FAQS OF MARKETING

Question:
How important are "looks" when it comes to marketing communications, including my alpaca website?

Answer:
A recent Stanford University study found that looks count when people judge a website for credibility.

"To look good is to be good--that's the primary test when people assess a Web site's credibility," said B.J. Fogg, Ph.D, who led the Stanford study. "People evaluate TV news and politicians in the same way: presentation matters more than substance. Why should we expect the Web to be any different?"

And this is equally true for the alpaca industry. In fact, as alpaca farms are widely disbursed across the country, people rely on a farm's alpaca website to gain their first and sometime only impression of a farm and what it offers.

Question:
What is the difference between marketing, advertising, and sales?

Answer:
This is a common question, and a lot of people confuse these various terms. First of all, marketing encompasses a wide range of both analysis and tactics. For example, marketing involves doing customer analysis, including market segmentation, market perceptions, market sizing, but also competitive analysis and reactions, target segment selection, positioning, branding, advertising, sales, promotions, channel of distribution arrangement and management, product line decisions, sales force management, and more. You can see, marketing involves a number of activities.

Advertising, however, is a tactic in marketing. It involves a number of activities to be sure, but it really focuses on communicating a message to the market (which it partly shares with Public Relations).

Sales is also a tactic of marketing. This is typically what the sales force does. But it is marketing's job to focus the entire marketing effort (of which the sales force is one part) towards providing what customers want and gaining a sustainable strategic advantage.

Question:
How much should be spent on advertising versus promotion?

Answer:
Magic formulas really don't exist in marketing (even though lots of people may try to get you to believe such magic, tricks, or tips may exist). Having said that, the question you ask is interesting. First, advertising is meant to establish awareness, build interest in the market, educate, change brand attitudes, and influence perceptions of customer consistent with a chosen positioning (assuming you have a clear position in mind). Promotion (and I assume you're not talking about public relations here) is typically of a short-term nature that is typically meant to encourage trial. Marketing encompasses both of these activities, and more, so it is difficult to assess budget allocation to marketing since it's too broad a term.

But focusing on advertising versus promotion, you need to first think about what are the objectives of the marketing campaign. If it's heavy on getting people to just try your product or service (or web site), then promotion should be heavily weighted. Give stuff away, special deals, etc. These are short term objectives and often just produce short term effects. That makes sense since they are designed to get people to try out something.

Advertising is more designed for longer-term objectives, such as establishing awareness or interest as mentioned above. If you really are interested in getting people aware of your offering, then advertising should also be a critical part. The same is true if you want to change customer's perceptions.

Since often companies want to get both awareness, interest, and trial (especially with brand new companies), you have to think about a combination of advertising and promotion. Should it be 50/50, or some other number? That really depends on your best analysis of the market. For example, if you potential market would not be motivated by promotions and gimmicks, or discounted prices, then it makes less sense to put a heavy weight on promotions. If, on the other hand, your customers are an easily defined market such that building awareness could readily be done via certain advertising vehicles (such as magazines, affiliate web sites, etc.), then this suggests putting a higher weight on advertising.

In short, as in all things in marketing, the more you know about the customers you will be targeting, the clearer your objectives are for the marketing campaign, the easier it is to know what type of mix between promotions and advertising you should have.

Question:
What is a Brand?

Answer:
This is a concept that is confusing to many people. Here is a straightforward and simple but accurate definition: It is the sum total of all experiences a consumer has with your company, product or service in their mind.

A brand is simply a set of associations linked to a brand or company name that resides in consumers' memory. It helps them understand what the brand or company is, why it may be relevant to them, how it is different from other similar companies or brands.

Question:
Does every company need to brand itself and its products?

Answer:
Frankly, the answer to this question depends on whether or not you want customers to identify your product with something they will remember. Brands are nothing more than a set of associations that, if properly communicated, will result in potential customers associating a message with the product.

A good example is Intel. Prior to launching their Pentium campaign back in the early 90's, their microprocessors were known by a number and letter (e.g., 386 or x86). This meant little to most people other than numbers. The Pentium name, communicated to mean performance and compatibility, now meant something to people. Realize that the microprocessor is embedded inside a product, so now people really knew about something that literally meant nothing to them before and was invisible.

This was not the first time this had been done (Stainmaster and Teflon are other examples), but the point remains the same. A brand name can communicate something important to customers even if they can't see the product or if, in reality, the products are commodities (like bananas, cranberries, and chickens which all have been successfully branded).

Question:
How do I know if my brand name is distinctive?

Answer:
If your brand name doesn't create a curiosity factor, you're wasting gobs of money just trying to cut through the communication clutter. The sooner you get psychological exclamation marks into your brand name, the sooner you get the attention you crave.

Even if you choose to have a name that means very little and can drum up a story to match it, you've got yourself a winner. Which place would you rather frequent? "One Red Dog" or "Joes Café?" With a vivid name youve got the opportunity to weave a story--even a story that you made up all by yourself!

Don't just Mona Lisa your brand. Put some Shakespeare in it as well. Push the limits of your brand name and make it an action tool. Create visual advertising, icons, logos, etc. that brings your brand name to life, and help it stand out in the crowd.

Question:
Effective advertising for brands depends on what 3 key factors?

Answer:
The ad must be relevant, engaging, and motivating. But brands must listen to customers as well as communicating messages that cover those three factors in order to truly be successful. It is necessary to give customers a stake in the brand by letting them tell you what is important to them, why your brand is good and how it can be improved.

Question:
What's a tag line and how is one created?

Answer:
In short (because tag lines are short :), a tagline is simply a short set of words that companies use to associate with their company or brand...like the NY Times "All the news that's fit to print" or the Yellow Pages "Let your fingers do the walking", etc. These taglines, while clever, should also be highly relevant to your customers. So the best way to start to create one is to first figure out what segment(s) of the market you're going after, based on what these segments really care about, determine your positioning statement. Then, use the positioning statement as the basis for your tagline.

For example, BMW positions itself on performance and drivability. Therefore, it's not surprising that it's tagline is "the ultimate driving machine".

You can find sites on the internet that will show you hundreds of taglines, but in almost every case, when they are good, they are based on a strong positioning statement and also have a bit of cleverness too. But cleverness alone won't do it. So start with a good positioning statement.

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