Archive for the ‘Start-ups’ Category

Brand assessment — Building & maintaining brand strength

Wednesday, June 30th, 2010

Building strength in a brand over time is not an easy process. Continuously changing and evolving companies can often lose the brand personality. Regular checks and a corporate-backed brand strategy can help keep a brand on track.

Typically, a branding strategy or campaign consists of three general elements: Identity, Implementation and Management. It takes commitment, discipline, focus and courage to build a strong brand that people will care about and support (everything done should be considered within the broader context of brand strategy). A strong brands acts like a magnet to prospective employees, shareholders and customers.

Understanding the brand:

The brand:
There are many ways to define a brand, some define it as a position in a target market; price, quality, uniqueness, reputation… Some define it as a perception that exists in the minds of the customer, prospect or stakeholder. No matter how it’s defined, a brand is either built, ignored or neglected by the companies that the brand stands for. The amount of respect dedicated to the brand is the difference between a successful brand and one that fails. Everything a company does, the way they do it, and, in many cases, what a company doesn’t do, acts to reinforce or undermine the unique position in a customer’s mind.

Brand identity:
A brand identity is the visual expression of the brand. It includes logos, graphic elements, colours and look and feel that reflect the personality & tone of the brand. An identity should be long lasting, memorable and a timeless reminder of what a company stands for and delivers.

Brand strategy:
A brand strategy answers an essential and basic question. “How do I make a positive impression in the minds of everyone who touches the brand?” Through positive branding techniques including delivery of the message through integrated marketing and communications tactics, collateral development and implementation, a prospect will become aware, interested and invested in a brand. This investment will eventually lead to brand loyalty and buy-in. Most successful brand strategies are ones, that include everyone from employees & vendors, right on through to shareholders, prospects & customers.

Basic brand strength measurement variables:

* Messaging
* Brand distinctiveness
* Brand tone
* Brand consistency
* Brand awareness
* Brand reputation
* Brand loyalty
* Brand preference

General characteristics of a strong brand:

* Messaging and identity is consistent, clear, engaging, unique and resonates with all stakeholders
* Messaging reflects the company’s positioning strategy and is aligned with the brand’s core values
* Brand strength is built through communications tactics and collateral
* Brand image is being reinforced internally and externally
* Strong internal communications, everyone knows the mission and values statement
* Company consistently delivers what is promised
* Comprehensive graphic standard is respected and followed

General characteristics of a weak brand:

* General helplessness as company adapts to changes in the market, restructuring, leadership & strategies
* Inconsistent identity and messaging has undermined the unique position to the brand in the minds of stakeholders
* Mergers and acquisitions have over complicated the brand architecture
* Messaging doesn’t make sense any more and may be confusing stakeholders – position, mission, value
* Vision of the future is not clear
* Competing on price
* No internal pride or understanding
* Lack of stakeholder energy – have become cynical
* Lack of self worth and acceptance of failure
* Difficulty retaining best personnel
* Growth without a plan (fill a sort term market demand)

Re-branding:
There are many reasons why a company may choose to re-brand: confused investors, tarnished reputation, merger of equals, need to renew interest… No matter what the reason, probably one of the most significant outcomes of a re-branding process is the clarity and focus that it generates to the leadership team, management and personnel. It has a rejuvenating effect on the entire company – a renewed sense of purpose and puts some measurable reality to the current situation.

For more information or discussion on brand assessment, please add your comments,
or contact us directly.

Ted Hutchins, Managing Partner, Creative Director
Canada: 613.482.9623

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Marketing — From a position of strength

Wednesday, April 7th, 2010

To market your company, product, or service successfully, you need to identify, claim, and defend a unique competitive position in your target market. A position that is most attractive to your potential customers, and that is in alignment with the value you provide.

It’s important to be aware that you already occupy a position in the market, because you do, whether you think about it or not! If fact, your customers and competitors have beliefs about your position in the market, and those beliefs will act as reality until you become proactive and define yourself. If you can’t differentiate your products, how can your prospects.

Benefits of identifying your competitive position in the market
Occupying a compelling competitive position helps enormously when creating marketing campaigns. It allows you to focus on and articulate how your strengths address real market needs better than the competition does. By claiming and defending a position of strength relative to the competition, you can shape perception in the market and define the rules of engagement.

Position value

  • Clarity in the minds of the sellers – what is being sold
  • Clarity in the minds of the buyers – why should they buy the product
  • Clarity in the minds of R&D and Production – expectations for the product

Know where you are now, where they are, and where you want to be

Once you take stock of your competitive position, you’ll learn that there are at least three critical positions in the market that you need to be concerned with:

  1. Your current competitive position
  2. The position(s) of your competitor(s)
  3. The ideal position in the market

By understanding your position in the market relative to the competition, you can design messaging and marketing plans that play to your strengths. By understanding the ideal position in the market, you can choose to make the business or product changes that allow you to claim and defend that more powerful position!

Finding a position: how does it work?

Positioning is a process that requires data, analysis and answers to some
basic positioning questions. Here’s a short overview of the process:

  1. Collect data: Survey your customers, vendors, employees, and other stakeholders to assess current perception
  2. Know the market: Understand the factors that will affect buyers now, and what will drive them in the coming years
  3. Take stock: your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT)
  4. Analyze the competition: study their marketing claims. Do a SWOT on them
  5. Put it all together: plot your position relative to the competition and to market needs and trends. Plan your strategy based on where you are now, and how you will evolve toward your ideal competitive position

Positioning Statement

Once you’ve collected and analyzed all the data, you will be able to follow the steps to creating a positioning statement. Typically you will have two or three versions of your positioning statement.

  1. long version — which states in detail, many of the differentiators and benefits for doing business with your company
  2. general summarized version — for use in collateral and generic ads
  3. a very short version — the elevator speech: what, where and why in less than 30 seconds

Your positioning statement can be sliced up or expanded (must keep it in the same context) to suit your tactical and collateral requirements to drive your marketing messaging, and the company.

Unique Sales Proposition (USP)

A USP is a statement that sets your business apart from the competition in a positive way. It essentially makes a promise to prospective customers that you do things a certain way, and your products/services produce certain results.

What we do:

For the established company, we act as an extension of your marketing or communications department. We work under your direction and deliver products and services that are on message and on brand, just as you would expect, if we were part of your in-house team.

For start-ups and developing companies, still trying to pull it together, Hutchins Crang has the experience and know-how create marketing materials that will deliver a strong consistent message that encourages the desired action.

For more information or discussion on positioning, please add your comments,
or contact us directly.

Ted Hutchins, Managing Partner, Creative Director
Canada: 613.482.9623

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Brand development — What’s your brand?

Sunday, March 28th, 2010

Technological superiority? People friendly? Best support? Highest quality? Most cost-effective solution? Or out of touch? Your brand is the sum total of how your audience experiences and perceives your company, products or services. These experiences (touch points) are molded by your brand identity, brand strategy, the implementation of your brand plan and the brand materials that deliver the message.

More than just a set of marketing tactics!

A branding program should be an “outside-in” & “inside-out” activity that includes and resonates with customers, prospects and stakeholders in the target market and business environment that your company participates in. Vendors, customers, prospects, distributors… all experience your brand in different ways. By staying in touch with these stakeholders, you can gain valuable feedback that can be pumped back into managing the brand strategy and preventing potential slippage.

Fully implemented, a company’s branding strategy and plan should touch and transform every aspect of your company’s operation, enlisting your employees as enthusiastic brand representatives who deliver the brand promise and influence brand strength.

Controlling your brand

Effective brands are built on an in-depth understanding of a company’s competitive position in the marketplace, its product & service strengths, its promises, its values & ethics, its sales process, its after-sales support, and its strategic plan. Understanding the factors that build and affect the brand will enable the creation & implementation of a solid brand or re-brand plan, essential brand elements and branding tools/materials that will effectively help the company engage with the needs and desires of the market, prospects, customers and stakeholders. Through consistent and targeted implementation of the branding plan, a company can dramatically impact brand strength and perception.

Understanding your company’s persona

Positioning:
Where is your company in your specific market space with respect to the competition and what the market needs are?

Unique sales proposition (USP):
What do you see as benefits to your client choosing your products over your competition? What makes your company so special? Even if you are a me-to company, there needs to be a compelling reason why a prospect would chose your products over the competition. Find that positive unique feature and make it part of your brand.

Your market:
Understanding and keeping in touch with your market is a pretty obvious requirement in any business. Being close to it, will keep you on the cutting edge, allowing you to predict the markets direction and adapt your offerings to potential niche opportunities. By staying synchronized with your market, you can address and publicize changes quickly, giving the impression that you are an innovative driver of the technology.

Your competition:
Continually audit your competition, understand their products and analyze the features and benefits they use to promote their products. Do your products out perform the competitions products? Make sure that you capitalize on the things that you do better by promoting the differentiators. Keep your literature and marketing pieces current, dispose of outdated materials, provide opportunities to update current and potential customers. Keeping current will help you build your brand.

Integrated marketing and consistency

Once your identity elements have been established, our integrated marketing approach ensures that future projects employ your identity standards for brand recognition, message consistency, and support of your strategic direction.

What we do:

Understanding brand strengths and weaknesses unveils opportunities for brand growth and renewed strength.

Whether you are considering a brand building strategy for a new company, re-branding of an existing company or making sure that you are staying the course, The Hutchins Crang Marketing Group has the experience, knowledge and resources to help you accomplish your company’s directives.

For more information or discussion on brand development, please add your comments,
or contact us directly.

Ted Hutchins, Managing Partner, Creative Director
Canada: 613.482.9623

Posted in Branding, Marketing Communications, Start-ups | No Comments »

Content Managment — Web site solution

Monday, November 2nd, 2009

Many web site content management solutions available today, have evolved into robust, feature-rich, versatile and affordable web site systems. In many cases the ability to modify, update, upload, replace and craft the content of a content managed web site is as easy as sending an e-mail.

As the technology has evolved and became more readily available, we have expanded our capabilities to develop a broad range of web sites and applications to meet our clients demanding requirements. The technology solutions are endless and vary considerably in terms of sophistication, flexibility, capability, ease-of-use and price.

When considering the implementation of a content management system, there are many things to consider:

(1.) Stability – will the site have to be updated often and is it a simple procedure?
(2.) Price – is a free open-source option going to be easy to manage by company personnel or will it require outside management?
(3.) Functionality – do you need all the bells and whistles or will the basics do?
(4.) Front-end adaptability – can the process be modified in the development phase so that it will simplify the administration for a non-technical end-user?
(5.) Search engine friendliness – will the search engines like it or ignore it?

Expression Engine our solution of choice:

Expression Engine for EllisLabs Inc. offers a refreshingly powerful, yet simple answer to the content management requirements for small to large businesses. It’s relatively inexpensive to purchase the software, it’s flexible/adaptive and it’s completely customizable. Plus it performs well when considering the points above.

By leveraging the power and ease-of-use offered by Expression Engine, Hutchins Crang is able to create custom solutions that provide our clients with highly-flexible, highly-functional, dynamic and brand customized web sites.

This web development solution delivers world-class project management and expansion capabilities and empowers the client by providing a simple non-intimidating, user-friendly interface that makes it easy to tweak messaging and add content.

Here are some web sites that we have designed using Expression Engine:

Our entry level solution includes, the cost of the CMS software license, 3 customized branded concept designs to choose from (as per your instructions), 7 main button navigation categories, sub-page menus and pages, automated (product, HR and PR) page posting, automated image posting, implementation, many other outstanding features…

As your business grows, the site can easily be updated, modified and added to.

Typical Site Features Include:

(1) Post, Edit, Delete:

  • Product Pages, Career Pages, Press releases, White Papers, Case Studies…
  • Including images
  • Automatically generates title link or first paragraphs to main index page
  • “Read More” links

(2) Contact:

  • Customized forms
  • Include attachments
  • Includes captcha to deter spam
  • Encrypted recipient e-mail addresses
  • All Information sent to both the recipient and and the database for storage

(3) Subscription Process:

  • Manage an automated on-line subscription
  • Harvests e-mail addresses for possible monthly newsletter, tech update or events…
  • Use e-mail communications tool to send messages to subscription lists

(4) Secured Client Center:

  • Set up and manage secured client pages
  • Assigned unique member passwords that allows specified member/page access

(5) Site Optimization & Tracking:

  • Site content will be created with rich key terms and phrases embedded in the content
  • meta data, page titles, headings, text, navigation, and image tags…

(6) Google Analytics:

  • Google account and Analytics will be installed for basic user statistics

(7) Multiple Customizable Galleries:

  • Automated upload, captioning
  • On-line image editing and resizing

(8) Beyond The Web Site:

  • Customized business blog (WordPress)
  • Customized Twitter page
  • Podcast series
  • YouTube presentation
  • Facebook Fan page…

(9) Compatible on Windows, Linix & Unix servers

(10) More Features (Expression Engine Web Site)

Documentation & Support:

  • Short Process description for each function
  • list of bookmarks to key pages
  • A short in depth tour of the completed site
  • *12 months free support

For more information or discussion on our content management system, please add your comments, or contact us directly.

Ted Hutchins, Managing Partner, Creative Director
Canada: 613.482.9623

*Up to 1hr/per month

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Why is your project budget so important to us?

Friday, October 2nd, 2009

“What’s your budget”? Sometimes a difficult question to ask, especially when more often than not, it will elicit a negative response. The usual assumption is obvious – tell them how much I have and they’ll take it all. Sales guys!!!

Actually, by asking about your budget, we are attempting to make life easier for both the client and the agency. It’s simple, once we know the details of what is wanted and how much can be spent, we can ensure that the solution we come up with is realistic, caters to the clients needs and goals, and fits within their budget.

THE RESULT

For the Client:
- The client gets pricing they would expect
- The client gets an understanding of what compromises might be required, if any to deliver a program within their budget

For the Agency:
- We quote a solution that won’t be rejected on price
- We get an opportunity to explain project details and realities to make sure the soultions will work for the client

For more information or discussion on what to expect when doing business with Hutchins Crang, please add your comments, or contact us directly.

Ted Hutchins, Managing Partner, Creative Director
Canada: 613.482.9623

Posted in Start-ups | No Comments »

What is a Marketing Communications plan?

Thursday, January 15th, 2009

Some of our start-up clients have asked us. Why do I need a marketing communications plan? Can’t I “just-do-it?” Just-doing-it meaning, tackling the requirements as they come up. The short answer is, yes, you can just do it, but probably shouldn’t. There are many problems that result from the “just-do-it” approach to marketing communications. They include lack of focus & direction, inconsistency in approach, loss of program momentum and pressures on the budget.

A well thought-out marketing communications plan supports the objectives laid out in your business plan. It allows you to focus your marketing and corporate communications, making sure that all activities work together to support the big picture and fit within your budget. The strategy is very important because you are building the components of your company (brand, identity, and everything in between) And in doing so, your plan needs to put the required pieces in place at the right time.

So, what’s a marketing communication plan?
A marketing communications plan, also known as a tactical marketing communication plan, is a written document that lays out your promotional and communication tactics and identifies collateral material requirement to support your tactics within a specified budget, over a period of time. The plan answers the basic question, how and where am I going to make potential customers aware of my company, products, or services? A plan helps you determine the most effective means of distributing your company’s messages to prospects and stakeholders.

What are the basic steps to creating
an effective marketing communications plan?
First, make sure you have a sharp pencil and a good eraser.

  • Identify your business and marketing goals
  • Determine your budget
  • Research & analyze your target audience
  • Look at what your competition is doing, and where they are doing it
  • List and analyze opportunities for communications
  • Evaluate and prioritize potential tactics
  • Determine the costs of your plan & compare them to your budget, adjust accordingly
  • Schedule proposed tactics into a calendar

What activities should a tactical plan include?

1. Tactics – intangible activities that you want to do or participate in and what capacity:

  • Public relations
  • Advertising
  • Trade shows
  • Direct marketing
  • Search engine/internet marketing
  • Seminars
  • more…

2. Collateral – tangible things that you need to have in place to support your tactics:

  • Web site, blog, wiki…
  • Advertisements
  • Trade show graphics
  • Brochures/data sheets
  • White papers/articles
  • Sales presentations
  • Pre & post design costs such as photography, printing, image processing…
  • Product tours or demos
  • Shipping costs
  • more…

What should I be looking for?
You want the biggest bang for your buck. You want to reach as many real prospects as you can. You want to use the tactics that will give you the best results. You don’t want to put all your eggs in one basket. Consider building in some flexibility – what would happen if circumstances were to freeze or decrease the budget?

How much should be spent on a tactical program?
There is no rule that says how much you should spend on a tactical program. It really depends on your company and your goals. Typically, a company’s marketing budget is based upon a percentage of forecast revenue (1-3 percent). For start-ups, a marketing communications plan is usually budgeted within their business plan and may include some of the basic requirement to get the business out of the gate fast:

  • Identity, logo, corporate guidelines, stationary, business cards…
  • Web site, hosting plan, domain name…
  • Collateral, brochure, data sheet, presentation, demo…

If you would like more information regarding marketing communications planning please contact us.

Trying to get your business plan pricing together? Need ballpark pricing? Contact us for a free, no-hassle, no-obligation quotation.

If you’re a start-up company, be sure to check out our special Kick-Start Program for start-up and developing companies.

For more information or discussion on marketing plans, please add your comments, or contact us directly.

Ted Hutchins, Managing Partner, Creative Director
Canada: 613.482.9623

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Kick start your new venture’s marketing

Saturday, November 15th, 2008

With the world economy literally in transition, there’s much more focus on new business development activity and the development of new technology ventures. We certainly see that in both of our locations in Ottawa and Ann Arbor.

If you’re involved with a start-up or an emerging technology company, you definitely have your hands full with planning, funding, operational, sales, and other issues. Generally, a marketing plan is a part of this mix, too – it better be! But even when a company has its own marketing manager, it’s often difficult to execute an effective marketing campaign that establishes and builds the brand while developing awareness and supporting sales.

Realizing this, Hutchins Crang has developed two new services that are specifically designed to help small companies establish their identity and get the word out – with help and advice from B2B technology marketing experts!

Our Marketing Kick Start Plan includes logo design, message development, identity materials, a brochure, and a content-managed web site – for one low price.

Our Public Relations Kick Start Plan includes development of a company backgrounder and FAQs, executive bios, a PR/news contact list and editorial planner that are relevant to your business, and the development of your first company and product press releases. Again, all for one flat fee.

For more information or discussion on our KickStart Program, please add your comments, or contact us directly.

Steve Crang, Managing Partner, Corporate Communications

Posted in Start-ups | No Comments »