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.
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