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Do you want even more branding and marketing secrets from successful entrepreneurs?

Do you want even more branding and marketing secrets from successful entrepreneurs?

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This mode of changing the previous image is also called “rebranding”. You base the new marketing efforts on an old product, but you do change the logo and the packaging. You want to change how the customers see your product and its reputation in the marketplace.

Rebranding is often used by companies that are the victim of poor publicity. A company that is involved in a scandal or malpractice litigation has to change the reputation and get rid of the negative feelings associated with it. The way to do this is through rebranding and this move will definitely help your sales.

But rebranding is not useful only when you want to fix a bad thing. It can also be used in order to differentiate your company or product from the competition. Think for a moment how companies that produce high-end products manage to differentiate their products from cheaper knock-offs. These companies make their product distinguishable by a special stitching or by inserting serial number on their products. Make your product or service stand out and customers will know about it.

Rebranding is a good idea when your product or service has been on the market for a long period and consumer are starting to get tired of it or if their interest is not as big as in the beginning. If you change the image or reputation of your product you will gain a bigger share of the market and you will make customers excited about it. Everybody wants to try something new and even unexpected.

3. Advertise and respect the brand value and promise

Promoting your product on television is excellent if you have the budget. Most of the other advertising channels are very effective too and can easily make a product a success. Customers often buy product that are more expensive just because they are familiar with the brand, they do not want to risk being unpleasantly surprised by another brand. Just think about Tide. It is a laundry detergent that is in top of the mind for many people and they buy it even if there are other cheaper products just because they hear about it all the time.

But Tide must be careful. It can`t disappoint the customers if it wants to keep that place in the consumer`s mind so it needs to be an excellent detergent. No amount of advertising would be able to compensate for a poor product. Your advertising must be sincere and the product must do what you say it does in the advertisement.

Is your advertising reaching the target audience? Make sure it does, whether you are advertising locally, nationally or internationally. Think about the Chrysler Pacifica! Oh, you don`t know it? That`s okay, they don`t make it anymore. About ten years ago Chrysler invested $10 million for Celine Dion to promote Pacifica, despite the advice of marketing consultants. The van was perfect for younger professionals, but the ad targeted a whole different age group and the campaign was a disaster and tens of millions were wasted. The lesson from this? Know your target market well!

How to apply the strategies

Don`t be discouraged by the impressive examples that feature important companies. Anyone can use these strategies in order to promote a business or improve the image of a company.

More importantly, you can use them even if you are on limited budget. Use the social media tools at maximum. You now have YouTube, Instagram and Facebook and you can create messages, photos and videos that can spread quickly and without costs. This has the potential to bring in important sales. Your focus from now on should be to build a brand. A good brand will bring new customers and will increase the value of your company ten-fold.

The Guarded Secrets of Crowdfunding

Crowdfunding means convincing regular individuals to invest in your company as a group. They are regular individuals because they will not be banks, angel investors or venture capitalists, but people who like your product or service and want it. This type of funding obviously gets you to your goal, it bring money into the company, but there are more benefits than this one. Here are 5 more very important benefits of crowdfunding and ways to successfully gather funds from a group.

5 Key Benefits of Crowdfunding

1. Market research

With crowdfunding you are basically pre-selling your product and this allows you to know more about your market. You know if people and more importantly, who likes you product even before releasing the first product. If your marketing message is right you will know. If you satisfy a need and if you product has potential, you will know.

If there is something wrong with the marketing message or if the product does not satisfy a need then you will know soon enough and you will either adjust something or you will change the message.

Crowdfunding means powerful market research that you get before trying to raise money. You will quickly know if you have a winner or a loser and that means the world in the world of business. Moreover, you can use a crowdfunding success in order to raise eve more money from investors later on.

2. An established customer base

People fund you and they become your customer base. This means that if you will develop a new service or product in the future you will have a group of people who will be interested in them and will be likely to buy them. You can even sell the same products, upgrades or new products.

3. Valuable Case Studies and Testimonials

You will easily get case studies and testimonials that will make future customers more prone to buy from you in the future. If your crowdfunding customers liked your product you will quickly get valuable case studies that will convince more and more people that your product is a hit.

4. Word of Mouth

Any entrepreneur will tell you that word of mouth is very powerful. People who see that you are raising funds through crowdfunding will get excited about the idea and will tell friend about it. People who fund the idea will be even more excited about it and will definitely share the idea with their friends. Try to make them feel like they are investors and founders and that they are in a way responsible for the success of the company. You can do this easily through email or through the email.

The word of mouth marketing you can get will be worth millions of dollars. Just a few thousands customers will be able to share the message and the idea of your business to many more. They will tell their friends and colleagues about the product and your will become an overnight hit.

5. PR

Media loves Crowdfunding. It is new, unique and just the kind of thing that the public loves, so they will publish the news. Numerous entrepreneurs who tried Crowdfunding have been featured in newspapers, radio shows and TV broadcasts and that gave them the much needed free publicity that was worth thousands.

It does not come easily, but if you put in some effort, raising funds through Crowdfunding can get you a lot of free PR.

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You now know how you benefit from crowdfunding, but do you know how to raise it? Here are five elementary ways in order to motivate people to fund your company.

5 Elementary Strategies for Crowdfunding

1. Inspire People

In order to raise money through Crowdfunding you need to tell your story and you need to tell it well. They might like the product or service, but they need to like you and the way the idea came in this world. The story must inspire them. Think about something that motivated you or tell them why you are building the company. Make them want to help you and aspire to a greater goal.

2. Offer Value

You can`t just ask people for money and expect to be successful. Offer something of value as equity, the product in a certain amount, the service that you will offer or even some extra stuff for those who invest a whole lot more than the value of the service or the product. Make them feel like they are investing, not donating. If they don`t feel they are getting value they will not invest in you.

3. Create Social Proof

Social proof is a very powerful trigger. Is based on the fact that if you see someone having, doing something it is more probable that you will want to have or do the same thing. The best example is the line outside a bar. This inspires other people to want to go inside because they perceive that place as being of value or a cool place where everyone wants to go and where you will have a good time.

You can create the same effect on Crowdfunding. How to do it? Ask for the help of colleagues, friends and family. Immediately after you launch your product or service as for many of your friends to fund it, even if the invest small sums. People who will visit your Crowdfunding page after that will see that your project is popular and that what you are offering is of value. They will see that other people have funded you and that the project is likely to get accomplished. All these things will make them more likely to invest in your project.

4. Build Buzz and sell your idea

It does not matter how cool your product or service is, if you do not market it the chances are that nobody will know about it. A good product does not mean automatically that you have an audience. Promote your Crowdfunding raise. Email all your friend and colleagues and ask them to share the message to their friends. Share the news on Facebook, Twitter and on every media channel that you have access to. Even if you company is amazing you first need to push it to a critical number of people in order to be able to spread rapidly and you need to keep doing that. Promote the funding in every way possible.

5. Don`t stop or slow down

Don`t think that if you get a few initial people to fund your business you can sit back and wait for the money. It doesn’t work that way. You have a deadline to meet. You have a fixed term to raise the money or otherwise the project will not happen. For example, if you choose to use Kickstarter you will be able to raise money for 90 days, but not more. If you haven’t reached your goal in this period you will not be able to raise more money and you will probably have to find other ways to fund your project or start a new campaign later on.

While the campaign is active go ahead and raise as much money as possible. Use the power of the people who already funded you. Contact them, thank them for their support and ask them to share the news and tell their friend about the project and, if possible, to fund you. Avoid “Buyer`s remorse” also by assuring them that this is only a way of raising the money faster and that you will definitely achieve the vision in one way or another.

All the best,

Peter

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