Designing a company profile that sells

Today, it is not uncommon for companies not matter their size to have a company profile. A company profile is intended to tell readers about the company as well as ultimately how they (i.e. The company) can be contacted.

But there is an important factor which I do find many company profiles lacking in, that is they DO NOT SELL the company. Though using the selling analogy rather broadly, what I mean is that a company profile or brochure has to accomplish 2 things; one being that it should let you know who and what the company is about.

Second and more importantly a company profile must sell the company's experience, expertise, knowledge, etc.

So, what sort of information should we consider when developing a company profile which sells.

Here's what I think should be very fundamental information of what contents a company profile has to have:

1) About Us: This section entails describing issues of who you are, your history and core beliefs. Anything more in my opinion would amount to story telling and no one wants to read a long winded profile. KISS is the acronym that comes to mind. KEEP IT SHORT and SWEET.

2) Products and services: Come on, this is a given! Why else would anyone want to come up with a profile if not to include this in it? The point here is to go into very brief descriptions of your products and services. Leave out the technical specs and specialist jargon which belong in the trash can and not your profile. Having something too technical to describe your product or service will serve to confuse your reader rather than infuse them with knowledge about you.

3) Why Us: For myself and my team, this represents the most important aspect of any profile. This is where you sell the company, its experience and knowledge. The point of this section is simple: to let the customer know you can handle his business.

4) Clients: This area helps a lot in giving your readers of your profile confidence that you are capable and competent. It especially helps when you have a few big names (i.e. well known clients) as your current or previous clients.

I believe that these are the basics of what should be covered in every brochure. Anything more could be boring, but if you feel it important then maybe it should be in there, but not covering your basic areas as outlined here is sure to guarantee you a weak profile that will be of no use to you or anyone else.

Is promotion marketing?

Have you ever wondered, “Is promotion . . . . . marketing ?”

Likewise with advertising, promotion through its extensive use of the advertising vehicle has landed its role as perplexed as the misplaced advertising. In all its intent & purpose, promotion activities carried out by many companies has become marketing per say; as promotion is used to generate purchase, induce consumer purchase, induce pantry stocking and its all placed under the expense of marketing. Why is this so - one may ask?

To get a glimpse of this scenario all one needs to do is to look at the number “price – off”, “special offers”, “consumer premium gifts”, etc.; that are funded by manufacturers and advantaged by the retail trade. To us, the sole purpose & role of promotion is lost and promotion is done solely for volume gains and to wedge competition, so to speak.

Now a big Question comes to mind, how long can one wedge competition by throwing special promotions; weekly, monthly, year round? In the Malaysian retail trade, it has gotten so bad now that most retail stores have sale after sale throughout the year just to encourage consumer spending. This has thought consumers to be very smart, if its not on sale; don't buy it! What kind of impact do you think a year long promotion will have on your brand?

So trying to wedge competition by throwing countless promotions is not feasible due to the number of products & SKU’s available in the marketplace, moreover the cost to do so is in itself prohibitive, even if you have a multi-million dollar budget.

Yet again, here we see a marketing tool which is obviously misconceived and misplaced. The age old rule & role of promotion primarily is to build consumer trust and acceptance of the “Brand” through product trials & usage thereby generating brand royalty, perhaps, even loyalty.

So lets keep those “price – off”, “special offers” & “consumer premium gifts” to a minimum and ensure that their usage is done so sparingly and in the correct context.

Choosing the right background...

I recently received a postcard as pictured above. First and foremost, I must say it is a great endeavour by the company that did this. It is an excellent way to build brand awareness via marketing tools such as postcards and flyer's to new or existing clients.

However, as we all know, the end result of any marketing material given out is that your potential reader might do 1 of 2 things when they get it. Number one being that they might just throw the darn thing into the trash can or second they will give themselves all of their precious 5 seconds to skim through your postcard and then throw it into the trash.

So in essence, designers and marketers have a big role to play when coming out with promotional material. Back to our story, to my surprise it was actually a LEGAL FIRM and not a INTERIOR DESIGN firm that sent me this postcard.

The point is this, whenever you design marketing materials always PUT YOUR CLIENTS BUSINESS in pictures. Pictures together with the right words can make a very effective promotional tool. I didn't know that it was a legal firm and that they were informing me that they were moving to a new location. I thought they were a design firm who were trying to introduce me to their service. Perhaps what the designer of this card should have done was to choose a background which suited the business of the client (i.e. legal services) and just put these words on "WE HAVE MOVED!"

Point I'm getting at is this, always choose a design which fits your business. Example; If you're in the design business, use pictures or design elements that say your in the design business. Perhaps in this case a more suitable picture to have used would have been a picture of a pen & paper or a picture of a legal document as a background. In this case, the background for this postcard should not have been a pen with some technical drawings & sketches in the background. YOU LOOK LIKE A DESIGN FIRM buddy, not a LEGAL FIRM.

A good example of what I'm talking about would be this postcard below. Simple, straight to the point. You know their in the beauty business.

picture courtesy of www.visatacreative.com

So keep on designing and be careful to choose the right pictures and design backgrounds that suit your business or you might end up promoting yourself in the wrong light.

Brand Building fundamentals

In today's business environment, the buzz that we seem to hear about is “branding”... Brand this... brand that... But lets focus for a minute. Do we actually understand what branding is about or what it actually entails?

Essentially, I think branding is all about having an identity for your product/service. For example, we all have names and behind each name is an identity. Take for instance, my name's Tim and I'm sure behind my name exist also an identity to Tim which gives me a character and personality.

So when you strip away all the lingo behind this phenomenon of branding you are left with this... A brand is fundamentally an identity / personality / character behind your product or service.

Which then begs the question, if we know what branding is, just how do we go about doing it? In my opinion, BRANDING should be simple. The search for an identity / personality / character behind your product or service should be in essence a search for the obvious. It should be something which is easy to understand and communicate to your consumers be they old or potential new consumers.

So here are the 4 consideration that go into building a brand:

1) What's your differentiating factor?
This is a common among many businesses . Many companies assume that if they have a budget for advertising then they are likely to build a brand or a differentiating factor to their business. It does not work that way. The reason is simple, if your consumers today are so over communicated with advertising from your direct and indirect competitors to your business, are you sure the money your spending on more advertising really working?

Won't it just overload them with more messages which they might not be paying attention to in the first place? The mind is a funny thing, the more overloaded it becomes with information the more it tends to block out e.g. Trying to study for an exam the day before the actual test. Can you actually recall anything you studied the night before? So, first and foremost, creating a clear difference between you and your competitors is top priority.

2) Who are your clients?
This is also important issue to consider, to determine who your clients are going to be. As Jack Trout and Al Ries once put it “you can't be everything to everybody” so the same is true when building a brand. What kind of clients do you want? Price sensitive or quality sensitive? Naturally a price sensitive consumer is not going to be loyal to you if you are not the cheapest in town. They'll only stay with you as long as your prices can STAY LOW. Question here would be how low can you go?

3) Does your Sales material reflect your brand?
In trying to build a brand, its always important to ensure that every communication from you to your consumers must carry the company's corporate identity (C.I) be a brochure, packaging, website, etc. Many a times, most companies and this is true of companies in Malaysia, where they have a different company doing their packaging design and another company doing their brochure design or website. This can be detrimental to building a brand. Are you sure that each supplier understands your brand completely and executes your design requirements in-line with your brand values?

For the sake of your brand, perhaps its better to stick with one supplier. Some of the better suppliers to look at would perhaps be marketing agencies or even reputable brand consultants. I do understand that when you undertake such services they are usually not cheap but there are marketing agencies or even brand consultants out there who charge reasonable service charges. Keep an eye out for them, I'm sure they're keeping an eye out for you.

4) Brand building is about creating MINDSHARE.
I remember reading Jack Trout and Al Ries, where they mentioned that positioning (i.e. Branding) is ultimately a battle for the consumers mind. A place in the mind that is. So, branding is about building mindshare. To more your consumer remembers you ultimately will contribute to your market share. So, do whatever it takes to get into the minds of your consumers. Staying there is a whole other story.

Ultimately, brand building is by far the most successful way to build your business, but alas many businesses for go this step because its either too expensive to hire a brand consultant or a marketing agency to help them. That I believe is the no. 1 reason why most companies think they can go about brand building on their own. However many a times, a 3rd party can provide some direction or avenue to build your brand which you just might not have thought about. After all, they always say that 2 heads are better than one.

Is Advertising Marketing?

As deliberated upon in the previous entry “Just what is not marketing”, it is now timely to apply some sort of meaning to the question, “Is advertising . . . . . marketing?”

From the barrage of advertising spend to so promote or induce consumer trial or generate brand purchase; it seems to be the common assumption that “advertising is marketing” and vice versa; as advertising helps to market products and services & brings it to the consumers. The current practice seems to suggest that. Take a look at the picture below.

The advancement of technology these days, has brought products closer to home (i.e. television) and to personal self via Internet and of course, email and SMS mails both pictorially and verbally. This thrust of technology advancement, had begun a very serious mis-perception & misconception, of what advertising and its role is! Based on what the previous marketing Guru’s have taught before this technological advancement, advertising is merely a tool and is used to help relay information about the brand’s purpose of existence.

The chase for profit taking has further accentuated this misconception as a large part of the Advertising & Promotion budget is coerced to spend on chasing after sales volume.

Advertising in our opinion and in line with the past marketing Gurus advocate, is fundamentally a marketing tool, to be used wisely to further the advancement of the BRAND. The age old rule & role of advertising is to build consumer believability, trust and endeared in the mind of consumers. That should be nothing more and ultimately nothing less.

So to sum it up, is advertising marketing? We certainly don't think so, but that maybe contrary to the beliefs of a lot of advertising companies out there. Till the next time... take care.

S.L. Liew

About the author: The post above is from one of my contributors Mr. Liew Siew Loong. Mr. Liew has been in the marketing field for the last 40 years dealing in FMCG products to food products and even high fashion. To find out more about of his profile, log on to http://www.viscreative.com/

Shopping bags and more

Recently, I have been doing a lot of thinking about my next entry into the blog. Little did I know it would have to do with something so simple which we use in our everyday lives.

It all started as I was looking at the paper bags which I had lying around my office. It suddenly occurred to me that these paper bags did 1 thing fairly well which was to advertise their own brands.

However, I noticed that these paper bags did not communicate as to how an individual could get better connected to the brand on the paper bag.

Imagine this, here you are sitting at a nice little cafe having a latte when all of a sudden someone walks by with this really interesting paper bag (i.e. as per above). You think to yourself, “what an interesting design but unfortunately there's no way I can contact this company / brand.” You then say to yourself, “ I'll probably google the brand when I'm next on line...”

Here's the truth of the matter...I'm pretty sure that in today's uber busy lifestyles, many of us would probably have forgotten about “googl-ing” that brand and probably gone on to do other things when we next get in front of our PC / Mac's.

So I was thinking to myself, why won't companies put their contact details (e.g website) on their shopping bags? Would that not make it easier for potential customers to interact with their brand? After all what other purpose does that bag have other than to expose potential clients to your brand? I imagine it would look like this bag which I found in Hong Kong.

Thus, It is my strong belief that more and more companies should take as many opportunities as possible to communicate their brand presence to potential customers. God knows we get so little opportunities to interact with customers these days... So companies out there, I think the above shopping bag has set an example for us all to follow.

Signing off for now.

Just, What is NOT Marketing???

Many marketing guru’s says that marketing is about consumers, about advertising in any forms (reaching consumers), about placement (distribution avail to consumers), about promotion (allowing consumers to try product), etc… and perhaps, a combination of all the above.

(Source: www.freedigitalphotos.net)

As mentioned in the above, thence, where does marketing start? In advertising, in placement, in promotion, in packaging & labels, in brand names, etc . . . etc . .

(Source: www.freedigitalphotos.net)

There appears to be no beginning and if there is no beginning, what then is not or is marketing?

It is my belief that marketing is not advertising, it is not placement, it is not promotion i.e. any gimmicks that induces consumers to know, test, try the product as we are all given to believe.

The gimmicks in my factual appreciation, are all short term & does little to inject positive influence for the product or brand.Therefore, it is important to tackle the fundamental question of...

“What marketing is NOT?”

marketing compatriots, your views please...

S.L. Liew

About the author: The post above is from one of my contributors Mr. Liew Siew Loong. Mr. Liew has been in the marketing field for the last 40 years dealing in FMCG products to food products and even high fashion. To find out more about of his profile, log on to www.viscreative.com