Be Courageous

Late nights in a dull and dingy conference room with your brand team, trusted partners, a stack of market research, and a pizza, carefully crafting your brand's positioning, could ensure that you'll not just win the sprint, but also the marathon.

Matthew Mizer, Senior Vice President, Group Account Director | GSW Worldwide

A crystal clear, highly focused positioning of your product is absolutely essential. It's often the cause of less than successful launches where follow-on products quickly take share. It takes courage, diligence, and discipline to create a sharpened positioning statement that may not cast the widest net, but builds the strongest foothold. There are case studies upon case studies of brands that were greedy, launching with the promise and pomp of an exciting new drug accompanied by a goal of owning a therapeutic area almost from the start.

Customers don't always believe newer is better. By targeting the customer segment with the perfect marriage of unmet needs and opportunity for positive customer experiences, you begin your brand's life cycle with a solid group of advocates that can only grow.

The more often utilized mass market approach, seeking the broadest path to the fastest share, often results in poor customer experiences from which it's hard to recover. This is where the courage comes in. Our instincts tell us to grab as much as we can, as quickly as we can, before anyone else gets there.

The right patient and proper use of your product. Don't forget, it takes a lot more money to undo a negative customer experience than it does to get it right the first time. Most importantly, no marketing tactic in the world is more effective than your customer's word of mouth. Make sure their words are the ones you want to be heard.