Marketing Ground Zero has moved to a new location on our website. Please visit our new Marketing Blog for a variety of articles about our work in branding, traditional marketing, and online marketing (including seo, social media and online advertising).

And so it goes with marketing. Which brings me back to my Marketing 101 class in college and one of the most important P’s of marketing: Product.

As obvious as it seems, it’s easy to forget while we’re all chasing social media, SEO, email campaigns, etc. etc. etc. that great marketing begins with product. I’ve been thinking alot about this lately. When you start with a bad product, the rest of your marketing become a complex effort of smoke and mirrors to distract from your product’s downfalls or present an image that is not a reality
Abra has been fortunate in that we work with clients who really have great products and services. This makes for really exciting marketing because when you start with a great product, marketing becomes a process of peeling back the layers between your prospects and your product to reveal all the great things it has to offer.

When you have a great story to tell, the challenge is finding unique ways to get the complete story to your audience. This past year, this has lead us to explore new marketing opportunities that allow us to tell more of our clients’ stories – to really get into the ‘layers’ of who they are and what they have to offer. Of course we’re still driving our efforts with traditional media and online efforts, but expanded messages have included a half-hour show on local tv, a feature on In View with Larry King, and even creating a short documentary film.

So start with Product:
Do you really have a great product?
What do people love about your product?
What are its shortcomings? How can you fix them?

Ask yourself: When my customers are talking to people about us, what are they saying? Are you happy with what the answer would be? If not, map out what you need to do to fix it.

With social media and online review venues, this is more important than ever. We all know people are more likely to complain than compliment. And now that feedback is going out to hundreds or thousands or even many more people AND staying there online for years to come.

So before you plan your next campaign, look at your product. If it’s broken, hopefully you’ll be able to fix it. If you’ve got a great product, focus on what people really love about it and that will help you design a better campaign as well.

Abra is a partnered in a number of start-ups, providing our expertise in branding, marketing, and web development. It’s really exciting to be a part of a complete project like this where we get to be involved in every facet of seeing an idea go from literally notes on a napkin to – in some cases – actually profitable online businesses.

One of these projects is an online photo and video-sharing website called FamilyBook.

One of the partners had shared the site with some potential new users and received a laundry list of new features they thought should be added to the site.

Below is my response. I think this will also give insight into anyone taking a look at their own brand.

When running a project like FamilyBook, all sorts of suggestions from users will come in.

Once we have clear answers to these questions, we’ll have a stronger message to promote the site and also assess how it should evolve.

The campaign was designed to break through with unique images of flowers actually taken using the mammography equipment at MD Imaging.

The message and imagery encourage the audience to look at mammography and their own health choices differently.

The campaign started with online ads that linked to a special page showcasing the Mammography Flowers on MD Imaging’s website.

Abra Marketing also created a YouTube video version of the presentation and has been promoting the page and YouTube video through social media.

We are currently developing a tv commercial to begin airing in October 2011.

At Abra Marketing, we’ve developed company or business Naming as part of our range of marketing services. Although we got into naming somewhat by accident, it’s one of the most important services we provide our clients. Before you start any major marketing campaigns – and if you are starting a new business – take the time to look closely at your company name. The right name can make a world of difference when building your business empire.

How We Got into Naming
So first, a quick history on how Abra got into naming businesses for better marketing. Up in Redding, California where we were based for many years, you run into the typical naming approach for area businesses: selecting a name based on the city/region.

So you have:

• Redding Driving School
• Shasta Driving School
• Redding Eyecare
• Shasta Eyecare
• Redding Orthopedics
• Shasta Orthopaedics (not a typo – they prefer the ‘ae’ spelling)

I’m sure you see the problem here.

Regional names are generic. There is nothing really unique for customers to grab onto when remembering your company. The every day result of this is the common story I hear from these companies: they get constantly get calls from people confusing them with their competition. I guess that’s good, except the same thing is happening the other way around. These are companies that have been around for years, working hard to provide quality services and a good reputation, spending a lot of money on advertising, all to the effect that customers and potential customers can’t differentiate you from your competition.

So Abra entered the arena of Naming as a marketing strategy to help companies with the regional name dilemma. However, the more we got into naming, the more I became hooked on how essential the right name to any business’s marketing strategy.

Your Name is the Anchor for All Branding and Marketing Efforts

The goal of a name is simple: to provide customers and prospects a word they will use to identify and remember your company.

Ineffective names occur when people do not understand the purpose of the name. A common mistake is when the name is misused to try to tell other parts of the branding, for example telling where you are located or what you do.

For example:
• Northern Diagnostic Pathology
• Cancer Care Consultants
• Redding Sleep Center

To correctly develop our name and branding, our first step is to understand the Parts of the Brand:

Name – anchor for all branding
Tagline – how you want people to remember you
Positioning Statement – briefly tells what you do and how you are different (why do your customers need you and choose you over the competition)
Marketing (sales, advertising, public relations, etc.) – communicates the details

So knowing that the Tagline, Positioning Statement, and Marketing will handle most of the details of building our brand, let’s get down to the work of developing a strong name.

Qualities of a Strong Company Name
• Short
• Unique, Easy to Remember
• Non-Generic (regional)
• Your Name Should Be Your Nickname
• Captures an Essence of Your Company

As you can see, our biggest goal with a name is to give customers and potential customers something very unique and simple to make it as easy to remember our company as possible. We give them a strong anchor and then we can begin the work of attaching the giant ship that will hold in their minds everything our brand offers. Without the solid anchor, everything in the ship is adrift at sea.

Naming is not easy. The hard work is coming up with something that meets the first 4 bullets while strongly nailing the last item.

Your Name Should Be Your Nickname
I’m sure you get the first few qualities on the list. Yes, short and easy to remember. Related to that is ‘Your Name Should Be Your Nickname.’ It is our nature to simplify things, to give nicknames to things that have longer names. We do it at home. We do it at work.

If you don’t choose a name that is short enough, people will come up with a nickname for you. So a good goal is to choose a name that will be short enough to be your nickname, instead of leaving it to the masses to come up with one for you.

A good example is Federal Express becoming FedEx. And Government Employees Insurance Company becoming GEICO.

Your Name Captures an Essence of Your Company
This is the really hard part. Again, we don’t want our name to tell exactly what we do, but ideally there should be something about it that hints at the qualities of your company. Something that begins the conversation of what you are about. This part can be very hard to define, but once we hit the right name it’s usually pretty obvious to us and our clients that we are there.

Here are some sample company names Abra has developed:

Abra
Marketing

Aleva
Medical Exams

Avenew
Senior Move Managers

Goalvana
Online Goal Setting App

Iron Burger
Deluxe Burger Joint

Petrific
Online Pet Health Records

Pulmedica
Pulmonary Medical Group

Resta
Sleep Center

Saablime
Website for Saab Automobile Enthusiasts

Solace
Cancer Care
(formerly Cancer Care Consultants – talk about generic!)

I hope this article has helped you. Here’s what I find rewarding working with clients to help name their business: as we get into the process, while there will not always be agreement on the concepts, at least we are all discussing the effectiveness of each idea based on the concepts above, instead of “I like this name” or “I like the way this sounds.” They start to understand what a company name needs to do as well as have that special connection for the business owner/manager that captures what your company is about.It is essential that naming your company includes both science AND art.

Not sure about your company name?
Call me (530-246-8000). I’m happy to give anyone a free, 5-minute name assessment.

I’ve developed this list over the years based on the foundation I learned in Marketing 101 in college which taught 5 P’s.

I’ll be coming back to this list with further definitions and examples from our work in the marketing arena.

Abra Online Marketing is located at AbraMarketing.com.