Focus groups can help expand knowledge about customers, prospects and experts. It's insight. Learn about customer behaviors, attitudes, feelings, perceptions, opinions and beliefs. They can help you assess consumer needs and feelings both before the launch of a new product or promotional campaign and long after implementation to gauge success. In a focus group, you bring together a group of people to discuss issues and concerns about the topic. Focus groups bring out users' spontaneous reactions and ideas, either reinforcing your opinions or shedding new light on the topic at hand.
For participants, the focus-group session should feel free-flowing and relatively unstructured, but in reality, the moderator must follow a preplanned script of specific issues and set goals for the type of information to be gathered. During the group session, the moderator has the difficult job of keeping the discussion on track without inhibiting the flow of ideas and comments. The moderator also must ensure that all group members contribute to the discussion and must avoid letting one participant's opinions dominate.

Focus groups can tell you a lot.
- give information on people think or feel about a particular topic
- give greater insight into why certain opinions are held
- help improve the planning and design of new programs
- provide a means of evaluating existing programs
- produce insights for developing marketing strategies and tactics

Before investing in the launch of anything, test the market place. It would be a misuse of funds, time and passion to only find out that you've missed the mark.
Need some help evaluating your service or product? Contact us.

Your business has developed a brand. This development is a core focus of your business strategy. So now there is a brand strategy, a business strategy and of course, customer needs. To not understand customer needs can predict the failure of a brand and a business. Look at the successful branding of our Canadian example, Tim Hortons. Tim Hortons gives their customer an easily accessible, friendly and affordable experience in which creating the environment to make money selling coffee.

Today, we have more products and services offered than there is demand. We cannot simply supply the market. There must be a desire for our products in the marketplace. As business owners and marketing executives, we need to capture the excitement, hearts and minds of our audience before we secure the demand needs. This is a primary goal of branding.

Focus on what it will take to make your brand successful with your customers.
- Find creative ways to connect your customers to your brand.
- Develop a plan that communicates your brand to your customers within everything you do.
- Know you customer. Understand what appeals to them when marketing your brand.
- Create tactics that encourage your customers to interact with your brand.

When Edge develops a brand, we state what the brand will do for customers and what behaviors define the market for this brand. Interested in expanding your brand and your strategy? Call us at (204) 772-4061.

So many businesses make a crucial error when defining their branding. The error is they don’t brand themselves at all! If you own your own business, you are so busy wearing so many hats during the day, there seems to be little time for things that don’t seem to matter. One of these low priority business activities seems to be branding. Tragically, if we don’t put branding at the top of the priority list, how do we expect our potential customers to learn about our products or services and create an emotional bond with us?
A lot of people think branding is just a logo. You can drive or walk down any city street to see some horrible examples of businesses branding. Surf the net and you will find hundreds making similar mistakes. Many are using terrible logos, clip art, poorly designed websites, no defining message and are expecting customers to flood their business location. The customer is very savvy and is presented with so many great visuals and messages on a daily basis, the fact that a business simply has a logo, website, brochure, etc., doesn't automatically make the business stand out.
Three things to remember when marketing your business:
1) who you are
2) your target market
3) what you have to offer/what's in it for the customer
Number three is a unique thing that your competitors do not do. This unique business activity must inspire an emotional response from your potential customer. How does it make them feel about your product or service? What's going to get them to tell others about it? If you haven’t made them feel good about you, they are less likely to want to buy from you.
When branding, remember the KISS principle. You don’t need mega bucks to show customers who you are, but you do need:
1) a professional website
2) to get noticed
3) have a good 30 second elevator speech
4) get out there and tell people about you
5) be patient and flexible
Branding is a ever evolving building process. After launching the brand, ask yourself how you are doing, then, ask how can you do it better.
At Edge, we want to help you do it better. Email us. We want to help you to find your competitive edge and build your brand.

4. Get Them to Come to You.
Identify the needs and problems of your target market. Put together a report, blog, newsletter-the ‘magnet’ that addresses the problems. The magnet needs to be real information, not a trumped up sales pitch. Next, promote the magnet with direct mail, print ads, press releases as well as seminars and workshops. Once you have attracted the sales prospect with your magnet, send them a sales letter about your product or process. The magnet is solving a real problem for your prospect. If you are unsure about your target market needs, read trade magazines, view who your prospects are doing business with on the web or just call us at Edge.

5. Less is More
If you wanted to blitz 2,500 businesses, take off the last zero. A multi-step direct mail campaign to 250 prospects and a personal follow up with a smaller, more targeted group within the 250 ensures better results. Remember, small targets and repetition. With all the emails and clutter we receive, it is difficult to get noticed. It can take a minimum of 7 – 10 messages to get noticed by a prospect.

6. Last, Follow-up Techniques
Sending out information in a multi-step sequence will definitely get you noticed by your prospects. Once you have built interest, these prospect magnets can honestly convert the prospect to a happy customer.

The follow-up call to the multi-step campaign is to build rapport and establish yourself. Ask questions, listen and record the answers. You are following up with 2 groups. The first is the group that requested follow-up from your campaign. Treat this group with much care and consideration. If they liked your message in the campaign, they may want to continue the low key approach on the phone.

The second group is the follow-up with those that received your information, but haven’t contacted you. They may move at a different pace or have different needs than the rest of the target market. Treat them the same as the first group. At the end of the call, ask the prospect if they are interested in taking this relationship to the next level. Don’t try to sell complex products or processes over the phone. The next level is yourself – a personal meeting with the prospect.

Are you ready to take your business to the next level? Edge can help. Call 772-4061 today for a meeting with our marketing and design experts that will take your business to the next level.