Innovation on the Cannonball platform
Enso Consultancy have continued investing in innovation on our world leading, direct electronic marketing platform with an exciting new version of Cannonball to be announced in the very near future. What is Cannonball you ask? Check out the buzz here.

There are two key things you can do for your business.

Don’t stop marketing!
Appreciate your clients!

Let’s look at the first point. Most businesses forget to plan for hard times, so often when facing financial uncertainty the first budgets to be slashed are for advertising and marketing. However, this is the time to possibly increase funding to take advantage of ‘distressed’ advertising – basically advertising space that isn’t being used or has been abandoned by another party at the eleventh hour. You will often be able to pick up heavily discounted ad space in various vehicles appropriate for your business, and the door is open for negotiation. Christine Tutone, CEO for ‘Ad it Last’ – a business based on finding and selling distressed advertising to small and medium businesses in Australia and the US – says distressed ads sell for approximately 40% off the normal rates.

Keeping your brand name visible in the market during these times may give you that extra edge over your competition. It may enable you to achieve that 2% growth to bring your business just ahead of other businesses in your industry. By advertising your brand/product you provide the perception to the marketplace that your business is still strong despite the market downturn. Potential clients will remember your name if there is no one else promoting themselves during this time.

Which brings me to the second point – clients! As much as gaining new clients is extremely important to your business (and to reassure yourselves your business is growing), there is a lot to be said for treasuring your existing clients. You need to make your existing clients feel extra special and reinforce their value to your business – perhaps providing them with some kind of reward if they refer a friend to your business. This is an effective low-cost marketing strategy. You can draw greater value from your existing clients by providing incentives for repeat business – after all, I think we would all agree that a high percentage of our business earnings come from repeat business. You could set up a loyalty program, or offer a quicker turnaround for jobs completed during quieter times of business. You can also reinforce the quality of your service or product and distinguish your business from your competitors via direct mail or email campaign.

Adopting these low-cost ideas will assist your business to weather the economic storm, and hopefully provide an edge over your competitors.

One example of an emerging service that has its roots as a product, and is rapidly changing an industry, is Software as a Service (SaaS). Previously, companies had to purchase a piece of software and install it on their machines. Now several catagories of software are available as services where they are installed and maintained on the vendors equipment and run as rich internet applications.
In many cases it changes the way the software is sold, purchased and the relationship between supplier and client. Enso Consultancy’s own innovative Cannonball platform is a prime example of SaaS.

I believe on a practical level that services marketing is the ‘new marketing’ that will inform marketing practice as a whole. It’s about selling the experience or the promise of an improved condition of the customer and can be applied equally to products and services. There is certainly a lessening requirement to distinguish products and services marketing as unique categories. Indeed many products are becoming customised or heterogeneous (such as NIKEiD ), and it is often the intangible qualities of a product that becomes the focus of its marketing. Product marketing has followed services in attempting to establish an ongoing relationship with the customer, one that begins before the product is sold, and continues afterwards. In many cases the product comes with an ongoing service such as support, training or membership to a club of some sort. A great example of this is the Brisbane Lexus dealership. Lexus of Brisbane offers purchasers membership to the Lexus Owners Club with benefits and privileges such as gymnasium, Perisian arcade, billiard room, lounge, boardroom and of course car servicing all within the car dealership’s facilities. Where does one draw the line between the product and the service, the tangible and the intangible?

So, if services marketing is the ‘new marketing’, and IHIP is out the window, what are the emerging ideas that may give us a hint into innovative marketing of the future? Three areas I believe are important considerations in any modern services marketing strategy are value creation, customer centricity and co-creation. Without getting into too much detail, following are 6 practical initiatives which focus on these ideas.

1. Reconsider your marketing to be a service in itself.
   That’s right, your marketing initiatives can be treated as, and become a service for your current and prospective clients. This is a service you provide to them free of charge, and becomes the first stage of the value chain that involves the client. Your marketing efforts should be focused on providing value before any service engagement is made. Simple examples of this are information services (email newsletters, mail-outs), free evaluations / consultation or online resources or entertainment. This form of marketing is pull centric rather than push centric as it draws people with the value it provides.
2. Consider whether you could provide value to clients through your client network.
   If interactions and networking amongst your clients would provide the opportunity for them to extract value from each other, how could you could best facilitate these interactions using your brand as an umbrella. Possible examples include developing an online community or hosting events and functions or providing membership to a club.
3. Consider opportunities for co-creation of marketing through fostering active brand advocacy.
   How could your clients participate as co-creaters of marketing initiatives or even products and services themselves. Co-creation focuses on the customers experiences and derives value for both parties through the relationship formed between the supplier and consumer. The consumer, through involvement (either actively or passively) becomes a great advocate for the brand. An example of a co-created product and service is SugarCRM, in which users around the world create their own customisations specific to their needs, and sometimes this innovation is fed back into the core product and hosted service.
4. Embrace web 2.0 methodologies.
   Web 2.0 facilitates an online relationship and conversation with your customers. The technologies allow you to give your customers a voice and can be an economical platform upon which to facilitate user generated content and co-create value. Check out the article on Web 2.0: A New Dimension in Brand Marketing.
5. Implement a CRM program.
   Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a not software system, it’s a customer centric approach to business. It often involves maintaining intimate knowledge of individual customers, analysing this information and feeding it back to every stage of the marketing and sales process chain. A CRM approach helps you focus the business around the needs of the customer and tailor individual marketing and communication pieces. In modern marketing where relationships are important, CRM is a valuable approach.
6. Build an innovative brand.
   A brand is one of the most valuable assets a services organisation can develop. It is a platform that informs everything an organisation does, from the services they offer, to the client interaction. A brand is the customers’ perception of the values, personality and the quality of an organisations products or services. Innovative brand building and management for a service organisation needs to consider the clients role in their brand, after all, a brand is not what you say it is, it’s what they say it is.

Every designed object arises out of a brand, a system of ideas, motivations, objects, actions, events and goals. The thing that gives design its particular power is the fact that it’s derived from the motive, mission, strategy, market position, product design, distribution and corporate culture of a company.

Design is the sole point of contact between a potential customer and a company. Until a person decides to engage with the organisation, design is all they see, all they know, and they have to relate to. And that makes it very important.

Any brand that is serious has a lifestyle, an opinion, a culture, an attitude – or all of these things – associated with it. One of the primary jobs of a designer is to translate that concept into a communicative look and feel. This message may be complicated, however, through a professional designers employment of semiotic language, the message will speak loud and clear to the target audience. An effective piece of branding collateral immediately perceives the core message that embodies the brand simply by seeing the design. Design therefore functions as bridge between a customer and a company. Get the design wrong, and the bridge wont reach the consumers on the other side.

For an individual, brands are a perception. Bonds is a brand. Many people perceive Bonds as providing quality products for affordable prices; others perceive Bonds as iconically Australian. These are just two of the perceptions that make up the Bonds brand.

Visual elements of a brand such as logo, colour, typography, taglines, imagery and packaging are all triggers for these perceptions. When making purchasing decisions, these perceptions come into play. For example if a consumer has the perception that Bonds singlets are good quality and value for money, the Bonds logo and branded appearance of the product act as stimulation in their purchasing decision.

Loyalty to a brand stems from a solid visual style and language consistently implemented across all marketing materials. Consistency with a brand leads to a comfort zone for the consumer. Through familiarity of the brand and the values encapsulated in its visual identity, as well as delivery on these perceptions, trust will grow in the brand.

Neglect to utilise professional designers in your branding strategy could prove detrimental to your businesses success. Think about it – a business that uses inferior graphic tools from cheap online logo generators or clip art logo packages says nothing of the business and its values and subsequently will create the wrong impression in the eyes of the target customer. Visual communication is more often than not the first form of communication. And to successfully connect to the target audience, the brands message needs to be understood effortlessly through the visual language of all of its material.

It can therefore be said that investment in a professional designer can pay high dividends when it comes to design and branding issues.