the added-values of size, reputation, recognition, awareness, reliability and support.

Many companies offer cut-price unknown equivalents.  Supermarkets now offer their ‘basics’ range of similar products at lower prices.  Yet consumers still go for the brands.

That is the result of the brand marketing manager’s strategy and long-term vision.

Consumers also recognise something they need from the company’s brand marketing.  A man does not buy a box of unbranded basics chocolate for a woman to satisfy her hunger.  He buys a brand that communicates something about him to her.

Often, he hopes she will remember something about the advertising of the brand and associate it with him (one reason why a woman will receive a box of Milk Tray on a first date than a pack of Kinder).

Perhaps there is also the brand perception of value leading to her playfully telling him off for spending too much on it.

Or perhaps it’s known to be sold in only a few retailers meaning praise is given for making such an effort towards their relationship.

There are many brands which have failed to make a profit or win shelf space.  These are a result of the brand marketing manager failing to integrate all elements of the marketing mix.

“The brand marketing manager needs to use multi-channel marketing strategy to ensure the target audience receives the message that communicates the added-values unique to that product.”

But the purpose of brand marketing is to gain and maintain a loyal customer base in the most cost-effective way that delivers the highest ROI.  That will lead to longevity and longevity leads to power.

Power of course is not just the preserve of consumer products and therefore neither is brand marketing.  People can be marketed and develop a brand.  Celebrities or politicians, business leaders or athletes, they all can become their own brand.

Rap artist Jay-Z famously said he is not a businessman, he is a business, man.  When a person develops their own brand to such an extent that they are representing known attributes just by their appearance or name, they become a business in themselves, just like the consumer brand that becomes a market leader.

Successful brand marketing communicates to satisfy the consumers emotional and rational needs.  A consumer may evaluate several brands of whisky in a supermarket on a rational basis looking at pricing, whether it’s a blend or a malt, the age of the whisky etc.

But they will also be measuring emotional needs such as social acceptance, the prestige of the brand, the opinions of friends towards a brand, how the advertising made them feel when they saw a brand in a media channel, etc.

The successful brand marketing manager will research and understand the extent their brand satisfies those two needs and develop a marketing approach around them.

The right agency then amplifies that approach.

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Glossary:

ROI – Return on Investment

Required reference:

YouCom Media News, Mar 2018, London, ‘Brand Marketing.’

The post Brand Marketing appeared first on YouCom.

Buyer behaviour is not as simple as you might think.  Brands cannot simply choose an audience and think they know how to communicate with them.  Buyers respond in different ways to the continual and relentless marketing communications aimed at them.

There will be general buyer behaviour practices but also variables such as motivation, perception, adaptability, memory, attitude, personality, pre-disposition and group behaviour (the collective).

Understanding buyer behaviour can be gained from asking five questions;

• Who is the buyer? (target market or decision-making body)
• Why do they buy? (or why they don’t buy your product or your competitors)
• How do they buy? (behavioural patterns)
• When do they buy? (when can determine where)
• Where do they buy? (a fragmented market place leads to accessibility)

Of these questions, marketing managers really need to know ‘why’ the audience buys.  The answers won’t be constant, the buying behaviour of a target market is constantly changing.

Their reasons change, the market changes, the products change, competition changes and of course technology changes.  A brand sending out their communications in adverts to their target audience may do well one year and have a disaster the next.

A brand may use an agency to develop their communications strategy and then go it alone thereafter only to find it stops working because a new app has been launched which changes their target audience’s buying behaviour.

The amount of effort a consumer is prepared to put into any purchase depends on the amount of money spent, how often they will need to buy and the perception of risk.

If it is a new car, the risk is high, the expense is high, buyer behaviour changes and the message of the advertising needs to change.

If it is a tin of baked beans, it is a routine purchase, risk is low, frequency high, expense low etc.  The buyer behaviour in that example will be fast decision making and low involvement with the product.

The marketing manager must understand the buyer behaviour of their target market, before, during and after purchase.

Good qualitative research will reveal insights into that behaviour and so too will the latest PEST research.

Buying models like A.I.D.A will help understand the stages through which the buyer passes offering a checklist for which to compare marketing strategies.

With better understanding of the buyer behaviour, brands can gain greater ROI from their marketing communications.

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Glossary:

PEST – Political, Economic, Social, Technological

AIDA – Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action

Required reference:

YouCom Media News, Nov 2017, London, ‘Buyer Behaviour.’

The post Buyer Behaviour appeared first on YouCom.

Hospitality marketing ensures employees treat customers as guests, greeting them with pleasure when meeting them for the first time and when old customers return.  This creates brand loyalty in a fractious marketplace.  Pret do this very well.

A survey of 4,500 consumers by Market Force, asked consumers to rate their satisfaction with their last experience at a coffee shop and how likely they would be to recommend it to friends. The data was averaged to rate each company brand on a Composite Loyalty Index.

Pret also rated the highest on seven of the eight critical drivers of satisfaction, primarily driven by ‘friendliness of staff’.  Courtesy for customer’s needs extends to all forms of marketing communication.  Face-to-face like in Pret, but also telephone and online interaction.

Title-nine sports are a California based sports company who greet customers put on hold with the marketing message “Hey wait! Don’t hang up! Our goal is to get you through to a real live person in 20 seconds!” If 20 seconds pass and the customer is still on hold, a new automated message plays “Oh brother, we didn’t make our goal, if you’d like to be credited for the time you waited, just tell our customer service agent and they’ll take care of it”.  The credit is typically applied only if requested (where the number is surprisingly low) and given in company tokens (gift card) to be used for yet more purchases.

Brands realise that the customer lifecycle is more important than short-term sales and seek to build customer loyalty to gain repeat business and upsell opportunities.

In the USA, hospitals make a lot of money from people as they don’t have a national health service free at point of use like in the UK.  They know the reason most families start using a hospital is to give birth and with so many birthing centres and hospital, they face stiff competition.  Stiff competition and a service/product that opens the door to further ‘sales’ opportunities requires hospitality marketing.

Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston, USA, offers new mothers afternoon tea and cakes.  In Cleveland Clinic, each room has a Jacuzzi, mothers can eat and have fresh juice at a ‘nourishment bar’ or dessert tray.  During the final night of their stay, new parents dine in their hospital room on filet mignon or seafood provided by the Hospital’s ‘Stork Club’.

Marketing studies show women make 75 percent of health-care decisions for their families and make medical decisions for elderly parents.  So attracting mothers with hospitality makes commercial sense.

The search for competitive advantage in mature industries will come down to not where you advertise but what you advertise.  The creation of value-added services and supplementary services to make your product/service/brand stand out from the competition.

Managers must be aware of selecting the right mix of supplementary services (no more but also no less, than what is needed) and the right agency will help you to do that.

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Data source:

Survey by Market Force, a leading global customer intelligence solutions company.

Required reference:

YouCom Media News, Aug 2017, London, ‘Hospitality Marketing.’

The post Hospitality Marketing appeared first on YouCom.

Despite all the media coverage about how consumers like instant news wherever they are, computers still count for 66 percent of the time spent by people reading online news whereas mobiles count for less than 20 percent.

In addition, marketing staff need to analyse what stage of the buying cycle to target which message.  Consumers spend the greater amount of time researching a new purchase on their mobiles, but the majority still make the final purchase on their computer or tablet.  It seems we need the bigger screen when making a commitment to buy.

Consumers generally prefer bigger screens for video, computers for the purchasing stage, mobiles for location-based services and research, with wearable media for sports.  But brands shouldn’t think they must employ a cross-device advertising approach, it may be that just mobiles or just tablets are enough depending on the product and the intended outcome for the consumer.

Consumers accessing health related services and products (think visits to the NHS website) do so using their mobile with a concrete 82 percent choosing that device.  67 percent use their tablet to look at properties.

Government websites are visited by computer users commanding 83 percent of activity from that device type.  Only 22 percent of consumers use their tablet for shopping, versus those using their mobile or laptop.

But for entertainment including YouTube, Netflix and Spotify or shopping and books, the type of device is evenly matched.  Therefore, brands targeting these industries have the choice of a more device neutral approach.

At YouCom Media we will plan your campaign with you, adjusting messaging to the devices most likely favoured by your target audience at the stages of the customer lifecycle necessary to achieve success.

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Required reference:

YouCom Media News, Jul 2017, London, ‘Digital Behaviour.’

The post Digital Behaviour appeared first on YouCom.

The organisers of Summerland hope to create a holiday getaway in the capital equipped with a jungle, waterfalls, hot tubs and live DJs.  Each day Summerland will have four hour tickets available for the Winter-weary to come and experience summer by a tropical waterfall surrounded by the beach.  Sand between your toes, entrants will sit underneath an artificial sky that goes from dawn to dusk, and on through the night (think of the film The Truman Show).  After all, who wants to experience summer under a grey English sky?  That would be as foolish an idea as Disneyland in Paris.

Any event that attracts large numbers will attract advertisers.  YouCom Media offer event marketing services and see that Summerland has already attracted attention from leading brands such as Rubik’s Cube and Coca-Cola.

The event organisers show further project management excellence by dividing the shows so that the daytime tickets focus on families for little Johnny and Isabelle to build sand castles and eat ice-cream while mummy and daddy enjoy alternating turns with yoga, massage and wellbeing.

Then there are the night time show tickets.  These are more ‘Bahamas pool-party’.  UK visitors will see a stage created within the rocks next to the main waterfall on top of which a DJ will be mixing the decks at.  Hot tubs will be positioned by the stage.

There will be characters wandering the arena copying the Disneyland experience.  However just like a festival or a holiday resort, you can walk around where you please.  You can bet there will be Tropical huts covered in palm leaves selling Caribbean food and cold lager n’ lime.

By using the event marketing equity crowdfunding model, it means that the people who love the idea actually get to own part of it.

Summerland will be the first festival that is equity crowdfunded.  Seedrs have now created an investors forum and YouCom Media has the link for you to be in with a chance to get involved as a shareholder for only £10.

[https://www.seedrs.com/summerland]

 NB. All of our main images are available without any text on our Pinterest site.

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Required reference:

YouCom Media News, Feb 2016, London, ‘Summerland. A Winter Paradise.’

The post Summerland. appeared first on YouCom.