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Aug 24, 2020    Burn Book

Custom, Product, & Other -izations in Branding

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In a world where your target consumer listens to friends, influencers, Amazon, and Pinterest before becoming loyal to any brand, authenticity isn’t the only thing you need in order to be set apart. We broke that down here in Forbes if you need to catch up; today we’re moving on to the balance between innovative and relatable.

How do you strike that balance? Through careful productization. Let me explain.

When you do market research and consumer targeting, whether you’re a startup, a seasoned industry player, B2B, or B2C, one thing remains constant: your target needs to quickly understand who you are and what you offer.

Without that, no amount of dope ad copy, A/B testing, motion graphics, and content marketing can keep their attention. No amount of industry-shaking, innovative technology, competitive pricing, or out-of-the-box branding can save you against competitors if you aren’t also digestible.

The Brand / Product Naming Game

For example, if you’re an app with a premium subscription offering, you better only offer three upgrade plans (at the most), as much as consumers love customization. Because to offer them 100 things to choose from, toggling pricing options on their own, no matter how cool your product is, is confusing. It’s time consuming, and you want their time to be spent going further down the sales cycle, not playing with a hundred different options.

This simplicity isn’t just that, simplicity; it’s productization. It’s limited, branded options. It’s a meditation database offering “Bundle 1: Divide & Guide” or “Bundle 2: Courses Galore,” where the first is a cheaper upgrade option where they get access to guided meditations, not just relaxation music, and the second option adds on courses for building meditation habits and calming anxiety. It’s a banking app allowing only three options to choose from, not a checklist of 100 features where the consumer chooses what they need and don’t need. It’s a SEM (search engine marketing) tool allowing all the same access to SEO and SEM tools across the board of plans, with the only change being how many domains, profiles, and keywords you can track on each. It’s a carpet cleaning service offering only 3 tiers, not a big landing page of “pick your shampoo / operator / date / square footage / deep clean level / pet friendly / etc”. That’s enough examples, right? You can talk to us if you want to know how it applies to your unique business.

People like customization, but not more than they hate homework.

Through productization, a brand can do more with less. Less attention needed from the consumer, less time spent (both by the consumer and by the marketing team), and less sales cycle dropoffs. Their authenticity holds up with less effort, leaving more space to impress market segments with all that other sparkly stuff: the innovation, the video ads, that rebellious brand name you paid for.

Product naming, business naming, integrated marketing, conversion rate optimization, it’s all bundled up in your ability to strike that balance between innovation and relatability. Then, remember when we mentioned competitive pricing? You might not even need that. Charge more and convert more with the right productization and product naming; then spend more time on that bold marketing and authenticity that builds deeper loyalty. Simple as that (at least to us).

Let Your Curiosity Take Control