2 Important Reasons to Consider Brand Penetration

Brand Penetration – This is the concept that I feel more people will be talking about in 2014 and into 2015.

As you can tell from the past few weeks, I am trying to take marketing in a new direction and set a new tone. We are quickly circling back to having a strong company brand that penetrates the market and gets noticed. Today, people are really confused about what a brand is. Companies are buying each other out, changing their identity and trying quickly to make more of a presence. Established brands are trying to keep pace with change and are continuing to reinvent themselves. It is a never ending job for a company. Today, I want to focus on two important reasons to look at this concept of brand penetration.

Serving Client Needs

This concept is the minimum requirement if you want to be in business today. Serving clients means so much more today that it ever has. You may provide a great product or service, but if your ordering system is not quite up to par with Amazon, you may have some work to do. I received a client complaint that our company was not saving his credit card profile and that we make him key-in his credit card each time. It may sound like a small thing, but Amazon and other sites have provided this convenience. Banks would like to serve client needs better, but they need to be careful of violating regulations.

Imagine your front desk person is sick and you put someone in their place and they get upset with the consumer because they don’t relate well to clients. It may have been a one-time event, but one experience is all it takes to lose someone’s business.

On another front, companies are very desperate to attract new business and they may try to compete through much lower prices to take business away from you. How are you going to react? If your only option is to come back with lower prices again, what does that signal to your client. How are you going to build up your brand value so this type of action is not even a consideration by your clients.

Listening to your clients and working toward not only servicing their needs but exceeding their expectations is the only option for companies to continue to make a difference in the market. Also, remember competitors are always selling out around you, it is a prime time to establish your brand like never before and become the place that people recognize and go to.

Online Marketing is rapidly changing

Google is changing the rules quite a bit. Google Authorship is still alive and well. Google wants to collect a database of information from known people and not some type of bot. It is for this reason that personal branding and company branding are huge. Marketers need to develop content relative to their audience and find a way to draw people to their site to learn more. Content marketing is alive and well. Social media makes a great distribution for this information and it helps to maintain a brand presence.

Mobile technology, (smartphones, iPads, tablets) are really changing the dynamic of brand penetration. Google likes to know where you are and provide you with search results respective of your current location. This is great if you are a local company and your audience is all local consumers. For smaller, national companies like Midwest Laboratories it offers challenges, because keyword search does not have the search power like it once did. Companies are going to need to buildup their brands to see if they can have more of a national attraction to them. Obviously, this means other channels are going to be needed then just content marketing to make this happen. Companies are going to need to find a way to get more creative than ever to see if their brand can get more attraction. Colleges and Universities recognize this and consistently include their brand identity with content that they put online.

Summary

Brand Penetration – It should be a goal of every marketing department. In a very noisy and busy world, consumers are making decisions based on information they can obtain. Companies are going to have to find creative ways to insure their brand is being recognized in the market. I believe this new direction will bring about new technology in the future. In the meantime, it is important to continue to follow the direction of the current technology and associated internet platforms and look for trends. Finally, the key really comes back to listening and serving clients, without this piece the other parts quickly go away. Do not lose site of that and always strive to be client-driven.

I would welcome your comments on Brand Penetration. What are ways you are penetrating the market today?

photo credit: dmelchordiaz via photopin cc

2 Important Reasons to Consider Brand Penetration