This episode’s question comes from Jacquie Tewes, at Nurturing Your NDIS, who asks, “What are the best ways to create a name for my online program which is appealing to new disability sector business owners across Australia?”
This episode is the fourth in an eight-part series answering listener questions. For each episode and question, an amazing marketer from my network will join us and provide some different points of view and advice.
Peter Ring, from Altitude Brands, who has been the creative architect of over one hundred brands and brand experiences, joins us to help answer Jacquie’s question. Peter is an expert in helping his clients make the invisible, visible, and he achieves this by distilling where a business excels, drawing out its positives, and promoting and exploiting that through its brand proposition to create relevance, resonance, and customer engagement.
You can connect with Peter at altitudebrands.com.au or LinkedIn
Enjoy.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
As part of the service, I have had this episode transcribed. Transcribing, proofing, and editing a podcast episode is A LOT of work. That’s why I use a service called REV who provide professional freelance transcriptionists who are vetted for quality. While they offer a 99% accuracy guarantee, I do not proof-read their work extensively. Instead, I simply copy and paste below and, as such, please note that this is not a verbatim transcript of the episode and I have trimmed things like the intro, close, and mid-show ad.
Daniel
Pete, welcome back to the show. And I say back because regular listeners will remember you from the great chat that we had around branding back in episode 30. For those that haven’t heard that episode, you should really go and check it out. There’s some great stories and some great examples in that one. But Pete, before they do that, can you tell us a little bit about how altitude Brands helps clients?
Peter
I like to say to my prospects that I make the invisible visible, that’s my job. So certainly I do that from a branding standpoint. And how I do that is I distill where business excels, so I draw out their positives and then I promote that or exploit that through their brand proposition, which ultimately hopefully creates relevance and resonance and customer engagement. So essentially what I do is I distill the positives, I distill the unique benefits that a business provides, and then I communicate that to the market.
Daniel
As we know, part of branding is coming up with the name for a business or maybe a product or service. In this episode, a listener question asks about coming up with a name. And the question comes from Jacquie Tewes, who has a business called Nurturing Your NDIS. However, Jacquie has asked, “What are the best ways to create a name for my online”… I’ll just do that a little bit again. “What are the best ways to create a name for my online program, which is appealing to the new disability sector business owners across Australia?” So Pete, obviously Jacquie already has a business name, but needs something for her offerings underneath that umbrella business name. When people are faced with this situation, what should they do? How can they push forward? Because this is different to coming up with a brand name for a business that you can build an identity around. It kind of feels like the name of the program should be maybe fairly descriptive.
Peter
Yes, yes, yes. But more importantly, it needs to be relevant, resonant, engaging, and motivating. So I would put descriptive pretty well below that list. At the end of the day, that the prospect needs to see a clear benefit, a clear end benefit to them, and they need to see that very quickly. So you can’t be [inaudible 00:02:10] in the title. So the question to ask when you’re writing the names for these programs is how will these offerings enhance their lives, the lives of the end user? How will it help them and their business, for instance? Why should my prospect pay attention to this? If it was just a descriptor saying this is a curriculum item and it does this and it does that, it’s going to be a bit boring and they’re not going to necessarily engage with it.
And it also has to connect on an emotional level. I have to feel like I want to spend my time and my investment and whatever else it is on this program. So the thing I would say to you is if it’s not effective, as in emotionally effective, then it’s not going to be effective. And this is why branding is an art. You need to distill the end benefit to the consumer, and then tailor your message to that consumer.
Daniel
Jacquie has an existing program she’s trying to name, let’s say she follows all that great advice and she ends up having an amazing name, but then she has multiple online programs or services that she offers that kind of hang together, should the whole approach to naming them as a suite, should that whole approach feel like they belong together, as in there’s similarities across naming, or does that not really matter too much?
Peter
It matters, but it matters in the reverse, to be honest, because it really has to be tailored to the target market. So if the target market is linked, if your whole target market is going to be wanting your whole suite of programs, then by all means, have a family feel to them. But if you have different target markets or different programs, then you have to align your branding to those target markets. There’s two brand strategies, if you like, or conventions. One is called the branded house. So if you think about a company like Virgin or Apple, they have a branded house, where the house is the hero brand. So you’ve got Apple iPhone and all these other products that come out of Apple. Apple [inaudible 00:04:21] and so forth. And you’ve got Virgin Airlines and Virgin Blue and Virgin Insurance and so forth.
So the brand, the mother brand is always the hero supported by the services. And that’s all very good if you’re trying to target one particular type of target market type. If all programs are separate, i.e. they are targeting different markets, then the naming should also be separately aligned to the individual target markets. And that’s known as the house of brands model. So if you think of Cadbury, for instance, you might, Daniel, love Turkish Delight, and my favorite is Crunchie. So we’ve got very different tastes in what we like, but all come from the same quality supplier. So the mother brand is Cadbury, but it’s not the hero. The hero is Turkish Delight or Crunchie. And it’s got a different flavor and a different communication to that particular market. So always keep in mind alignment and then deliver that consistently with the needs of your target market. That’s my advice there.
Daniel
If we look at courses, or maybe online programs, sometimes we might find that we offer something very, very similar, or maybe even the same as other businesses. How do we name those? Does it really matter too much in that instance if there’s already programs with a really similar name out there? So if people are doing research and they find something similar and it’s got a good name, does it matter if they really name it the same? I mean, there’s lots of people that offer an RSA course, for example, the responsible service of alcohol course, and they just call it that, or a diploma of management or something. Does that hinder or help them, or are they missing an opportunity to differentiate?
Peter
Exactly. Your last point, exactly. This is where the opportunity lies because everybody else is doing the mediocre and just following the norm. And that’s where the opportunity lies, to be different and stand out from the crowd. I mean, you need to have some key descriptive words, like SEO and so forth. You can’t be too out there. You’ve got to have a relationship to the context. But beyond that, you need to be different, to stand out. I would definitely steer away from commonality. I mean, obviously if you’re running an alcohol course, you’d have the word alcohol in there for all those common purposes. But apart from that, I would name it something quite different and I would make it very end benefit orientated. Commonality equals mediocrity and mediocrity is the enemy of branding. So look at it as an opportunity to create something different. That would be my advice.
Daniel
Amazing. I’d a hundred percent agree with all of that, particularly the bits about being yourself. Because to be honest, it’s exhausting trying to be anybody else.
Pete, if Jacquie or anybody else wants to get in contact with you and continue this chat, what can they do? Where can they go?
Peter
Well, they could go in my website, altitudebrands.com.au, or they can get in touch via LinkedIn, or I’m happy to take a call, (040) 213-6260 and have a complimentary coffee with them. Yeah, so any of those ways they will find a way to get in touch with me. I’d love to hear from them, in all honesty.
Daniel
Peter Ring, CEO at altitude Brands Strategy. Thanks for joining us and sharing your expertise and advice and answering Jacquie’s listener question about naming her new program.
Peter
Pleasure.