Why
Should a Tech Company Care About Branding?
(This
article was contributed by Farida Fotouhi, CEO, FA2/Fotouhi
Alonso, and speaker at the January 16 and 17
Larta
University workshop, Attacking
the Market: Marketing and Selling Your Product.)
Isn't
branding just for consumer marketers? Why care about branding
when you
have a kick-butt technology that speaks for itself? Well,
people don't just
buy products. They buy brands. A brand is more than just
functional
attributes, it's a sum of the experiences people have of
your product and
what they take away from these experiences. Whether they're
checking you out
on your website, or sitting through a one-on-one demo. Brand
perception is
one of the key factors that determines whether someone will
purchase your
technological product or not.
One
of the biggest mistakes technology companies make is to
focus at
length on functional attributes, describing in great detail
the robustness,
the breadth of functionality, the layers, the depth of design--going
on, and
on, and on. How many times have you listened for a half
hour to a
description of a tech company or product, and ended up wondering,
"What do
those guys do, again?" If your brand stands for a better
way to do
something, making "the alternative" obsolete,
you need to be clirect about
it. Simple, even. Your value proposition needs to be clear
and memorable.
Another
common tech company mistake is to forget about the emotional
issues involved in the purchase decision. What pain is your
prospect experiencing, and how will your product relieve
this pain? How does your target audience
like to feel when they make this kind of purchase? What
kinds of feelings do you want to evoke when someone visits
your website or reviews your brochure? If
it looks dull and reads like a spec sheet, you are saying
something about your brand whether you like it or not. You
are not getting people emotionally involved with your product.
You may even be confusing them, which isn't good for a product
that's supposed to be simplifying their
lives. On the other hand, if your communication is gratuitously
high-tech and flashy, without expressing a clear benefit,
you create an immediate distance between your brand and
your prospect.
A
reality-based brand platform comes out of insights into
three key realities: what customers care about, who you
really are, and your true
difference. (from your direct competition, and from the
"legacy alternative".) When you nail the right
brand platform and express this principle (and personality)
in everything you do, from sales presentations to websites
to how you interact with customers, you not only speed up
the
process of consideration and purchase. You build a relationship
with your brand, going beyond the purely functional and
logical into even more
powerful motivators.
 |
January
16 & 17:
Attacking the Market: Marketing and Selling Your Product
A
business can fail or flourish depending on how well its
product is marketed. Effective marketing is about establishing,
building or protecting an organization's reputation through
partnerships, the recruiting of talented professionals and
effective strategies that make a product stand out. This
workshop covers publicity and marketing strategies, from
brand placement to consumer contact, to creative alliances.
Featured speakers include: Farida Fotouhi, FA2 Alonso and
Associates, Tracey Williams, Casey Sayre and Williams, and
Grey DeFevre of Grubb and Ellis.
click
here for more information on this workshop and other 2002
Larta University sessions
Farida
Fotouhi is the CEO of FA2/Fotouhi
Alonso, a marketing consulting, creative services, and
advertising agency that has been in business for over 20
years.
Farida
has been developing marketing communications strategies
for technology companies since the 1980's, when she contributed
to the success of novel concepts such as the disk drive,
the answering machine, robotic vision for manufacturing,
and the digital cell phone. She has created and implemented
integrated marketing programs for clients in a broad range
of categories from entertainment (FX Networks, Warner Bros)
to packaged goods (Mocha Mix, Wolfgang Puck Pizza), to automotive
(Honda) to telecommunications (PacBell). Current technology
clients include hardware, software, and internet-based companies.
