Branding

This area will teach on the various aspects of creating a brand — one that will set you apart from your competition, finding your relative strength, and positioning your brand. For a convenient, printed version, click this link.

Market Strategy and Brand Position

• Week 1
  • Overview, discussion of the principals of marketing, and building strong brands.
  • Strategic marketing for your brand: What make you valuable?
  • Market positioning: Finding and targeting your most lucrative brand segment.
• Week 2
  • Positioning Statement: Positioning your brand in a few short words, relative to your competition.
  • Finding your brand mantra, the “heart and soul of your brand.
  • Connecting experience to your brand: Creating brand loyalty.

Customer Decision Making and the Role of Brand

• Week 3:
  • Understanding the shopping experience from the customer point of view. Positioning yourself to be in their minds when at the point of making a buying decision.
  • Buying “triggers,” providing variety but not choice overload, and connecting the online-offline buying experience. 
  • The purchase state: Selection and conversion-to-sale, pricing and other enticements.
  • Post-purchase satisfaction, social media and what makes for viral sharing.

Effective Brand Communications Strategies and Repositioning Strategies

• Week 4:
  • Conveying brand message, and the customer perception of your brand.
  • Strong and persuasive brand elements; choosing a good brand name.
• Week 5:
  • The various elements of a brand, and making it work together.The choice of colors; the basics of good taglines, and packaging.
  • Repositioning a brand: When is it necessary, and how is it done?

The Importance and Art of Client-centered Focus

This area will teach client-centric focus — that coming shift from product-centric focus to customer-centric focus.

The Limits of Product-centric Thinking

• Week 6:
  • What is product-centric focus? –And some of the cracks in this traditional pursuit.
  • Moving from product-centric to customer-centric focus, and the critical importance of this as we move into the future.
  • Data-driven business, and the increasing importance of this.

Opportunity and Challenges of Customer Centricity

• Week 7:
  • Understanding customer centricity, and celebrating the different customer groups.
  • Selecting the specific customers that should be focused on, and maximizing value to the company.
  • Should your company even pursue a customer-centric approach?

Can Customer Centricity Be Profitable?

• Week 8:
  • The data of customer-centricity –Show me the money!
  • “How to” on cross-selling and upselling; increasing frequency, and premium pricing. Referrals.
  • Customer acquisition, development, and retention — where should you spend your next dollar, and why? 
  • Discussion of “customer lifetime value”: what it is, how to select for it, and how to measure it.

Go to Market Strategies

This area encompasses the internet; the various aspects of marketing, and creating an Internet-based business.

Omni Channel Strategy and Online-Offline Interaction

• Week 9:
  • Go to market strategies, and introduction. What would be your next “hot” product. And four unstoppable market trends.
  • The specific benefits of the online world; search and geographic friction, and goods and information.
  • Online/offline competition and why offline is still important.
• Week 10:
  • The world of selection, and what makes for strong Internet sales — the Long Tail. 
  • How Internet retailing startups grow, and how influence spreads.
  • When and how to compete with offline stores: The concept of preference isolation.

How to Find Lead Users and Facilitate Influence and Contagion

• Week 11:
  • The differences in digital marketing: goals, tactics, and the things to avoid. How to attract and retain digital customers.
  • Reputation and Reviews.
  • Product life cycles: Who buys what, and when.
• Week 12:
  • More on how information spreads. And the power — and limits — of your influence. 
  • Digital spread: Targeting neighborhoods; how influence spreads.
  • Referrals and contagion.

Targeting and Messaging, Pricing to Value, Customer Access, and Distribution

• Week 13:
  • Pricing and price setting: Sensitivity and competitor issues.
  • Pricing strategies: What makes price sensitivity vulnerable, and what works to isolate it.
  • Distribution strategies for the flow of information and goods.
• Week 14:
  • Challenges and conflice between the online-offline marketplace. When they will shop in a store and purchase from you — and vice-versa. And which shopping categories are most vulnerable.
  • Trends in media spending: TV, digital, print, radio, outdoor advertising, others.
  • Summation: Markets, Message, Mission, Message design, Media strategy, Money, and Measurement.
  • Conclusion and wrap-up.