Good morning David, Elliot again, another short video which will appear on the website and YouTube. If anybody has any questions please get in touch.
What I’d like to talk about today’s is; availability VS familiarity this may sound a bit bizarre but i want to explain why i wish to talk about this. Often young companies with new products get very excited when they’re approached by major retails, of course this has always been in there dreams, they’ve hoped to get on the shelves of supermarkets such as Waitrose, Sainsburys, Asda, Tesco ect.. and perhaps often in the health care sector such as Boots, Superdrug ect… however if the company hasn’t done it’s homework in the sense of developing the brand before it gets to the mass outburst stage, then unfortunately the availability will exceed familiarity and the likely hood is after the initial excitement, the euphoria, the joy ect… they’re will be huge disappointed as the product will be D listed and things then will become very difficult for the company.
So what am i suggesting? I’m suggesting the company works very hard on familiarity that is getting the brand known before the retailers come into play, now this may sound bizarre but if you get to the point were availability exceeds familiarity then the stocking is the next step so how you can increase the awareness people have in your brand without spending an absolute fourtune when you don’t have availability. My suggesting on this are as follows; first of all you should start selling the product on the web, this will mean developing a fully set up E-commerce site with a sensible web design, this will then enable you to test your marketing approch, to gain fimilarity and how customers react to your product and also give you a fall back situation ultimatly they don’t want your product. Whislt this is going on you should also engaged a sutilbe PR comapny, a PR company who shares your vision, who shares your enthusiasm for the product, you don’t have to spend an absolute fortune you can work together developing suitable press releases, buliding up an image for your products for your product in the minds of the buyer before they start to see them on the retail’s shelves. There is a maximum that says “the sun should never set on your brand” so this means, every newspaper, magazine, opportunity you can take on the web you should take to publicize why your brand is different, why people should be intertseted in your brand and why it should move on the shelf.
If you’re able to do that then familiarity will match availability and hopefully things will progress from there.