Appco Group India: Strategize your Brand Awareness

A brand is what holds the most important aspect when it comes to advertising a particular product. All that the product advertises culminates as the brand image. Hence it becomes extremely important to form the brand’s pathway in the market and amidst many strategies that work and those that don’t, one thing is clear, companies would need to create an aggressive brand building atmosphere putting consumer as the king and the various strategies as the pawn.

Some of the leading ways to form brand strategies are as below:

·        Know your product well before understanding its brand value:

o   Always understand the positives of the product, the attributes which can form the foundation for its brand image

·        Know your consumers well:

o   You cannot sell a product to the wrong audience. That’s a kill-situation for a brand. Understand the audience well and closely. Segregate them and understand the current buying patterns of the target audience. This is one of the areas where firms lose the focus.

·        Choose the right marketing channels and tools:

o   Decide on the budget and choose the marketing mode which will directly link your product to the target consumer and your awareness could be more appealing and visible to the target.

o   Rely on the current marketing tools to provide a good reach to the target consumers.

·        Engage the audience:

o   Engage your audience through the various marketing initiatives that can build a positive outcome for your brand.

·        Keep a tab on the competition:

o   Always keep an eye on the competition and the competitors activities. There may be an opportunity you can pounce on.

All in all, we can conclude by understanding the fact that a through product, consumer, market and advertising analysis would ensure a brands stands upto its promise.

Appco Group India: Brand equity Or Product attribute??

An era of advertising, which we live in, has opened the doors to brand building as never before. Today a particular product is better known with its brand image or brand element more than the actual product’s attribute itself. In a market situation like this, brand equities of different products will soar and fall in a flash. What remains is the brand awareness that the consumers have in their minds which is responsible for forming its equity.

However as the brand equity increases (classic/big brands), does the real attribute of a product get sidelined due to the marketing gimmicks, image and other advertising gimmicks! As a brand matures in the market, consumers start associating the product with its brand value or brand image. It’s no surprise that a food product gets identified with prefixes like ‘instant-meal’ or catchy phrases. The whole image of the product gets in the background and what survives is the brand association- all the factors that are associated with the brand like consumer’s perception, brand image, brand loyalty to name a few. The rise and fall of many brands have been a result of these factors.  We also come across many levels of a brand’s life cycle which is quite contradicting to that product life cycle. An age old or consumer favorite brand prevails irrespective of its market-age or even competition.

However many a brands falter in their lifecycle owing to many factors like competition, newer trends, market value etc and what impacts the brand equity more than anything else is the failed perception of the brand in the eyes of the consumer. Because it is the consumer ultimately who builds and collapses the brand equity in the market. In the long run, as far as the hype surrounding brand equity is concerned, it is up to the strategists to turn the tide towards the consumers and associate the product to their perceptions and preferences.

It can be fairly concluded that firms should revolve their strategies and focus around the brand and its association with the consumer for it serve as an effective medium to capture the consumer’s mind by recognizing the necessities and demands and recalling of the brand through various initiatives.

“A brand is as mature in the market as it is in the consumer’s mind”

Appco Group India: Leading ways to form Sales Strategies

While there are many definitions, strategy usually refers to organizational processes involving the determination of goals and the means to attain those goals. This entails the marriage of two factors- external factors relating to the environment and industry, as well as internal factors, such as capabilities, values, motivation and trust.

The most effective sales strategy opens the door in a direction where the professionals achieve their targets with minimum risks. Industry leaders have listed out many such approaches to sales strategies which can be the ultimate solution to trigger hard hitting sales.

1. Determine your target: Never underestimate the potential of target audience especially in sales. Analyze the demographics and be always clear about the target. Once you have determined your target, create a list of the same and calculate the potential of the target group. This will form the basis of your research.
2. Determine your mode: Once you are clear of your target, now is the time to determine the mode of approaching the target; be it cold calling, direct marketing, networking, promotions or a mix of approaches.
3. Know your questions: Always prepare yourselves for the sales appointment/meeting with the client or prospects. Always pre determine what would be the winning questions that you can question the prospects so that they are attracted or triggered to buy. Always understand- Preparation is the key.
4. Build relationships: Once you engage with the prospect, try to build a relationship with them. Don’t go overboard yet try to mingle more with an interesting conversation and make your product/service the centre of your conversation. Be a pitch initiator.
5. Monitor your sales performance: This is one of the critical steps that the professionals miss out. Always self monitor and correct yourself from each failure and analyze an alternative solution. Take a look at the previous month’s sales and measure your growth. This will help as a motivating factor too.
6. Small motivations: Always motivate yourself and your team through the general small motivational factor that you may come across in daily life. Seek motivation in the one deal that worked rather than the 5 pitches that didn’t. Ultimately your hard work will be defined by the number of deals acquired, not the deals that didn’t work.

And the most important point is REPEAT. Repeat this process and cultivate it in your strategizing activities. Adopting it over and over again will not only bring in good numbers but will also enhance the strategic abilities in an individual.

Appco Group India: Role of Strategy in Business

For large and small business, Strategic innovation is the need of the hour! The pressures on the strategic front has off late increased and expanded to an extent that growth is being associated with the outcomes of planning. Earlier companies put emphasis on the short term goals and objectives to meet the business targets. This ideology, in today’s demanding ecosystem, doesn’t fit enough and why? The reason behind many business failures today has been a lack of vision and the proper direction to execute the same.

Take the example of product launches. The automobile sector in India is the perfect example of businesses struggling to make a blockbuster impact on the consumer. In India, on an average, 3 different models of the same company are launched in a year. Yet how many of them succeed in registering sales. The lack of vision and future sustainability is the result of such poor strategic direction. The real essence of Strategic planning comes with a blend of innovation, operational planning, directional planning, growth forecast and risk/crisis management. Many a times, due to growing market competition and change in market trends, some of the aspects of traditional strategic planning gets lost. In the wake of budding entrepreneurial environment and unplanned acquisitions and mergers, the company objectives fail to get conveyed to the expanded team. This creates a huge gap in understanding the real motive of having a strategy in business planning. FMCG/consumer goods industry has been a classic example where the throat-cut competition has generated some great products and equally led to the failure of the classic age-old brands.

The mantra for successful strategic planning comes from having a clear understanding of the business plan and defining the objective clearly to the managers and the consumers. And a clear and crisp understanding of the objectives comes from strong research and analysis. And it is no surprise that companies are now investing in research and business intelligence to tap the potentials the market has to offer.

Positively the downside of the current falling economy is the advent of many opportunities that companies can tap into and create long lasting impact on the market.

‘Real strategy comes from an insightful research that has tapped the untamed potentials of the market’

Appco Group India: Freshers at Work

Many companies in India have come forth to tackle the recruitment issues of freshers which have been plaguing the growing markets across various industries. We, at Appco, believe in the power of young minds who, when mentored correctly, can be an asset to the Organization. 

However, the people in the top management often mistake the freshers for being inexperienced and under skilled. This causes the gap where a lot of freshers out of business schools, colleges fail to make an impression despite good grades and confidence. At Appco, we have always vouched for our people. This belief is at the core of how we recruit. Our recruitment systems are much focused where we initiate the recruitment with a prior call to the candidate, a phone interview, a face to face interview and an Observation day test which helps us determine our ideal candidate. Although our process seems to be quite strenuous, but we never shy out from hiring freshers. We feel that a fresher is like molten iron which can be mould into the responsibilities by understanding their skills and giving them a fair chance to display what they are capable of. 

Adjusting to a new person in the team can be a risky task but with a little effort on employee engagement and understanding, companies can make sure that a fresher becomes an equally crucial part of the team. The most important quality required in an employee for sustainability is their ability to accept and adopt change. A fresher is the most adaptable and has more willingness to undertake change. Experienced employees, on the other hand have been reluctant to change. Freshers additionally come with their humongous bundle of energy and are mostly open to work hard. This forms their basis for learning. With proper induction and training from a supportive team, the freshers, as they advance in the coming months, achieve a sense of responsibility and gradually develop onto becoming a valued employee or team member.

The grooming and success of a fresher depends largely on his individual skills and abilities but to ensure they are recognized and put to use, companies need to drive recruitments on the entry level and expose the freshers to various management and technical positions to provide them an insight of what career responsibilities they are fit for in the future.

Appco Group India: Experienced workforce in comparison with Freshers

A survey among professionals in India states that 70% have been rejected for the sole reason of them being freshers. Additionally many of them admitted to joining B-schools primarily for getting an upper hand over the now regular engineering, arts and design, science and management colleges. This situation proves the very fact that, in the fast growing economy of Indian markets, still companies thrive on the age-old criteria for hiring experienced professionals over a fresher even in the entry-level and middle management jobs.

Truly, there is a mindset that experienced employees bring in expertise, knowledge, training and are highly responsible as opposed to freshers in the industry. While many companies regard these attributes of experienced employees, they fail to understand to understand the positives associated with hiring a fresher. Though there as some risks associated with hiring freshers in the mid management level, companies should feel free to initiate recruiting freshers for the entry-level jobs which will not only provide a good start for the freshers but also provide comparative cost cutting as opposed to hiring experienced professionals. 

Arguably, experienced professionals are the most preferred choice for the most mid level and above mid level positions. With experience, they bring in a blend of creativity, adaptability and understanding of the business practices and value the job more than a fresher. Based on the requirements and demands of the position and the company, HR managers determine whether a fresher would be able to take in the challenges associated. And often, there are some extremely ambitious freshers, just out of grad school or likewise, who have an intellect developed from academics and intrigue and who can comply with the requirements of a challenging position. Sometimes, such candidates surpass even the experienced professional with their attributes.

It is largely up to the Organizations and managers to understand the real potential of a candidate, be it a fresher or an experienced and to extract the qualities out of them to determine the real value of talent.