PILLAR THREE: GENERATING DEMAND FOR YOUR BRAND

How to Sell?

Once you have established the right sales channels for your brand, the next piece of the jigsaw puzzle to be solved is 'How to Sell?", which translates to your brand activation activities. Consumers will not discover your brand if they just come across your listing online or if you are just one of the items on a retail shelf space.

Getting your marketing plan right?from the beginning is the upmost important task. In the current era, marketing investments is a must, especially if you are in E-commerce. And one has to be mentally prepared, that marketing is not free and there’s no guaranteed ROI. It is common to see businesses pulling the plug after just one or two quarters of marketing activities, due to low ROIs generated. As pointed out in my earlier article, you need to start your global expansion by first developing the BLUEPRINT for your brand. The Blueprint helps to determine the war chest you have to build your brand.

The Importance of Margin Dollars

Sky is the limit, when it comes to brand building. There's no fixed formula or guaranteed ROI when it comes to brand building. Every industry and every product category is different. It all comes to the amount of margin dollars you can generate to build your demand, especially in the digital space. I was once approached to sell Dragon Fruit Buns in E-commerce by a supplier. I outrightly rejected although there was a fine profit margin of 50%. The 50% profit margin only translates to RM1, which means to spend RM5,000 of marketing funds, I will have to sell 5,000 pieces of buns to cover this marketing investment. Based on this business logic, I decided not to pursue further, despite having the know how to build a new online brand. It is important to know that you need to have enough margin dollars to sustain your demand generation activities, and this starts from your SKU planning. In E-commerce, it is important to structure the number of items in a single pack, or the items in a single bundle, to ensure you can generate sufficient margin dollars per transaction or per order. This has to be done before you plan out your marketing strategies.

Demand Generation vs Demand Fulfillment

It’s very common for brand owners to have full confidence in their product line up, till the point they think their product will sell without the need in investing in any marketing activities. This mindset is definitely wrong. As you can see, all global brands have invested a lot in building their brand over the years, including the likes of McDonalds, NIKE, Microsoft and etc. And there is no end to brand building, it is a continuous process, while adding more value to your company.

When your brand enters a new market, you definitely need to follow the Marketing Funnel process. From Awareness, to Engagement to Conversion, it is a natural process that is inevitable. There is no short cut to this. Every stage of the funnel carries its weight and needs to be carefully executed.

Do not expect that your brand can enter the Demand Fulfillment phase the moment you launch your brand into the market. Many business owners carry the believe that listing their product in Online Marketplaces guarantees sales. It is easy to see how big brands in their respective categories sell thousands or millions of units every month, but not many understands the investments they have made in their brand over the years. There is no short cut to this.

Invest in the right way to build demand, and you will soon be in the demand fulfillment phase.

Content is King

All demand generation starts with content creation. Most new and emerging brands are not aware of the importance of having great brands assets to start your business. I’ve personally come across many brands who take high resolution product shots just with their smartphones. With mobile apps that offer easy background removal tools, it makes brand owners to become complacent. Your brand is your baby, it deserves the best. If you are only in the e-commerce space, the more important for you to invest in the right content. Remember, the conversion funnel will only be effective if you get the top end of the funnel correct. The right content developed paves the way for a successful conversion campaign. Get it right from the start.

Engage your Customers

Once you have the right brand assets, you are ready to move further down the marketing funnel, which is the engagement funnel. This is where you communicate with your customers. In the current digital era, where information is easily available, the trick is how to resonate with your target audience in the shortest time. Based on many case studies, the most effective way to engage your potential customers is to use KOLs.?Using KOLs will easily help you to penetrate new audiences to discover your brand. Depending on the status of your brand and your product category, you will have to decide between choosing Macro KOLs, Micro KOLs, Nano KOLs, or develop a campaign that uses a good mixture of KOLs from various backgrounds. Key Opinion Customers or more affectionately known as KOCs are trending now and forms an important part of your strategy in engaging customers to discover your brand.

Go Niche

Once your brand successfully enters the mind of your potential customers, it’s time to drive them to make a purchase. To convert your customers, go as niche as possible to ensure you optimize your ads investments.?Each boosted ad on social media needs to target only a specific group of target audience. Based on our experience, it is highly recommended to focus your ad on a specific 10 years age group, gender, location and common interest. We have seen many successful brands generating over 100 ads at one go on Facebook, with each ad targeting only a very specific group of people.

When it comes to keyword search, whether it is within a marketplace platform, or on Google SEO, you need to ensure the keywords are well selected. A general keyword is pointless to drive conversion. Keywords search is pointless if your awareness funnel is not well done.

Conclusion

In short, generating demand for your brand is not an overnight exercise and requires investments and patience. The investments need to be a calculated risk, as you need to know how long and how much you are willing to invest before you see returns. One important mindset to cultivate before you start. Building your brand is an asset and not an liability. If it is well executed, the brand value generated will benefit your business and increases your company valuation in the long run.