Friday, February 29, 2008

Branding: Its all about sustainable business future

Ron Shevlin indicate on his blog that a Brand can create awareness, expectations, and even intention, but it doesn't close the sale.
We believe that in some cases the financial departments (bean counters) and management are guilty of trying to measure the short term ROI on branding campaigns but not seeing the big picture. This can create marketers that only play for the short term sales scoreboard. Management must understand that in order to create sustainable business, the brand must be nutured and looked after.

Although the short term sales are an important consideration for management and markerters, the long term and sustainable future of the company must be considered. This implies that branding campaigns must be judged on a longer term and with the emphasis on sustainble business future.

To read more about the ROI on brand vs the value of the brand visit:

http://marketingroi.wordpress.com/2007/08/03/the-roi-on-brand-versus-the-value-of-brand/

Social marketing must conduct with the right staff

Social media marketing must conduct with the right staff, consultants or alliances. This was the findings of recent research conducted by Jeremiah Owyang of Forresters Research. He further identifies two key roles which is needed to conduct successful social marketing campaigns.
The first identified role is a social Computing Strategist. This role basically leads the internal charge.
The second role is the community manager. This role implies that a external customer advocate must be involved in the SMM campaigns.

It is important that these to role work in tandem in order to keep the social communities involved and happy.

South African companies (brands) must embrace these findings and
management must put more emphasis, structure and finance to SMM campaigns

Source:

http://www.forrester.com/Research/Document/Excerpt/0,7211,45127,00.html

Thursday, February 14, 2008

Reasons why South African wine marketers are not embracing Social Media Marketing (SMM)

In the recent past the apparent successes of social network marketing as a wine marketing tool has been highlighted. South African wine marketers are lagging behind the European and American wine brands and I believe that the following are some of the reasons


- Wine marketers deem SMM to be a time consuming marketing tool
- Lack of knowledge of the marketing options available
- Rigid internet sites are the marketer's only presence on the internet. Marketers are not willing to move beyond this strategy/marketing tool
- Marketers live in fear that an uneducated consumer will bad mouth their brand
- Marketers are waiting for other brands to lead the way. Will follow eventually (to late)
- Marketers not have the personnel or knowledge to effectively manage and implement SMM strategies

Wine marketers must accept the challenge and must use specialists(like Bivio Consulting) to promote their brand through SMM.