The Art of lead generation through Brochure

Brochures - Brochure  are the marketing tools that everyone has but few really know how to use. There are several different situations in which brochures can be employed, which is why many companies print several different types of brochures. That being said, small businesses on tight budgets can print a single brochure and have it serve all situations. Either way, the investment in brochures often remains wasted because they’re used for little more than information dispersal. But savvy marketers know brochures can be powerful sales tools, especially suited for generating leads. Whether you leave brochures on counter tops, in trade show grab bags, or anywhere else potential customers pick them up without first meeting you, read on to The Art of lead generation through Brochure 

First of all we should focus on one basic thing "How to write brochure"

1 Use the front cover, or front panel, to your advantage by including an eye catching photo or graphic. Too many amateur writers use the front cover to showcase their company’s name or logo. How exciting! Not. Instead of using your logo, use a photo that showcases your best-selling product(s) or people enjoying your products or services. Along with this great photo, be sure to include text that speaks directly to the reader. Ask a question or state a benefit that most people want. In other words, give readers “an offer they can’t refuse.”

Brochure 

2 On the inner panels, use headings to break up long blocks of text. Brochures have limited space and you don’t want to use up all the space with long blocks of text -- that looks intimidating to the reader. Instead of long paragraphs, write short sentences and short paragraphs, and use bullet lists or numbered lists to further separate the text. These elements will also bring the readers’ eyes into the brochure.

3 Stress the benefits of your product(s) instead of just naming the features.Features describe the product or service; benefits describe how the features will help the reader

4 Address the reader as “you” to establish a relationship with the reader.Talking directly to the reader as an intelligent person, meaning not dumbing down words, but also not using industry-only jargon, makes for an easy and enjoyable read.

5 Keep your brochure content focused. If you’re writing a brochure to generate leads, include info that prospects don’t know about your company, like how it started. However, if your brochure is a sales closer, your customers already know your company’s history so don’t bore them with that info. Keep the content relevant to your brochure’s purpose and yet brief enough to not run out of your reader's interest

6 End the brochure with a call to action. Tell the reader what you want her to do: either visit your showroom or call your office. If you don’t tell the reader how to reach you (and don’t forget to include your contact info!), she won’t do anything to reach you.

But all of above - Never loose creativity.

Pond's Focus on Men Grooming Market

Pond's has been traditionally viewed as a feminine brand. More so because of the products that the brand endorses. Starting with the cold cream, the brand has moved to various skincare segments. In a recent move , HUL has decided to launch Pond's skincare products aimed at men. 

Ponds 

The first product to be launched was the men's face wash. The variant or rather the brand-extension was launched with the upcoming actor Varun Dhawan as the brand ambassador.
Watch the ad here : Pond's men's facewash 

The ad is predictable and compares the brand to a battery charger for the face. Pond's men's facewash has the tagline " Face ka charger" and touts coffee bean's extract as the USP.

According to AC Nielsen, the male grooming market is estimated to be Rs 4000 crore and skincare is the biggest growing category with around Rs 443 crores ( Source). Hence the launch from HUL make sense.

Whats puzzling is why HUL decides to launch a predominantly feminine brand like Pond's for this opportunity.

Ideally (IMHO) HUL should have launched a brand exclusively for men's category instead of extending a Rs 1000 crore brand from a feminine category . Ofcourse Nivea is doing the same thing but doesn't mean that HUL which has the capacity to launch new brands should not launch a new brand. 

My argument is that Pond's will not be able to bring in lot of masculinity into Pond's without hurting the parent brand's persona and will always be constrained by the parent brand's perception. Since the market in question is so huge, HUL has wasted an opportunity to launch a powerful brand exclusively for men. It already have brands like Denim, Aramusk etc which could have been used for this opportunity. Why Ponds ?

Source - (Economic times & Marketing Practice )

Top 5 Things To Consider When Building Your Brand

Building Brand 

   

1) Identify Your Target Audience

Your brand's "target audience" is the specific group who your product or service is trying to reach. In order to reach this group you need to first figure out who they are. Ask yourself these questions: "who would buy my products?," "who currently buys my products?," "where does this group shop at or frequent?," "what other interests do they have and how can you best cater to these interests?." Your brand can't be all things to all people. However, your brand identity should be based to some extent on who your target customers want and need you to be.

2) Create An Identity

The key to successful branding is building an identity. Now that you've recognized your target audience, the next step is defining who you are. Discuss with partners and employees your brand's core values. Ask customers what keywords or values they associate with your company's services. These values need to be present in everything that you do from here on out in order to transmit a cohesive image. Your brand must reflect what your customers and employees think about your business to have any credibility. For example, if being friendly
is one of your brand values, make sure anyone who answers the telephone or has direct contact with customers is friendly.

3) Discover Your Competitive Advantage

A brand's competitive advantage is it's unique offerings that differentiate it from similar offerings in the marketplace. What makes your brand unique? Identify and isolate the things that make you better than your competition. This will allow you to maximize these characteristics moving forward, easily conveying them to consumers. Make sure your company literature reflects your brand values.

4) Set Brand Goals And Plan Accordingly

"He who fails to plan is planning to fail," -Winston Churchill. This is true for embarking on building your brand. List the objectives you want to achieve with the brand and most importantly, achieve them! An effective brand knows what it wants, how it wants to achieve that, and when it will have these objectives completed. Your brand strategy should be inline with your general business plan. Opting out of setting your goals for moving forward leaves your brand vulnerable to loosing its purpose. Once your image has been created, following some simple rules should ensure its continued effectiveness. Always think about what your business achieves for your customers and structure your business to achieve it effectively and continuously.

5) Be Relevant and Flexible

A well managed brand is always making adjustments. Branding is a process, not a race, so expect to constantly tweak your message and refresh your image. If your old tactics aren't working anymore, don't be afraid to change them just because it worked in the past. Take the opportunity to engage your followers in fresh, new ways. Look at Old Spice, around since the 1930s, but still relevant and finding new ways to present itself. Over the past few years, Old Spice has managed to create quite a buzz with their new ads (which are hilarious)! In this fast-changing world, marketers must remain flexible to stay relevant. Use new strategies to connect with new customers and remind your old ones why they love you.

Branding Tips for New Businesses

Technology has changed the landscape of how businesses communicate with their customers. These days, marketers reach a target base by implementing online techniques such as search engine optimization or by utilizing social media. But even though modern businesses exist in a state of hyper-competition in the online world, the fundamentals of business strategy have remained relatively the same. One such cornerstone of a successful business is effective branding.

Those who don’t place much importance on branding need only to look to Coca Cola or Apple or any number of other titans of industry that have remained profit-generating goliaths over decades or even generations. And like any fundamental value, many of the best ways to build a successful brand are still based around core principals that have informed businesses practically since their inception.

1. Know the Customer

It’s an old adage, and one that is still relevant even in today’s world of SEO and Google Analytics. The key to successful branding is still identifying a target base and defining it through segmentation. After this is accomplished, it’s up to the marketer to link his or her service or product to that customer base with a promise. It’s in this way that a particular brand becomes superior to the competition.

2. Stay on Top of the Competition

One of the main reasons businesses fail is because they fail to see how customers respond to their competitor’s brands. This goes beyond looking for chinks in competitors’ armor and includes looking at how they are successful as well. It’s only by fully understanding these two key aspects of the competition that marketers can then find their differentiator, which is ultimately what will set their brand apart from the competition.

3. Think about Compatibility

There are plenty of ways to understand a customer base, one of which is through brand compatibility. This takes into account everything: the customers’ spending habits, their lifestyle, their media interests – even their general attitude. To this end, marketers will want to focus on the strength of the connection between the purchase behavior of the customer and the brand’s differentiator.

4. Position the Brand Effectively

This goes back to communication, because how well a brand communicates its message to a customer base will ultimately determine its success. But it takes more than merely telling a customer about a product; the marketer needs to establish a relationship with the customer through positioning. And the two keys to successfully positioning a brand are simple: pre-planning and market research.

5. Merge the Business with the Brand

Those most successful brands are also most successful at blurring the lines between their business and their brand. And this goes beyond simply hiring positive employees to represent “service with a smile.” Go into any Apple Store and the first thing a person sees – aside from the sleek devices – is a group of employees who represent the brand to the letter.

While the above list may not be a complete blueprint for how to achieve ultimate success in business, it should provide startups or new entrepreneurs with those fundamental notions to bear in mind during every step of the game. Because without core guiding principals, many businesses languish right from the get go.

5 ways to build customer relationships even during a slowdown

Customer Relationship

1. Be Wise, Ad-Wise

As a new business owner, no one understands the meaning of 'austere' better than you do. You do not have the budget for a big ad spend, but you cannot afford to stop advertising either. The prudent thing to do is to manage your ad spends well. Kaushik Chakravorty, founder of Breaking Rules, a photography institute in Mumbai, says you need to figure out which advertising avenue gets you the best leads. "Depending on your target audience, concentrate on placing your ads in a channel that works best for you instead of putting your eggs in different baskets." Since his target audience is largely cosmopolitan college-goers, Chakravorty is making the most of the social media platform and focusing his ad spend there.

2. Improve Your Customer Interface

If business is not at its peak, don't fret. Make good use of this slowdown to take a close look at your website and at your customer contact form. Shailesh Velandy, founder of e-commerce platform buynsellindia, believes that a slowdown is the best time to re-asses your website. "Begin with checking if your contact form is too long, because that's a turn-off for potential customers. Ask short, relevant questions and restrict the contact form to three fields, at best." According to him, it has been proved worldwide that business owners who have concise contact forms on their websites have often seen potential leads turning into paying customers.

3. Honesty Is The Best Policy

There will be times when an interested lead will go beyond the web interface and like to have a telephone conversation with you, to know more about what you can offer. When things are slow, business-wise, it may be very tempting to drum up your business and your product or service offering to a potential customer. Chakravorty of Breaking Rules strictly advises against it. "Be clear, honest and tell your lead exactly what you have to offer." Do not think of a lead as a naive person who has not conducted his research before taking the trouble to call you. In that case, anything you say is crucial to him or her. If you exaggerate, rest assured you will have driven him away!

4. Always Follow Up
 
The trick to turning a lead into a paying customer is adequate follow-up. Now this could be a slippery slope as you never know how much is too much or how little is too little, right? Velandy of buynsellindia believes in being cautious. So don't call him or send him an email or text message every other day. That reeks of desperation and is a major turn-off for a lead.

Chakravorty of Breaking Rules agrees. He advises that you play it by ear, depending on the nature of the customer. If a lead seems genuinely interested, it makes sense to drop in a mailer once a week or fortnight, just to keep him posted about your latest activities. Once again, you can make the most of your social networking platforms, says Chakravorty. "If a lead likes or follows you in any of these social media platforms, your job is half done as that will help him keep track of your activities without you having to send him an email or call him up to seek business."

5. Help Customers Complete A Purchase
 
If you are into e-commerce, you will encounter a host of customers who develop cold feet just before they make a payment. Here are two things to remember. Velandy of buynsellindia says it is of utmost importance that you make customers feel secure while making an online purchase. "Make sure you have a secured payment gateway to ensure that your customer does not feel that you are likely to flee with his money. Also ensure that the backend technology is working at its best so that the payment is fast, secured and hassle-free."

In spite of this, if a customer has not completed his purchase, send him reminders about his unfinished transaction. This may be in the form of better service offerings, new product lines or industry tips. In marketing parlance, this is called 'nurturing a lead' and if you can do that successfully (once again without spamming him), you are likely to turn a lead into a paying customer.
 
As a business owner, never underestimate the importance of maintaining good customer relationships. Instead of going into panic mode during a slowdown, turn adversity into an investment by nurturing your leads and turning them into gainful business over the long term.