123 eGuides

1 Minute Advice: What You Must Know About Marketing to Businesses

If you market products or services to businesses, you need to know this information

- Primary prospect’s job title

- Primary prospect’s job responsibility

- Company name, size, type, business segment, and location (these elements are sometimes called “firmographics”)

- Primary Buyer vs. Buying Influencers (In the business market, buying influencers can be very important in making the final purchasing decision. Influencers could include the primary buyer’s manager, direct reports, colleagues in the same department or division, colleagues in different departments or divisions, corporate purchasing managers, and so on.)

- Company’s purchasing cycle (Again, this is a key factor in the business market. Many companies operate on budgets which permit them to buy certain items only at certain times of the year. Typically, purchasing coincides with a company’s fiscal quarter or fiscal year, but every company may be different, which adds to the complexity of the purchasing decision.)

- If your product is marketed outside the United States, issues related to globalization, such as language, culture, and international trade concerns should be considered; in some cases, regional differences within the United States might also be a consideration.

When you market to businesses, don’t overlook the SOHO market (Small Office Home Office). One of the fastest growing segments of the business market, especially in this economy, is people who start their own businesses and work in a very small office or at home. Depending on the product or service you market, this audience could have potential for you.

1 Minute Advice: Naming Your Product

Here are some of the key attributes of a successful product brand name:

Memorable

Your brand name should be a name that attracts and holds the attention of your target audience. This can be accomplished in a number of ways, as in the consistent naming of a product line (Apple’s “i” products, such as iMac, iPod, iPhone, and iPad), alliteration (American Automobile Association, Dunkin’ Donuts, Frosted Flakes), and rhymes or word play (Band-Aid, Kleenex, Reese’s Pieces).

Meaningful

Your brand name should reflect a key product feature or compelling benefit; for example: Constant Comment Tea, 5 Hour Energy, Herbal Essence, Hershey’s Kisses, Mr. Clean, Post-It Notes.

Unique

It is increasingly difficult to come up with a unique product name, because there are tens of thousands of them, but you should strive for something that makes the name stand apart from competitors. The name might be:

- a brand new word (Gatorade)

- a different spelling for a common word (Trix)

- two words combined to make a single name (Duracell)

- or some other “form factor” that makes it unique.

Also consider a name that can be used in a unique URL (www.duracell.com), since more and more, the Internet plays a crucial role in brand marketing.

Naming a product isn’t necessarily an easy task. Take a look at the pharmaceutical industry and you’ll see a lot of examples of brand names gone wrong. This is largely because the industry is heavily regulated and is not allowed to make promissory claims in its brand names. But some of the brand names are meaningless and have nothing to do with the actual product or what condition it treats. Use this as a lesson for what not to do when you name your product.

1 Minute Advice: Basic Sources of Market Research

Whether you're doing market research on behalf of a brand or a product or service, there are basic sources of information you can access, most of which are available online:

1. Online search

Entering the appropriate search terms (keywords) into Google, Bing, Yahoo! or other search engines will very quickly reveal sources of information. The “Google Keyword Tool, helps advertisers fine tune their keywords for advertising purposes using Google’s AdWords, but it can also be used for market research. The tool  analyzes a keyword by competitive keywords and indicates the number of monthly searches on keywords on both a local and global basis.

2. Government information

A wealth of information is available from federal, state and local government sources, most of which can be accessed online. The federal government alone is an enormously valuable source of information. The easiest way to access federal government information is through specialized search engines such as:

USA Search, the official U.S. search engine - http://search.usa.gov/
The U.S. Dept. of Commerce gateway to government information - http://www.fedworld.gov/index.html
U. S. government science information - http://www.science.gov/

3. Business organizations and associations

Various business organizations make valuable market research information available online. Local Chambers of Commerce and state and city Visitors and Convention Bureaus are useful sources, as are trade and professional organizations and associations.

4. Publications, websites and other online information

Increasingly, newspapers, magazines and journals have migrated their information online, and in many cases you can sign up without charge to access articles. Get information about competitors competitors from their websites and Facebook pages. Pay particular attention to the information a competitor provides to investors. Also look in the newsroom or media section of their websites to gain awareness of new product announcements and product enhancements.

5. Libraries

Libraries continue to be an excellent source for two reasons. First, they provide access to research sources in the form of directories and book collections that might be otherwise prohibitively expensive. Second, they can provide additional sources of online information that might not be commonly available, such as paid subscriptions to scholarly journals or information services.