#3 Let’s conquer the business triplet — branding, marketing, and selling
From when you realize that they are different…
Hi!
It has been 2 months I guess since Indonesia started implementing work from home because of COVID-19. I hope that it will over very soon so we all can do our daily life normally as we did before. I am going to continue sharing about marketing, as I have posted before on the #2 post. I am kind of feel unproductive right now (well, surely most of the time hehe) and I feel like the urge to write. BUT this time I am going to write it in English *horn sound* because I also need to improve my English. Thus, if you have any criticism or suggestion about this post feel free to tell me!
Alright let’s get started. So as the title said, what do you think about branding, marketing, and selling? Are they the same? or do you think that they are probably different?
When I first learned about marketing, I thought that they are the same as something that has the same position. BUT it turns out to be different, completely different. Why is that?
I learned it about 2 weeks ago from Pak Subiakto, one of Indonesian greatest branding specialists. Do you know Indomie or Kopiko? He is the man behind those viral brands. He said that branding, marketing, and selling are different. They are not in the same position and they have their own objective.
To make it clear, let’s think about a business. My business is about vegetable chips. The objective of my business is to make our brand viral and in the end we will get the amount of revenue, which iIthink what the business is all about. How do I manage to achieve the objectives? Let’s back to the diagram above.
- Marketing
I will not discuss it more deeply yet you can read my second post about basic marketing to get a glimpse of what marketing is all about.
Alright, simply in this step you are about to prepare your product to fit the market (Remember about the concept of marketing). Business is coming up from a problem and your business may want to find the solution to the problem. As for that, you need to do market research >> interpret the data>>planning>>execute. In addition, you also need to consider the distribution of your product and how much it will cost so that the customer has a willingness to buy it.
Yes, marketing is where you build awareness about your product and how to make the people want your product so badly. As for my business, I start to make something that is simple that can increase people’s vegetable intake. People are actually too lazy to eat vegetables (tho they like it) because it takes time to buy and cook the vegetable until it is ready to be eaten. They also more like to eat snacks while doing activities. So my team thinks that by making the vegetable are simple and eat-to-go, we can help people on their vegetable intake.
So when I tried marketing the product I always said that my product is plant-based and eat-to-go that you can always eat it anytime and everywhere. This value is actually what you need to market your product.
2. Branding
Let’s move on to branding your business. Before you do this step, you need to define your Brand DNA. *what is that? is it some kind like living things’ DNA or something?*. YES! we know that DNA is something which defines who we are like black hair, brown eyes, our basic personality and the most interesting thing is we, living things, do not have EXACTLY the same DNA on each of us. Unique.
So does the Brand DNA.
Brand DNA will tell you about your very basic identity of the brand. As for my business, the DNA is about vegetables and simplifying. You need to define it first so you’ll know how branding your brand. Furthermore, you need to be empathetic to the people (your probably future customer). Empathy means trying to understand the people, who are they, what they want, need, think, or even their daily routine, which will lead you to develop a further branding strategy.
Let’s take a bit closer to Starbucks. This brand is huge and one of the highly successful brand. You know why? it is because Starbucks was trying to empathize with the people. Back then, they only just a usual coffee shop. But then they realize that they need to change to make their brand huge. That way, they tried to think about what people need and how their daily routine. From what they have got, the people actually needed a place just to relax, hanging out, or even doing their job beside home and office (Because it is boring). With that information, they combine it with their Brand DNA which is selling the best coffee (more or less). They did not change their DNA but they did change the people’s perspective about the brand.
“How can my brand getting known by the people?”
“How can the people remember it?”
That is where the branding works on. To get your brand getting into the evoke list of the people. Evoke list is a list of something that lays inside your mind and somehow you remember it, unconsciously. For example when someone said handphone a list will pop-up on your mind about the brand that correlated with the keyword, like Apple, Samsung, Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, etc. By being able to get your brand to people’s minds, you will definitely get into the evoke list.
What you can do to make it happens is connecting your brand with people routine (habit) as I mentioned before. When you look at Starbucks, they connected their brand (selling coffee) with the people’s habit (drink coffee while working). Whilst my brand (vegetable chips) are trying to connect with people’s habit of eating vegetables and eat a snack while doing some activity. You do you with your brand.
3. Selling
On this step, your objective is to sell the product. You try to build people’s perspectives in order to have a willingness to buy the product. Everyone has its own strategy(s) on doing this step. Still, there are some words that most people use in this step.
- New
- Bonus
- Discount
- Cashback
Obviously those words have the energy to introduce your product and make people curious about it. Many researchers said that people seek pleasure and avoid pain. Those words are actually a stimulus for people to act and making decisions. With the ability to use those words correctly, there is no doubt that you will increase your sales.
The “new” word can be described as dopamine which will make people feel as they are being rewarded or having the pleasure. You may see that people who bought the newest iPhone surely feel happy about it. So you can add such as new flavor, variant, product, feature, or else in your selling strategy. The “new” word also can be the thing that distinguishes your product from the other.
Discount, bonus, and cashback are also a stimulus that has a period of time, which convinces you not to miss it. The anticipation of not missing it is actually the way to avoid “pain”. Some of you may think that it does not surely work because maybe you are not using it properly. Let’s say that if there are two ways of telling about the discount, the first one is 40% off and the other one is 25%+20% off. People tend to buy on the second way even though it is actually the same amount of discount. Or maybe you can do it as the promotion below.
The use of psychology in business especially for marketing and selling is very important because you are the representative of the business that directly communicates with the customer. There is no need to understand deeply the psychology of human but you do need to reflect yourself as a customer and always try.
So, how is it? Still confuse or you have already got the point about branding, marketing, and selling? the outline of this post is actually telling you about the three inseparable business processes which are directly customer-related. It is up to you to choose which process you will do first. But just to remind you that marketing and selling are processes within a certain period of time while branding is a lifetime process.
If you have got the differences between those three, you can apply it now on your business and do not forget to always empathize with the customers because they are the core of your business. It is the end of this post. If you want to discuss more or have anything to ask, feel free to write it down in the comment section. Thank you and see you in the next post!
