The following one is a good example about how a company managed to attract a great number of potential customers by giving their trial product for free and with the application of great values and graphic inside their brand.

Mail Chimp is a company that provides an eMail marketing solution for business of various sizes, and they are doing a great on their marketing and branding environment, some good points are:

1 – Free Trial
They are giving their basic product for free to everyone. The basic account has some limitation in numbers, but is essential for people that owns a small business that is still growing. This free trial is important because the customers get used to it and can understand the possibilities that it can give and all the features available. His means that the customer gets used to the system and when he needs more, he is willing to pay for an upgrade, cause he doesn’t want to change his habits.

2 – Great Graphic and Usability
Every single page of this service inspires happiness. The color used are warm color that inspires freedom and gives a welcome sensation to the user. The system is simple to use and in some steps everything can be changed or modified. This system simply works, meaning also that the user gets a great value for free and this stays in its mind as branding values, and when there will be the need to pay a fee, the customer will know that it’s totally worth. The basic customer gives the customer all the monitoring that he needs for a start (of course more tracking features are always welcome).

3 – Connection with other services
In every venture you do, there is always the need to use more web services in a way to get the best results. Wouldn’t be great to have all of them connected together and sharing data? Mail Chimp does that and make people save a lot of time, time that can be given to something else. (Time saving methods are always welcome and gives a great value).

4 – Happiness
In every part of the product there is this easy going will and mood. This means that there is always the curiosity and by using the product cause it’s not boring.

This is a brief checklist of what this company does as marketing, but when you explore it you will be able to see it more ideas and methods that are using in a way to make their brand image great and valuable.
Probably more analysis will come, but I have to say that what they are doing with the branding is great, cause the expectations and the ideas of the customers are always met and the branding process increased.

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The title for sure is going to express a lot of points that I want to say in this post, and for most of them this concept can be seen as obvious, but in my experience Marketing is not only about target and advertising… marketing is about all the mechanisms that a company has to approach in a way to make its client happy with his own product.

Tweetie 2 is for sure one of the most usable Twitter clients for iPhone, I loved the previous version of this app, and when the second version came out I had no hesitation in downloading it.All the marketing mechanism that they did with the previous version granted them a great coverage of this new version and of course a lot of downloads (and revenue). The first version was easy, simple and reliable, it was doing its job perfectly without problems and cause of my happy experience I decided to upgrade.

After installation I was really happy about the experience and my expectations were met, but not for a long time. After a little I discovered

that it has big issues on synchronization and also in posting new messages, lots of time I was posting old messages again an again every time I was opening the application.

After a couple of weeks of waiting for an update (that never came) I switched to TweetDeck for iPhone, waiting for the update… but now after some time I managed to get used about the software and I’m not really sure to switch back. This is a personal example that shows some important treats that has to be considering on Marketing.

1. Reliability of the Product
If the product is not reliable don’t release it. Every time a new version of something that was perfect is released is bringing with it the expectations of the customers. A product that doesn’t work is unlikely to succeed and create a bad atmosphere around the Brand.

2. Chance for the Competition
When a product doesn’t work the customer loses faith on the brand and to get things done they go to a competitor. The competitor has in this way a chance to impress the new customer showing the solution for their needs. Once the customer is acquired by the competition and get used to the new product, he becomes really a big expense for the company to have it back.

3. Regeneration of the Brand Values
For the reason before not only the re-acquisition of the old customer has a bigger cost, but also the process of Regeneration of the Brand values owns a bigger cost. This is because there is the need to make a PR campaign to have those values back in the mind of possible customers.

To the satisfaction of the customer needs and of a launch of a product, there are a lot of steps involved, steps that has to be linked together and strongly considered. A product that doesn’t work can have the best marketing campaign ever, but if it isn’t reliable is a lack on the mechanism, a lack that compromises everything.

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