Branding & Other Marketing Concepts

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Branding & Other Marketing Concepts

Branding
Branding gives greater meaning to a company's name and its products. Through effective emotional appeals and market messages, your business can help the market identify your brand and differentiate it from competitors based on benefits such as better quality, services or tools. Companies build brands using memorable names, symbols such as logos and other images and phrases. Catchy slogans, for instance, sometimes become strongly connected to your brand so that people easily recall the brand from hearing the slogan.

Marketing Mix
Also known as the "Four P's" of marketing, the marketing mix includes four controllable strategic areas used by companies when making and implementing marketing decisions. Product is the actual product or service you provide. Place, or distribution, refers to the physical location or touch points available to customers and the order fulfillment processes that take place following sales. Price involves pricing decisions related to your value proposition. Promotion involves the specific marketing strategies used to deliver your brand and messages to its markets.

Market Segmentation
Market segmentation means breaking down a larger target audience into smaller, more homogeneous customer groups. This helps companies maximizing marketing effectiveness and improve efficiency by targeting more profitable customers with messages. Demographic, geographic, psychographic or lifestyle and behavior are all approaches to market segmentation. Demographic segments are developed based on shared individual traits such as age, race and gender. Geographic segmentation means targeting markets by location, such as local, regional, state, national or global. Small businesses often target local geographic customer segments. Psychographics means targeting customers with similar lifestyles, interests or hobbies. Behavioral segmentation is based on usage rates.

Positioning
Positioning describes the way in which a company differentiates itself in the minds of a particular market segment. A company may try to brand itself as the highest quality provider of its product to a particular market, for instance. Other businesses position themselves as top service providers. Saying you are a highly trusted brand or that your business provides small-town friendliness and personal attention are other positioning approaches. Customer perception of your business, brand and messages are key to effective positioning.


Source: http://smallbusiness.chron.com/branding-other-marketing-concepts-10474.html