Branding

Your brand is an implied commitment to your customers that the quality of your product or service will continue with future purchases. Our branding solutions seek to maximize your product or service's perceived value to your customer and thereby increase your brand equity.

Creative Branding / Imaging

Branding seeks to increase the product's perceived value to the customer. This may increase sales by making a comparison with competing products more favorable. It may also enable the manufacturer to charge more for the product. The value of the brand is determined by the amount of profit it generates for the manufacturer.

A good brand name should be:

• protected under trademark law
• easy to pronounce
• easy to remember
• easy to recognize
• attract attention
• suggest product benefits
• differentiate the product's positioning relative to the competition
• stand out among a group of other brands

A recurring challenge for brand managers is to build a consistent brand while keeping its message fresh and relevant. Brand identities may also lose resonance with their target market because of changing demographics. Repositioning a brand may cost some brand equity, and can confuse the target market, but ideally, a brand can be repositioned while retaining existing brand equity for leverage. Our Chicago marketing agency has various types of branding experience and can help you build your brand no matter what your current situation.

Brand orientation is a deliberate approach to working with brands. The most important driving force behind this increased interest in strong brands is the accelerating pace of globalization. A product's superiority is in itself no longer sufficient to guarantee its success. The fast pace of technological development and the increased speed with which imitations turn up on the market have dramatically shortened product lifecycles. This emphasizes the importance of building strong brands to combat the threats of an evolving marketplace.

Demographic and Industry Research:

In order to create a sustainable marketing strategy you first have to have a solid understanding of the demographics of your target market. Commonly used demographics include race, age, income, disabilities, educational attainment, home ownership, employment status, socioeconomic status and location of residence. Marketers use demographic research to understand their market segment. A market segment is a subgroup of people or organizations sharing one or more characteristics that cause them to have similar product needs. A true market segment meets all of the following criteria: it is distinct from other segments, it exhibits common attributes, it responds similarly to a market stimulus, and it can be reached by a market intervention.

It is crucial to thoroughly examine demographics so that a company can create a message that strikes chords with their specific desired market. Sometimes it is the case that a lot of company resources are be used ineffectively when working to understand a target demographic. Don't have the time or resources to research demographics? Consult with Ocean Strategic Group to get expert advice on reaching your goal demographic.

Industry research or marketing research is the aggregate information collected about the industry in which a company is interested in promoting a product. Market research is a form of business research and is generally divided into two categories: consumer market research and business-to-business (B2B) market research, which was previously known as industrial marketing research. Consumer marketing research studies the buying habits of individual people while business-to-business marketing research investigates the markets for products sold by one business to another.

Internet Marketing:

Internet marketing refers to the placement of media along different stages of the Customer Engagement Cycle, through Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Banner Ads on specific sites, email marketing and Web 2.0 strategies. The aim of internet marketing is to promote your company using online media. Ideally, a company should align their Internet marketing strategy with that of their off-line marketing strategy.

There are several benefits to online marketing. One major benefit of online marketing is that audience targeting can be much more specific to each individual viewing your content on the web. This is because the Internet allows marketers to target consumers based on their online activity rather than just their basic demographic information. Also, Internet marketing is relatively inexpensive; companies can reach a wide audience for a small fraction of traditional advertising budgets. The nature of the medium allows consumers to research and purchase products and services at their own convenience: an internet marketing campaign puts an organization's message in front of consumers when they can't miss it. Another benefit is the Internet's measurability; almost all aspects of an online campaign can be traced, measured, and tested. The advertiser pays per banner impression (CPM), pays per click (PPC), or pays per action accomplished. Therefore, it is easy to understand which messages or offering are more appealing to the audience. Ocean Strategic Group works closely with our partner company Ocean Online Group to bring expertise to every online marketing aspect.

Grassroots Marketing:

Grassroots marketing is about creating momentum so that consumers in your key markets care about what you are doing and become vocal supporters. You want to create a credible, voluntary sales force that carries your message forward. Start by creating local partnerships, frequent message reinforcement and loyal support from brand ambassadors. From there, each positive association or interaction produces ripples about your product, company or services that continue to expand throughout the community.

Grassroots marketing is about building strong, lasting relationships with a specific group or community. By tying your business objectives to the community's needs, you can create a win for everyone. Ultimately, this leads to loyal consumers, enhanced reputation, strengthened awareness and increased sales.

A grassroots marketing campaign should be memorable and should bring out people's passions. The message should permeate a community, therefore it is important to build layers of communication to get the message across frequently. One of the best ways to get people excited about your product is to let them taste, feel or use it for free. Sampling free products builds that desired word-of-mouth and demonstrates that you care what the consumer thinks about it.

Manage Customer Data:

It's practically common knowledge that the key to increasing business today is data-the more information a company has, the better its competitive advantage in the marketplace. By taking Internet click-trail data from servers, companies can analyze consumer behavior, identify their interests, and pinpoint their affinities for specific products and services. This type of information can also be used to predict what your customers will buy, when and at what price point. You just need to know how. Segmentation is a good starting point in managing customer data.

Once the segments have been established, marketers must understand the dollar value associated with the members of that segment. If you've designated multiple segments but they all have the same value, these segments may not be useful. Although some segments may tell you that your customers have divergent interests, it is critical to understand how much money and profit they generate for your business.

When you know which customers offer the most value for your company, you can tailor marketing programs for them and invest in those relationships. Having the insight and intelligence regarding the value of each segment enables marketers to develop programs that are appropriate for their contribution to your company's bottom line, or designed to migrate groups from the bottom to the top of your segmentation ladder. Regardless of the scope of data mining a marketer performs, a little intelligence can be used to generate a lot of revenue. By focusing on growing that sweet spot of customers, marketers will be able to exponentially maximize their ROI.

Reality Marketing: YouTube/MySpace/Facebook

Social networking sites (SNSes) like MySpace.com and Facebook attract large numbers of mostly young users who are eager to explore their favorite brands. But most marketers use traditional marketing tactics like run-of-site advertising and static micro-sites to push messages into these networks. Instead, to realize the full value of marketing on SNSes, marketers should be prepared to engage in a personal relationship with users by providing something of value. Promotions are good in this context, but even better are information or brand elements that users can pass on to their friends. One in four adult Internet users in the U.S. regularly visits popular social networking sites, according to iProspect Social Networking User Behavior Study. The audience visiting social networking sites is self-selecting in terms of looking for specialized sites to suit particular interests. These sites can be effectively utilized in a marketing or advertising campaign because of ability to market specific messages or products to their respective specific markets.

Advertising: Creative Content Creation and Placement Guidance

Effective advertising is the most powerful tool any business has. An advertising campaign can create awareness, enhance brand image, announce important news, open a new store, launch a new product, expand a geographic market knock out a competitor, build retail traffic or increase sales.

A well-planned and thought out ad campaign can accomplish almost anything - but you must first clearly define what exactly you want your advertising to do. This means setting a single primary objective. It is a very basic element, however many advertising campaigns fail because they either lack an objective entirely or the objective is not clearly defined. Setting a clear and realistic advertising objective is more complicated than many business people realize. In fact, a number of successful entrepreneurs and experienced business people don't know what an advertising objective is and how to establish one.

Setting an advertising objective is the first step any advertising agency or business does before creating a campaign. A clear, carefully defined objective provides the solid foundation needed to develop every element of the campaign from start to finish. A solid objective is the basis for setting the advertising strategy. The strategy determines "how" the ad will get the desired results and the tactics that will work best. The objective and strategy are the foundation of all successful ad campaigns.

To formulate your objective consider the following:

• Why Are You Advertising?
• Who Do You Want To Primarily Target?
• When to You Want to This to Happen?
• Where Do You Want This To Happen?

Packaging & Point of Purchase Materials

Point of purchase materials are your ticket to capitalizing on the impulse buyer, but you have to know how to select a POP supplier first. Points of purchase may be real, as in the case of a "brick and mortar" store, or virtual, as in the case of an electronic retailer that sells goods and services over the internet. In recent years, the POP for products and services has become an important focus for marketers, because consumers tend to make purchasing decisions on very high-margin products or services at these strategic locations.
Effective and interesting packaging can lure a potential buyer into making a purchase. Package design has been an important and constantly evolving phenomenon for several decades.