George Blogs!

One of the things that has always fascinated me about Switzerland is the world of private finance (and that should really come as no surprise - after all, after cheese and chocolate, that’s what this country is famous for). And while I personally may have neither the desire nor the qualifications to work in private finance, that still does not stop me from stopping for a moment to admire the multitude of financial arrangements and instruments that this country offers.

Consider, for instance, vintage Swiss trust companies. There are many reasons why they’re valuable, but the simplest way to explain it is to note the fact that, by owning one, you can claim to be the owner of a trust company with over 20 years of history - even if you yourself have been in business for only a few months.

And it gets better still - by owning one of those companies, you can benefit from favorable tax arrangements, ensure asset protection in cases of divorce and litigation and, for all intents and purposes, make sure that your assets stay safe, come what may.

Now, obviously, getting your hands in one of those things isn’t easy. By definition, the more vintage a Swiss trust company is, the more difficult it is to obtain - and the more you can expect for it (but, of course, the boost in credibility that comes from claiming ownership of a 50+ year old Swiss trust company is enormous).

That’s why in Switzerland there is a narrow range of specialists that focus on providing Swiss trust company sale and formation services to select clients. Their stocks are usually quite limited (in that, few would have more than a company or two at any given time) and prices are often quite high - but you really can’t beat the benefits!

Ok, ladies and gentlemen, we’re all business people here. And as a business person, there is nothing I hate more than independent contractors who simply cannot stick to their own deadlines.

I won’t be dropping any names here - at least, not for a few days - but last Thursday, at exactly 17:23 my time, I retained the service of a graphics designer for my next project. He contacted me prompty, acknowledged the receipt of the project and asked for 4-5 working days to finish the design.

No problem - 4-5 days for a minisite is somewhat on the longer end, but I can live with that.

You can probably anticipate where this post is headed…

As I’m typing this, it is now Friday, 0:19 AM my time (in other words, just past midnight). I haven’t heard from this designer, in spite of the two e-mails I sent him.

I have the book for this project ready and written - the only thing that’s missing is the graphics. By the look of things, I’ll be lucky to get it done this Friday (which already exceeds the self-imposed 5 working days deadline) - and even then, I won’t be able to sell it until Monday, because I won’t be getting maximum exposure on SitePoint during the weekend.

Bottom line is, this delay is costing me money (that’s the reason why you haven’t seen a single auction from me this week). If the designer actually knew what he was doing, the site would’ve been ready and sold, and I would’ve been reinvesting the money into my next project.

As it is, I am stuck here waiting on him like an idiot to, frankly, pull his finger out and finish the job that I’m paying him to do.

No, I don’t care what happened to him - if he needed extra time, he could’ve e-mailed me. But ignoring my e-mails as well as the deadline he himself specified is just bad practice - especially when it concerns a project that he’s being paid to do.

Bottom line is, you agree to a deadline, you stick to it no matter what - or you don’t get repeat business from me.

Harsh? Yes - but I never said that making money is easy or not stressful.

Christmas is over, and business is business.

As those of you who know me in offline life (interesting term, isn’t it?) are aware, I am now in the process of wrapping up my marketing examination. As part of it, we are expected to produce our analysis of the growth and decline of The Body Shop (TBS) brand, and of its subsequent acquisition by L’Oreal. For this reason, I thought I’d blog about it, since, to me, it is a classic case of an organization investing a lot into branding and then, for one reason or another, literally losing the way.

For the most part, the story of TBS is the story of societal marketing gone wrong. Anita Roddick sought to differentiate the brand from the competition by emphasizing an extensive list of core values that separated it from the competition (for instance, TBS did not use animal testing, respected the environment and invested heavily into marginalized communities worldwide).

The problems really started when other beauty-care brands began entering the market and positioning themselves in about the same manner as TBS - in other words, socially responsible and environmentall friendly. Faced with this situation, TBS found itself unable to compete, now that its first-mover advantage has been wasted.

Already in its death throes, TBS attempted to reposition its brand to the so-called “masstige” market - in other words, to combine glamour and excusivity with mass appeal. But, as I’ve already discussed at length elsewhere on my blog, mainstream marketing, as a concept, is quite dead. Similarly, mainstream marketing for a previous niche product is just asking for trouble. In the end, TBS lost its original customers, but never really acquired new ones.

What lessons can we learn from the TBS disaster? First and foremost, first-mover advantage is a headstart, and not a competitive advantage in and of itself. Just because you’ve beaten everyone else to the market doesn’t mean that it’s going to stay that way. In fact, the more successful you are, the more attractive your market will be for your prospective competitors, and the sooner they will enter in. And if you can’t differentiate yourself from them when that happens, then your business life will be very short-lived, indeed.

Secondly, mainstream and prestige don’t mix. You can either have a mainstream brand or a prestige brand - but you really can’t have it both ways. Prestige implies exclusivity, which violently contradicts the notion of mass consumption. For good examples of what happens when you take a prestige brand to the masses, consider the marketing debacles of Lacoste and Louis Vuitton.

Some time ago, I discussed the important of correct brand positioning and proper market segmentation. It would appear, however, that, in my haste, I forgot to cover the most important element of them all - how to actually create the theoretical framework to position your brand. While I’ve touched briefly on examples of brand positioning and why it is important to ensure that your positioning strategy correlates with the needs of your customers, I’ve never actually provided a step-by-step guide for accomplishing all of that.

The objective of this post is to correct this unfortunate oversight by examining the process of writing a brand positioning statement. This statement will create the framework which will help you determine the positioning strategy and methodology for your brand as well as help you gain a quick overview of what your brand is really all about and why it’s going to appeal to your target segment.

A correctly-written brand positioning statement will contain four essential elements:

1. Target Market Segment
2. Frame of Reference
3. Critical Point of Difference (PoD)
4. Credibility

Some of these are more self-explanatory than others, so let’s look at each in greater detail.

Target Market Segment

Your target market segment is the group of customers that you will be mainly targeting in terms of positioning your brand. As discussed earlier throughout this blog, it is important to segment your market properly and drill down to the group of customers that you will be working with. In other words, you must never make the mistake of falling into the trap of mainstream appeal. In fact, there is no such thing as a mainstream market - if you look at brands such as Coca-Cola (which is arguably one of the most global brands in the world), even they employ some form of market segmentation. For example, Coca Cola Light is currently being repositioned to appeal to women, while Cola Zero is being marketed to men.

Frame of Reference

Your brands frame of reference determines what category you will be competing in. For example, as Coca-Cola, your frame of reference would be the non-alcoholic beverage market. As an Internet Marketer, you would be dealing with a wide variety of niches, but one possible example could be the “make money online” market (and yes, I know, it’s pretty broad!) Properly selecting your frame of reference is very important, because it is a prerequisite for correctly identifying the next element of the brand positioning statement - PoDs.

Critical Points of Difference

Commonly referred to as PoDs by professional marketers, these signify the key critical differences between your brand and your competition’s offerings in any given frame of reference. For example, your product may be less expensive, include expert interviews or be written by someone of recognized Internet Marketing fame. The key question to ask yourself is - what is it that really makes my product different from the competition, and is this difference relevant in the mind of my target market segment? For example, if Mike Filsaime were to write a book on Internet Marketing, his reputation as an IM guru would be one of the main PoDs; conversely, expertly-designed e-cover would be unlikely to server as a PoD, simply because the quality of the cover would not be of high relevance to the target segment.

Credibility

This is the really important one. Why should your target segment believe that your brand can deliver on your promises? Examples of this justification can include “because we’re the only ones who have the necessary experience” or “because it leverages our expertise in the industry.” Ideally, your credibility point should also relate to your PoDs to help make life even more miserable for your competition!

It goes without saying that you do not sell products or features - instead, you sell benefits. How will your product help the customer? What benefits will it provide? How will it make your customer’s life better, easier, more exciting, more affordable?

The problem is, however, that, nowadays, you can’t sell what they call a core product. For example, you won’t get far with a product that simply teaches customers the basics of SEO or copywriting, simply because there are hundreds of similar e-books out there that all accomplish the same thing. To be successful, you will need to extend your product by adding new benefits to it - for instance, regular customer support, rarely explained strategies to drive more traffic to your site, exclusive members-only forum, etc. If you’re thinking product differentiation, then you’re not far off.

When differentiating yourself from the competition, however, you need to do so in an intelligent manner that emphasises points of key relevance to the customers. And that’s where a customer value hierarchy comes into play. Put simply, the hierarchy enables you to determine which of the benefits of are the really important ones. For example, if you are writing an e-book on SEO, the single most important benefit will also be the core benefit - that being, knowledge of how to optimize your site. But your second most important one may well a technical explanation of how to make changes to your code necessary to implement proper SEO practices (as you probably know, a lot of people are scared stiff by the very notion of fiddling around with HTML code).

In contrast, let’s assume your SEO e-book comes with a professionally illustrated, colorful e-cover. How much benefit do you reckon it will provide to your customers? The answer is - not a whole lot. While it’s nice to buy a product that you feel a lot of effort has gone into and that you can easily form a visual impression of, in the final analysis, this “feel-good” benefit is likely to be somewhere at the very bottom of the customer value hierarchy.

What does this mean for you as a marketer? Once you have constructed the customer value hierarchy for your product, you are in a much better position to write sales copy that will sell like hot cakes. You know exactly which points you need to stress the most, and which you can pretty much ignore or mention somewhere closer to the bottom of your copy. Properly-constructed customer value hierarchy pretty much writes the sales copy for you by helping you decide which of the benefits will help you sell the product - and which ones the prospective customer wouldn’t care one bit about.