by admin | Jan 8, 2011 | Blog, Strategy
An effective brand is the key to finding, attracting and retaining customers and earning profits! Yet most small business owners just don’t know where to start and are doing themselves and their customers a terrible disservice.
Much more has been written about “what is a brand” in the last 20 years then about “how to create it”, especially when it comes to small and medium enterprise.
qubePartners aims to address this need and provide easy to understand and simple to implement guidelines for SME business owners to either ‘do it themselves’ or being well prepared to work together with marketing professionals to achieve the desired business objectives in the shortest possible timeframe with the least amount of investment and personal stress.
Most importantly our aim is to make branding a fun experience! And experience one can learn from easily and provide the ability to apply this to their own circumstances. For example “Branding for Dummies” is a great book but it is over 300 pages long and not the 300 type of pages you can flick through. This blog is designed as a pleasurable read, a coffee table guide if you will, that can be read and absorbed and then referred to when and if required.
Simplicity is hard. It has taken me over 15 years to “simplify” my knowledge gained working on both the client and agency side of the marketing fence into this blog and the templates I will be including in it. You will benefit not only from my personal experience and knowledge gained by working with Australia’s biggest brands as well as over 100 SMEs in the last 5 years, but constant professional development, following the latest findings in professional industry journals and books written on the subject of marketing and branding.
Until my next post, here is my top 10 list of books that I would encourage you to read to both improve your marketing skills as well as provide you with a source of endless ideas and inspiration:
- “The Guerrilla Marketing Handbook” by Seth Godin and Jay Conrad Levinson.
- “Guerrilla Publicity: Hundreds of Sure-Fire Tactics to Get Maximum Sales for Minimum Dollars” by Jay Conrad Levinson, Rick Frishman, Jill Lublin.
- “The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing: Violate Them at Your Own Risk!” by Al Ries, Jack Trout
- “The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding” by Al Ries and Laura Ries
- “Brand Aid: An Easy Reference Guide to Solving Your Toughest Branding Problems and Strengthening Your Market Position” by Brad VanAuken
- “22 Irrefutable Laws of Advertising: And When to Violate Them” by Michael Newman
- “Sell the Brand First: How to Sell Your Brand and Create Lasting Customer Loyalty” by Dan Stiff
- “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion” by Robert B. Cialdini
- “Simplicity” by Edward De Bono
- “How to Win Friends & Influence People” by Dale Carnegie
However you can relax in the knowledge that everything you need to develop a powerful brand for your business will be provided.
qubePartners blog will show you how to harness the power of branding to grow your small business. We will be examining the techniques big (famous) businesses use to develop their brands and show you how to apply them to your small business. You will discover how to:
- Create (or recreate) your brand for growing your business through the scientifically proven principles of influence and persuasion
- How to position your brand to best satisfy your customers and fight your competitors
- How to align your brand with your core personal (business) values
- How to develop brand communications (marketing collateral) that will assist you in positively influencing your target audience
- How to avoid the pitfalls that plague your competitors and sometimes undo the years of successes of those “big brands.”
by admin | Jan 8, 2011 | Blog
The word brand began simply as a way to tell one person’s cattle from another by means of a hot iron stamp, which makes it the oldest form of marketing or promotion! In the beginning, before modern marketing there was just branding – a form of DIFFERENTIATION. Today RELEVANT DIFFERENTIATION is still the cornerstone of modern marketing.
Here are a few definitions of branding:
Brand (noun):
– a mark made by burning or otherwise, to indicate kind, grade, make, ownership, etc.
– a kind or variety of something distinguished by some distinctive characteristic
– verb (used with object) to label or mark with or as if with a brand.
David Ogilvy, the father of modern advertising defined it as:
“The intangible sum of a product’s attributes: its name, packaging, and price, its history, its reputation, and the way it’s advertised. A brand is also defined by consumers’ impression of the people who use it, as well as their own experience.”
BusinessDictionary.com
Entire process involved in creating a unique name and image for a product (good or service) in the consumers’ mind, through advertising campaigns with a consistent theme. Branding aims to establish a significant and differentiated presence in the market that attracts and retains loyal customers.
Entrepreneur.com
The marketing practice of creating a name, symbol or design that identifies and differentiates a product from other products. Your brand is your promise to your customer. It tells them what they can expect from your products and services, and it differentiates your offering from that of your competitors. Your brand is derived from who you are, who you want to be and who people perceive you to be.
Hence getting your branding “right” is the cornerstone of all your future marketing communications. Unfortunately most small businesses do not get this right and their marketing becomes a painful experience akin to getting “marked” with a hot iron – for all the wrong reasons.
by admin | Jan 8, 2011 | Blog
History of Branding
by admin | Jan 8, 2011 | Blog, Promotion
The word brand began simply as a way to tell one person’s cattle from another by means of a hot iron stamp, which makes it the oldest form of marketing or promotion! In the beginning, before modern marketing there was just branding – a form of DIFFERENTIATION. Today RELEVANT DIFFERENTIATION is still the cornerstone of modern marketing.
Here are a few definitions of branding:
Brand (noun):
– a mark made by burning or otherwise, to indicate kind, grade, make, ownership, etc.
– a kind or variety of something distinguished by some distinctive characteristic
– verb (used with object) to label or mark with or as if with a brand.
David Ogilvy, the father of modern advertising defined it as:
“The intangible sum of a product’s attributes: its name, packaging, and price, its history, its reputation, and the way it’s advertised. A brand is also defined by consumers’ impression of the people who use it, as well as their own experience.”
BusinessDictionary.com
Entire process involved in creating a unique name and image for a product (good or service) in the consumers’ mind, through advertising campaigns with a consistent theme. Branding aims to establish a significant and differentiated presence in the market that attracts and retains loyal customers.
Entrepreneur.com
The marketing practice of creating a name, symbol or design that identifies and differentiates a product from other products. Your brand is your promise to your customer. It tells them what they can expect from your products and services, and it differentiates your offering from that of your competitors. Your brand is derived from who you are, who you want to be and who people perceive you to be.
Hence getting your branding “right” is the cornerstone of all your future marketing communications. Unfortunately most small businesses do not get this right and their marketing becomes a painful experience akin to getting “marked” with a hot iron – for all the wrong reasons.
by admin | Jan 8, 2011 | Blog, Strategy
History of Branding
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