Sarah Carter

HOW TO MAKE A PLAN
2 minute checklist
oSet and agree clear objectives. Are they ‘SMART’?
oStart with business objectives: targets for sales, profit, market share etc.
oThen set marketing objectives: customer numbers, weight of purchase, distribution etc.
oCrunch the numbers. Even back-of-an-envelope stuff helps. Can your marketing objectives realistically deliver the business objectives?
oThink people, not just numbers. Who do you need to influence? What do you want them to do, exactly? Instead of what?
oIf necessary, commission extra research. Simple omnibus questions can often be enough.
oOnly then set communications objectives. Who are your audience? How can you influence them?
oCheck your budgets. Can you reach enough people? What will your SOV be?
oSet ’Key Performance Indicators’ (KPIs) for each objective, and start tracking them.
oEvaluate your results against those KPIs

Your customers are the customers of other brands
who occasionally buy you’
Andrew Ehrenberg

ut without big, famous advertising, the public started to forget about these two brand leaders. And when they did think about them, they felt less warm towards them. So despite product improvements, ratings deteriorated and people started experimenting with alternatives.

However, this was not really a profitable loyalty marketing campaign as such. The campaign ran in mass media, and so most of the people who saw it were not O2 customers. Yes, loyalty metrics like churn and willingness to recommend improved, but the main effect was to recruit new customers. As the company concluded: ’Talking to existing customers proved to be a more effective acquisition strategy than the previous acquisition approach.’

purchases affect brand image more than brand image affects sales.

‘The consumer is loyal to the brand they can find’

Comms implications

Trained, not taught.
Brand building is about creating associations, feelings & habits through repeated exposure

Psychologists tell us that most buying decisions are either too complex or too trivial to be made analytically. So people have to rely on emotions instead.

Rather than striving for meaningful perceived differentiation, marketers should seek meaningless distinctiveness.
Branding lasts. Differentiation doesn’t’

Research shows that brands become big and profitable by building weak relationships with lots of people.