To establish a premium brand-personal or corporate-in any niche is not an easy job but it is achievable. The first thing to do is to match delivery of expectation beyond what is available as well as manage the experience exceptionally. Consistency is also important. Consistency does not imply rigid attachment to old ways that are not working in today’s environment. There is an urgent need to ‘play it as it lays’ while playing the consistency game.

However, when all is said and done, being the first in audience mind always get twice the long-term attention than number two.

Al Ries suggests –I have added my thoughts also- the followings factors that may guarantee premium value brand.

1. Define your target audience: From onset, define your target audience that your brand will help, serve. Please note the words used: serve and help. If the brand is not ready to serve or help a particular audience-in this regard premium- the brand is already on its way to the gallows.

2. Establish high price value and be ready to walk away: when you have identified the target market, you must establish your premium price and be ready to walk away. The logic is not only on the price but on the value, creating something that the target audience will be willing to pay such premium for.

3. Have a valid highly ‘emotional’ brand story: The brand story must be so compelling and value laden that individuals feel associating with the brand is the best thing that can happen to them.

4. Be in the category where audience will be receptive: A premium brand is not out to serve everyone. Marketing activities of premium brands are not also directed to every jack and jerry. It is focused on those who can afford it. Particularly those who are not very price sensitive but value-driven. I remembered some years ago while I was sharing with a friend why I would not buy a particular kind of auto. My major reason was its level of fuel efficiency. The reply I got set me thinking. He said ‘I never thought along that line as long as the auto can satisfy my curiosity, needs, I will go for it’. Unlike me, as long as he could afford it, he goes for anything.

5. Have the perceived value: perceive value is important in premium brand. You may not have to be the best, exceptionally good; all that your target audience needs is that you have a perceived higher value delivery than the average brands in the market or in your niche. What do you think of Jaguar, Lexus, Richard Bradson, Oprah Winfrey and Queen Lateefat etc.

Please do remember ‘premiumship’ is not a game for the boys, otherwise they may starve to death. So get your game plan right.

We have established that sitting on the fence when it comes to conversation marketing today is dangerous. It is like taking a position in the middle of a highway road. I do understand that for some, it appears we are speaking a foreign language with all the terms we are using here such as web 2.0, conversation marketing etc. because of these set of people, I hereby give my opinion and what those terms translate to in a lay man’s language as well as make open what the rules of the game are. Like we have established, conversational marketing takes place on the web. Interestingly the web has moved from web 1.0 for beginners to web 2.0. To add insult to injury for many, web 3.0 is around the corner in the western world. This requires that those of us here must quickly update our knowledge as fast as possible so we can play in the big league. I must say I am not a web savvy individual neither do I study science related course in the university, my passion is only on how brands can take advantages made available to harness visibility and relevance. This I have being doing in the past three years before I start talking about it today. Not to worry, individuals out there will not need three years period to learn, all you need do is to closely follow issues here and drop comment if you do not understand anything. So to be a player in this game, take note of the following as brand owner or a brand.

1. Have basic knowledge of the internet: You do not need to be a guru. I am not one. There are things I wish I know that I do not know.

2. Understand your brand, business and its users.

3. Be keenly interested in your niche and listen to the conversation going on around the world.

4. Develop a strategy to partake. This will help you to measure results.

5. Delegate responsibility: you either get involve –personal brand, or delegate responsibility as corporate brand owner. Get a social media consultant or community manager as it is called now. If you can not get any, send your people to us for training. It pays greater dividends.

6. Utilize integrated social media method: There are great numbers out there i.e. forums, social network, ding, discussion group, blogs. These require adequate training to get best results.

 On the last note, do not enter conversation as a marketer delivering a sales pitch, it will boomerang. People do not like to be sold to. Learn to respect privacy terms too. 

Conversation marketing is the new way of marketing. The old structure of pushing out information is dying. Marketing today takes place at the discussion level. Is your brand there yet? It is true that joining the conversation as a brand owner may be technical, but rightful application of conversation marketing tools and web 2.0 help brand to look outward and found the conversation that are relevant to build important business relationship.

The mistake I have noted many make is that many want to join the conversation in a reactive instead of proactive manner. Let us examine some of the advantages accruable to being a conversation marketer.

1. Conversation marketing helps brand’s Public relations and customer service: go find out, people feel at home with someone they have interacted with before than a total stranger.

2. Conversation Marketing helps build relationship: Brand’s relationship ties become stronger with the stakeholders when it engages in conversation with them.

3. It creates enthusiasm among peers: Conversation marketing creates eagerness, passion for more, zeal to help among the stakeholders.

4. It instills customer loyalty: Customers feel more at home with your brand and believe they own you.

5. It increases trust and corporate memory: Through interaction, corporate brands can recall customers’ comment and complaints and have good understanding of how to deal with such customers in the future.

6. Conversation marketing helps customers to make informed decision that is not spurious.

As brand owners or the brand itself (Personal Branding), it should be a concern to us to build a lasting brand that does not fizzle out before its time. In Africa, very few corporate brands have crossed the two hundred years of existence. Meanwhile, we have up to seven hundred years corporate brands in western world.

This has usually being a source of concern to me as an individual and that is one of the reasons for the creation of this webblog.

I do strongly agree with Charles Darwin’s position when he wrote ‘it is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but one most responsible to change’. Charles made some salient points about what determines the survival of any brand. The key words he mentioned were responsiveness to change.

Few brands that have survived hundreds of year are not rigid in approach to issues neither are they strongly attached or controlled by the family of the founders alone. Some of the factors that made age-long brands last are discussed below.

1. Financial conservativeness: most of them are very prudent in the use of financial resources. Decisions on what to spend on what are not at the caprices of few who spend at will just to show off. But financial decisions are based on sound, proven ethics.

2. Sensitivity to the environment: they have their arsenals, radars positioned to comb the environments 24/7.They also act as fast as possible to the feedbacks gotten from environmental monitoring.

3. Strong identity awareness and promotion: every brand has an identity or cultural values in terms of location, culture and their visuals. Most use this to their advantage and promote their traditional values, culture everywhere.  

4. Vulnerable/tolerance of new ideas: Build to last brands are always open to new ideas. They are not afraid of taking calculated risks.

5. Value people: People are the major assets of any build to last brands. So it is not uncommon for some of their staffs to have become part owners of the business. Strong system or not, they are ‘raiser and not users’ of men.

6. Learning culture: Build to last brands place premium on improving the skills of their people. They do not fire people who are good but who made a mistake of judgment once.

Let us weigh our brands’ behavior against these parameter and we can determine the future of the brands with what score we get.

Most people who succeed in life have been traceable to great ideas or what I will call brands. The issue is that they do not need to be the originator of the ideas-though if they are it can be great. Psychologists say that tens of thousands of ideas pass through our thoughts every day.

Most times, when we are confronted with challenges that require urgent solutions, we do not trust ourselves to the level that we can actually solve the problem without a recourse to external help. We will all need help at a point in our lives, but there are times we need to sit down with ourselves and come out with solutions. Most solutions to great problems are always within. To get the best from our ideas or to build a strong brand, the foundation of the idea/brand is important. Do not rush out with your idea without the necessary ingredients that you need to put in. Let me give little advice on how to get the best out of your own idea.

1. Start listening to yourself: when there is an issue to resolve or you intend to start something, begin to listen to yourself first. I do know that negative suggestions of how it can not be done will race through your mind. But tune in to those positive thoughts and write all of them down.

2. Continue the brainstorming: before you make any judgment of all the ideas that are racing through your mind, pen them down and allow all to run their courses. Its not time to slaughter any idea.

3. Prune, focus: Now its time to prune and focus the idea. I suggest you leave the ideas written down for about an hour if you still have the time. If not begin to ask thoughtful questions about all the ideas written down. Which one of them will work well in the present situation? Who can you know call to give you inputs? At this stage, just begin to come out with some focused ideas that are likely to ‘gel’.

4. Sharpen your idea on paper: At this level, there is need to sharpen the idea on paper before you rush to town with it. Do everything you can to make it look exactly the way it will be physically and ensure you have a strategy that you will follow while going on your way.

5. Act:This is the time to make it work. This is the time to sweat and make something out of the idea. Your ideas will work. Give it all it takes.Do remember that sometimes not all ideas will work out, but one thing is sure, you will be able to beat your chest that you have given it all your efforts.

Getting new business is becoming a great issue in this recession time. Many hurdles are now on the way. Many have depended on referrals and old clients without tilling new grounds. Yes, new business development can be daunting, challenging but with adequate knowledge, planning, persistence, determination; some can still build new opportunities because this season also throw up new opportunities as much as the reality of the harsh, biting environment. That is if one knows how.

The following will help individuals, corporate organizations to win new businesses in this season.

1. Timely intervention: Ability to show up with right product/service per time is really important. This is possible if you are really close to your customer and you are involved in ongoing research of your niche market. Active listening to your environment will help in no small way in ‘guaranteeing’ that you will always have an answer to your niche market. Listen to the yearnings of your target audience and come up with a creative idea to solve these demands will help you in no small measure. Developing new business requires you take new initiatives and being ready to take opportunities when its available.

2. Show it: Before you can get new business, you must be able to proof that you can handle it. Be convincing, forceful in your approach. Being forceful does not mean you are brutal. Branding world is a game of war. You are always in the war room. Give the target the reason to believe you. Let the audience note you understand their problems and the solution is in your kitty. Let your message shatter any resistance.

3. Seamless communications: This is where many miss the opportunity for a new deal. Their messages are not consistence with the promise of value. Their brand environment gives room for doubt. If you say you are rich and will not need customers’ money to live, let it be visible in what your associates, employees wear to meet client. Opportunities still fall on people’s lap, if the laps are well-positioned. You will get yours. Its weekend, use the time and holiday to think through your strategy.

As we get close to the end of 2008, its time to take stock and make projection. Part of my plan is to go over Rajesh setty’s book Beyond Code again. Aside from the fact that this young man’s life is an inspiration, this book is a bomb. Rajesh is an info entrepreneur who had written not less than six books before he was 16.I will be sharing some of his thoughts in this book today.

For everyone, he advised that there is need for personal process re-engineering. As corporate organizations are involved in re-engineering, individual must also examine his own process and re-engineer them.

Re-engineering as defined by an online dictionary ‘is the radical redesign of business processes and organizational structure in order to achieve significant improvements in performance.

We all have different relationships that we maintained. These includes relationships with a boss, client, family, co-workers, friends, others. All these take our valuable time but they are all essential relationships to keep. The ability to re-engineer and give priority to those that matter is an issue. Note the followings:

1. Why are you keeping the relationships: answer this with all sincerity, because it can help to place proper priority.

2. Establish rules: What are the rules that guide each relationship. Do not mix them up. What roles are you supposed to play?

3. Know where you are: where are you now in the scheme of things?

I strongly suggest that you buy this book as you prepare for next year. I also learnt that Rajesh Setty gave this book away free in the last two weeks, you may want to check if this is still available for download on his site: http://blog.lifebeyondcode.com