Marketing

People almost never buy the process. They buy the result. We really should be selling them what they want to be sold.

the brand substitution test. If, in some marketing activity—an ad campaign, a viral video, a new product introduction—the brand were replaced by a competitive brand, then that marketing activity should not work as well in the marketplace. A well-positioned brand should be distinctive in its meaning and execution.

But the messaging architecture is only the first step. For every version of the Nest story, we wrote down the most common objections and how we’d overcome them—what stats to use, what pages of the website to send people to, what partnerships to mention or testimonials to point to. We figured out which story we could put on a billboard all the way d

We can examine competition from both an industry and a market point of view.7 An industry is a group of firms offering a product or class of products that are close substitutes for one another. ... Using the market approach, we define competitors as companies that satisfy the same customer need. For example, a customer who buys a word-processing so

Take a position: The best way to position a brand is through a structured approach versus The best way to position a brand is through an unstructured approach.

A person’s emotional response to a brand and its marketing will depend on many factors. An increasingly important one is the brand’s authenticity.29 Brands such as Hershey’s, Kraft, Crayola, Kellogg’s, and Johnson & Johnson that are seen as authentic and genuine can evoke trust, affection, and strong loyalty.

EMOTIONAL BRANDING Many marketing experts believe a brand positioning should have both rational and emotional components. In other words, it should contain points-of-difference and points-of-parity that appeal to both the head and the heart.

Employ a well-integrated set of brand elements. Tactically, it is important for small businesses to maximize the contribution of all types of brand equity drivers. In particular, they should develop a distinctive, well-integrated set of brand elements—brand names, logos, packaging—that enhances both brand awareness and brand image. Brand elements s

Fundamentally, marketing must refocus away from selling product and toward creating relationship. Relationship buffers the shock of change. To be sure, the specific product or service provided remains the fundamental basis for economic exchange, but it must not be treated as the main event. There is simply too much change in this domain for anyone