Are You the Leader of Your Pack?

by Al Weber, President, Tweed-Weber, Inc.

As a research company that does strategic planning, we view all of our research design and reporting activities through the lens of “what does this say about our client’s degree of differentiation.” Good strategy directs an organization to leverage its strengths to mitigate its weaknesses to capture market opportunities. However, in the long run, none of this matters if it doesn’t enable the organization to gain and sustain a measureable advantage over its competitors.

To identify the competitive point from which our client is starting, we regularly go to our client’s customers and ask them to assess our client relative to other similar organizations. These organizations are frequently direct competitors. It’s at this point we are able to determine if our client is competitively differentiated or just one of the pack. Because we are a non-threatening third party with good interviewing skills, we find our survey respondents are surprisingly candid.

In our survey design process, we will identify a number of performance areas that our client believes are important to their customers. These areas can include customer service, product quality, innovation, relationships, reputation, value for price, overall price, etc. We will then ask those customers to evaluate our client as either the “market leader,” “one of the pack,” or “market follower” in each of those areas. The results speak volumes, and it is often the first time our client has statistically valid confirmation of how differentiated they are (or are not) in their market.

In a recent competitive assessment for a logistics company, for instance, their customers unambiguously declared they were the market leader in all areas except price, where they were rated as competitive or one of the pack. It was exciting to congratulate them for developing a competitive advantage that enabled them to not have to rely on price to sell their services. In another assessment of an apparel manufacturer, we were able to tell our client they were perceived as a market leader in value. This, to the dismay of some sales folks, shot holes in their “our prices are too high” complaints.

Unfortunately, it is not uncommon to have to tell a new client that they are completely undifferentiated. Worse yet is telling them they are negatively differentiated. That is, they are a market follower, best known for their weaknesses. While this is certainly undesirable news, isn’t it always better to know the bad news than simply suspect it based on declining sales or increasing customer flight? 

Any company that invests in data that can reliably define it as a market leader can plan to capitalize on the opportunities that come from that competitive differentiation. If the company is merely one of the pack or a market follower, it can focus on improving its performance and moving the needle on its market position.

If you would like to know if you're leading the pack, give us a call. We can help you Know More, so you can Do More. Call us toll-free at 1-800-999-6615, email us at mail@tweedweber.com, and/or visit us on the web at www.tweedweber.com. Also, be sure to follow us on LinkedIn (Tweed-Weber, Inc.) and Twitter (@TweedWeber).

Brand? Humph... What is it Good For? Absolutely Everything!

Brand is a simple five-letter word that holds the fate of a company in its hand. When shopping, we tend to gravitate towards those brands that have the most recognition and deem them as being worthy of time/money (no matter how much cheaper the generic version may cost). Does the name-brand version have different ingredients that make it better than the generic version? In most cases, it doesn’t. It comes down to being psychological, because as a society, we are engrained with this brand is the best, while the other ones aren’t in the same arena.

The idea for the importance of branding dawned on me while I was conducting phone interviews for a client for a perception survey. About almost half of the stakeholders had little to no knowledge of whom or what the exact purpose/mission of the organization was, and most times got it confused with another organization in the area (with a somewhat similar name). This lack of knowledge can simply be defined as a lack of brand recognition, which only takes a simple fix – creating more awareness!

I asked myself, why does branding impact the fate of a company? If the company has a good product, shouldn’t that make it profitable (even if it isn’t name-brand)? Somehow, it all comes back to the brand… but why?

I found this interesting quote by Scott Goodson in his article, Why Brand Building is Important, and it helped shed some light onto this subject for me:

No branding, no differentiation. No differentiation, no long-term profitability. People don’t have relationships with products, they are loyal to brands. In a movement strategy, brands have a purpose that people can get behind. Brands can inspire millions of people to join a community. Brands can rally people for or against something. Products are one-dimensional in a social media enabled world; brands are Russian dolls, with many layers, tenents, and beliefs that can create great followings of people who find them relevant. Brands can activate a passionate group of people to do something like changing the world. Products can’t really do that.

After reading this quote several times, it all started to make sense. No matter what a brand sells, and no matter how good that product may be, the brand is the ultimate selling factor. Like Scott Goodson said, “brands are Russian dolls, with many layers,” they have “beliefs that can create great followings.” In the news, we saw what happened with Chick-fil-A, A&E, etc., when a person’s beliefs were not what the public-at-large believed. Boycotts were started and “loyalties” were hampered for a couple of weeks. But should a brand’s reputation be on the line for one person’s beliefs? In today’s day in age, a brand’s message is what sells the products, and if their message goes against a group’s message, it creates a conflict of interest. It is how a brand can “activate a passionate group of people to do something,” like national movements.

Even with the national movements I just talked about, we will still always go towards something that is more familiar and we know has a good track record, no matter what the product or message may be. Take for example, Sony. We all know it is a reliable brand, plain and simple, but take another electronics company, let’s say Acer, and we double-think about how the product will be because it’s unfamiliar to us. This occurs in every industry, with people gravitating towards the familiar. It’s all about how you can set yourself apart and become the name-brand in your industry. 

But how can you tell if you’re the name-brand in your industry? For starters, a perception survey could be greatly beneficial to your company because not only do you get strategic feedback (either negative or positive, or both), but you get your name out there and draw awareness to those who may be unfamiliar with your company. With designed-personally-for-you surveys, you get the chance to showcase your company – mission, vision, areas of expertise, etc. It’s the “simple” fix your company just may need.

To find out more about our designed-personally-for-you perception surveys and how they can help you KNOW MORE so you can DO MORE, contact Tweed-Weber, Inc. at toll-free at 1-800-999-6615, email us at mail@tweedweber.com, and/or visit us on the web at www.tweedweber.com. Also, be sure to follow us on LinkedIn (Tweed-Weber, Inc.) and Twitter (@TweedWeber).

 

About the author: Gretchen Koch has been with Tweed-Weber, Inc. since 2012 and serves as Operations Manager. She oversees office processes and provides quality control on all market research reports and strategic planning documents.