Sunday, December 28, 2008
The #1 way to build your brand – guaranteed!
By Mike Lake
Well, it’s 3 days after Christmas and all the gifts have been opened. But something remarkable has happened with three of them. Before sharing what that is, these gifts are three of the four “high ticket” gifts given within my family: A Kodak digital picture frame, a remote control helicopter purchased at a mall kiosk and a Zales precious gem bracelet.
What else do they have in common? They all were either broken within a VERY short time or came defective right out of the box.
Probably like you, over the years, I could make a fairly long list of things that… shortly after their purchase became defective. But I thought it was remarkable that three of four substantial purchases made within the past two weeks share that trait. A gem fell out of a thousand dollar bracelet, the photos don’t loop as they should on a Kodak digital frame and the rotors broke upon a fairly soft helicopter landing of the initial flight of this $200 machine.
What does this have to do with branding? EVERYTHING! Most of what we are told about building a successful brand consists of a catchy name, a good web site, well-placed high quality advertising, the right pricing model, etc. All of these and other means of building a brand come a distant second place to… HAVING A GREAT PRODUCT.
Go to Amazon and you’ll find several popular books written about how to engineer good word of mouth. They go into great detail about public relations, viral & guerrilla marketing, and slick distribution schemes. But before any of that, you just have to have a great product — one that people rave about to their friends, relatives, product review pages and social web contacts.
Here’s an idea for a New Year’s resolution: At the top of every marketing meeting agenda, put “Improve Product Quality”. No matter what else is on your agenda, spend at least half the time brainstorming about how to make your product better. What? You don’t think that’s the job of marketing?
Think again, because if word of mouth is valuable to your product’s marketing, Zales, Kodak and that little toy manufacturer doing direct sales in the mall just took a big hit. No amount of expensive marketing can come close to the power of my personal dissatisfaction story to my friends considering the purchase of a Kodak digital picture frame.
So, how do you know how to start improving your product? Ask your customers. Read reviews on Amazon.com, Bazaarvoice.com, Epinions.com, Buzzillions.com, Consumerreview.com, Testseek.com, etc. Can’t find anything useful there? Then do a survey using Surveymonkey.com and ask only one question: What improvements to our product would make you rave about it to your friends, relatives, colleagues and acquaintances?
The number one way to build your brand is to sell a remarkably great product — one that people enjoy bragging to their friends about how smart a purchase it was. But remember: Just like bad news on television is more interesting that good news, stories about poor products tend to be more prolific and engaing for the teller. Instead, give them something to rave about and you won’t have to waste your money on books about manufacturing word of mouth advertising!
December 28th, 2008 at 9:32 pm
Mike, Nice to read your blog. I like your point that improving your product is really marketing. Happy New Year.
January 15th, 2009 at 4:38 pm
Hi Mike, I totally agree, product improvement should always take a top priority position in any marketing and/or R&D meeting. Product failure looses the purchaser’s trust which easily equates to lost sales. How many times have we heard the saying “Do something good or make something special and 2 people will know about it, you and the person you did something special for! However, do something wrong or build/make something that breaks easily or is just plain faulty, and the whole world will hear about it!” Competition is aggressive and very hard these days, there’s no room for good enough! If you’re going to make and sell a product, make it the best you can and try to improve on it every day! Make it a challenge or a competition for your employees to find ways to make the product better, then reward them when they do. They’ll be happy and your product will probably sell more… Making you happy!
Best of luck Mike and Christine