Know-How Exchange : Branding

You may have the cart before the horse. Would you really produce product (200k units, no less) before you have a marketing strategy and plan in place?

The success of your business will depend mostly on your ability to sell the product. Until you have high confidence you can do that, you probably do not want to have a large inventory of product produced and on-hand.

I recently consulted with a client who was in a similar situation. They spent a lot of money formulating and producing product, and then came to me for a business (and marketing) plan. It hurt me to have to charge them a realistic fee AND then tell them that they'd need even more to launch a marketing plan that would have any chance of meeting their objectives.

It's clear from your post that you have given a great deal of thought to your market and the product specs. Before you go any further you need to give that same amount of thought to (and perhaps monetary investment in) the marketing and business plans.

For your company name: Will your company completely focus on the energy shot market, or is there a larger goal planned?

For your product name: There are a large number of energy type products on the market. Who specifically would be likely to switch to your brand? Why? What will clearly differentiate yours product from the others in a way that matters to your target audience? How will you plan to reach these people?

I know where you are, What's with the questions?

The best product without answering these basic questions and more questions will either: be produced where no where to go - or - preproduction sample runs meet well below expectations... either = not-so-good!

Take a breathe, listen to this panel, develop what is needed to make it a work - make that back office work as hard as the product

A great product - there are enough examples within this your approaching market silo - all came were market prepared to be who they wanted to be - key word - prepared...on both sides of the equation - the excitement of marketing a great item with business smarts to make it viable and long lasting

Hi All,

Thank you for such great questions. I should provide additional information as to the stages in which we plan to roll out products and our business; this will also deal with Jays questions.

Stage 1 Due to commence end of Feb - Whilst working on the energy shot and co name, we have an agreement with a colleague to sell our "green fermented super food supplement" through his e commerce store - in the last 90 days his store has reached 530k in sales, approx 90,000 units and has a considerable email marketing list to target. This product will be marketed under the Dr's own brand therefore we do not need to hold any min of stock. In terms of the product itself it is super concentrated, non gmo, suitable for vegans, containing all fermented organic ingredients.
Putting out toe in the water if you like.

Stage 2
Piggy back of the sales of the Green Superfoods market, launch our own D2C commerce platform and introduce our alkalinising and cellular regeneration range. This is where we would look to launch a crowdfunding campaign for the energy shot. Only when we meet the crowdfunding targets would the production phase begin. Crowdfunding in this instance really equates to presale of the first production run. Sorry the first run can be 100k to 200k units - simply 200k is at a lesser cost per unit to us.
Critical to the success of the crowdfunding campaign is our existing relationships with sports, music and other celebrities whom we would snap a pic/video of with our shot bottle. We would look to launch the crowdfunding campaign at an event, possibly a fundraiser/music festival/international bike race, however that is yet to be decided. The message should be along the lines of “We all need energy boost – use something that is actually good for you” Apologies as clearly my expertise is not content writing :)

Stage 3
Our partner in China will copy and translate the D2C platform to launch in her market at around the 6 month mark. There continues to be an ever growing Middle and upper middle class consumer in China that is very sceptical of health products manufactured in China and prefer the “natural, organic and green image” of products produced in Australia, NZ and the US. An important component of this shift is also the stricter manufacturing regulations we must adhere to, to retain our GMP facility status. I will return to marketing profs at the appropriate time for assistance to name both the “infant probiotic product” and the “student shot” to be launched in China, essentially every baby that is fed infant formula, should have this probiotic added to each feed and the student shot whilst providing an energy boost is formulated to provide improved cognitive functions, focus, mental clarity and so on, however that's another story.

The existing owners of the energy drink market all sell products which, according to numerous reports “may contain ingredients that are good for you” Ironic really. Therefore new consumers to this market and the ones we would hope to switch would be people who want an energy boost using a product which contains only ingredients that are good for you, formulated in a manner that works and at levels which are safe, without any crash and burn.
We plan to adopt an educative approach and therefore each product will have fact sheets available. With published health authors in our group we plan to launch e-books and produce informative webinars in English and Chinese. We will have a very strong social media presence and make good use of the social media tools to drive "consumers" to our products.

I don’t want to inundate everyone with info overload, hoping this is enough to answer the questions and once again thank you all for the advice and questions. Anymore though please ask. :)

Jacquie

Hi All,

Thank you for the suggestions. I think there are some interesting names there. It's difficult when you dent know exactly what you want and you're hoping for something to just grab you immediately which hasn't happened yet. sorry no offence intended to anyone. I will keep going back to the names over the next 2 days prior to closing the question. Thanks so much for everyones input.

Kind Regards
Jacquie

Hi Guys,

Thank you for the additional names - I've forwarded them along to both business partners and will wait their feedback.

Steve, thank you - for the trademark reminder

Kind Regards

Jacquie

Hi All,

I wish to thank you all your valuable feedback and contribution, We haven't found exactly the name we are looking for so for that reason will award the points across each member that has provided naming suggestions. I will also repost in the naming and tag line section of the site. Hope that is ok with everyone. Kind Regards

Jacquie