The Mud Valley ™ brand marketing community mission……………

Mud Valley was set up by brand marketers who thought that it would be worth their while sharing best practice, and swapping tools, stories and leads.

So, in essence, for us, the customer is on the inside.

One of the things we wanted to achieve was to develop those little gismos that nobody seems to have, but everyone would develop if they had time. This is how the Better-than-guessing ™ series was born.

One example is the Better-than-guessing ™ significance testing tool. You know the situation - someone has just asked you how big a sample size you need. You can work off the back of a beer mat (and there really are beer mats with statistical tables on one side), but why risk spilling your beer? Alternative you can pick up our tool and put in two simple sets of numbers – proposed sample sizes and what % difference you want to measure – and the system will tell you whether you are going to make it or not.

You try finding that in SAS or SPSS!

So the guiding principles of the Better-than-guessing ™ series are simplicity and Excel.

The big offer……………

The backbone of Mud Valley’s tools is an integrated brand education, analysis, development, and planning process, called The Open Road ™ workshop.

When you have been through that, you know where you are and where you are going.

But that will cost you thousands in anybody’s money, so we offer some of the component tools for rather less.

I want the right kind of customers…………

Profitable brand marketing is based on attracting, retaining and developing the right kind of customers – those who are attitudinally brand loyal. The rest probably cost you more than you will ever know.

So, we all need to work on market segmentation to find customers with the right values and of the right value to us.

The Better-than-guessing ™ market segmentation tool is a branding version of the old GE model. Define possible customer segments in brand terms (situations, needs, behaviours and demographics), work out what you could sell them, calculate what they could be worth to you financially, then assess alongside strategic fit and competitive competence. That simple!

Dark horse or sleeping giant……………

There are four types of brands in this world:

1.the dead horse
2.the dark horse
3.the restless giant
4.the sleeping giant

Which one are you? Are you the dark horse, new to the market, not well known but well loved, with a compelling proposition and a burning desire to succeed? Or are you the yawning giant who is only woken up by internal disputes over sales credits and company cars, with nonetheless lots of cash, market clout and heritage?

The Better-than-guessing ™ brand force tool is designed to help you analyse yourself and your competitors – if you can be bothered.

Who am I?

Teenage/middle-aged angst, or an eternal brand marketing question? How should we define our market context, and how do we give ourselves a fresh and compelling positioning within it?

The Market and Brand Definition workshops should help you sort it out.

Which half?

The other angst-ridden question for all brand marketers is which half of their money are they wasting – and is it only half?

Are there communications channels I could be using that would grab my customers’ attention quicker, better and more effectively? Is my communications piece any good?

You can spend five minutes thinking about this, and hope that you are very good or very lucky, or you can spend a stack of money using scientific predictive techniques.

However, research shows that getting a few grizzled old bears to rate your proposed communications piece against some discriminating criteria can be quick, cheap and effective.

The Better-than-guessing ™ communications assessment is that tool!

Or rather, it is one of them. Another way of looking at it is whether you are trying to attract new customers, or to build stronger relationships with your existing ones. Anyone with half an ear open to Bain & Co.’s legendary research will know that gaining new customers and then losing them again is very expensive indeed. On the other hand, nurturing long-term attitudinally loyal folks puts you on the gravy train.

There is nothing wrong with losing the customers you never wanted in the first place. Getting more sales from fewer customers is brand marketing Micawber happiness.

Which is what the Better-than-guessing ™ communications ROI tool is all about. Its big insight is that, either way, you want loyal customers, and so the effects of communications investments should be measured over more than one year.

Of course, the typical price-driven instant-sales promotion won’t have any effect over more than one year, except possibly to depress future sales, but those are the ones you are trying to avoid. Aren’t you?

How am I doing?

The dilemma of most brand equity tracking campaigns is that the brand marketing team wants to know everything, and then blows all its money on the first wave. End of tracking program!

There is an alternative – a very short questionnaire that answers all the key questions in very few questions, based originally on revolutionary thinking from Total Research’s Equitrend ™ model.

1.Do they know me?
2.Do they respect me?
3.Do they like me?
4.Are they an existing customer?
5.Are they a lapsed customer?
6.Are they a terrorist?
7.Are they a hostage?
8.Are they a loyal customer?
9.Can I sell at a price premium?

Four questions – that’s all – in our Brand Equity Questionnaire. Magic! You can afford to do it again and again!

David and Goliath?

On the other hand, some customers are just not like that. They are very big, they carry big sticks, and they don’t think twice about using them in a big way.

This is where our Key Customer Review process comes in. The truth is, big as he may be, that giant still likes to be honoured and respected. He likes you to listen to what he says (without interruptions), to think about it, and to come back to him with an offer.

Be nice to him – but don’t forget to duck all the same!

Now what would you like to buy?

Buy Now!

We look forward to hearing from you.