Posts tagged ‘Marketing Strategy’
Marketing is About What You Are NOT
I have been lucky enough to work with companies large and small. Each does have unique challenges depending on market size, industry, and business life cycle. However, no matter the size of the company, it seems everyone struggles with many of the same problems. For instance, every company has to develop something worth talking about before prospects and customers will tell others about it.
One principle which is true no matter the size is that marketing is as much about what you are NOT as it is about what you ARE. No matter the size of the company, it seems everyone struggles with focus. This became apparent again during a recent workshop I conducted in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia for senior marketing executives at Pfizer, Abbott, and Phillip Morris. No matter what industry you in, the natural inclination is to cast a wide net. The prevailing thought is that if you focus your efforts, you risk alienating a portion of the market. In fact, the opposite is true in marketing. The more you narrow your focus, the more you broaden your appeal – because you mean something.
This means there is more power in being the company that specializes in software for the education market rather than the general market. There is more power in being the legal firm that specializes in IRS tax issues than the firm that does everything. There is more power in being a marketing firm that specializes in digital marketing rather than being a “full service” agency. It gives your employees a direction and your passionate customers something to tell their friends.
When you sit down as a team (or possibly a team of one) to create your marketing plan, don’t just determine what you are, decide what you are not. This takes discipline, self-awareness, and the slaughtering of a few sacred cows. However, especially when you are introducing a new product, division, or company, focus becomes critical to staking your claim and establishing a brand.
What DON’T you do?
Strategy First, Then Tactics
(The following is an excerpt from the Introduction of the upcoming book Marketing From the Navel: How to Become a Company Worth Talking About and Arm Customers to Spread the Word)
I have a favorite saying by the famed war strategist, Sun Tzu, that says, “Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” In the marketplace today, there is a lot of noise. Anyone who learns how to use Facebook is all of the sudden a social media “expert” and the bookstore shelves are littered with publications giving their take on what this new reality means from a marketing perspective. Most of this literature tries to tell you what is going on in the market but few give you the tools to do something about it.
If you were looking for a Twitter or Facebook “tips and tricks” book, then you have come to the wrong place. There are plenty of excellent publications available that will help you hone your skills in one particular technology or another. There are some publications that will give you a task list (i.e. “write a blog”, then post it on Facebook, then Tweet about it). Others will give you a list of rules for online etiquette.
Stephen Covey talks quite a bit about “paradigms” in his writings, such as The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. A paradigm is a mental map, or the way in which we see the world. He uses the analogy of an iceberg to illustrate that the tip of the iceberg is our behaviors or our attitudes. If we want to make small changes in life, we work on the tip of the iceberg. However, if we want to make large, quantum changes, we work on the mass of the iceberg beneath the water, which is our character. It is as Blaine Lee states in his book, The Power Principle, “The principles you live by create the world you live in; if you change the principles you live by, you will change your world.”
I believe organizations work the same way. For so many years, we have operated under a certain paradigm. The industry as a whole has been making small changes by simply changing their tactics or their attitude about the consumer revolution. We have merely added social media or viral marketing as arrows in our quiver. I want to do more than change your list of tactics, I want to change your paradigm. I want to change the way you think about marketing.
Secondly, you most likely hear a lot of “noise” in the marketplace about new marketing tactics and how the old ways are dead. The Internet bubble of the late 1990s taught us many lessons about hype versus substance. The biggest lesson of all was that core business principles don’t change, but remain constant. For example, you still need a business plan that will generate revenue at some point (being bought out for millions of dollars because you have a lot of users doesn’t count). Also, cash is still king, and the faster you burn through your venture capital money, the faster you will make it to the unemployment line. This is the reason Amazon.com is still growing, yet Pets.com is a mere sock puppet memory. The Internet bubble taught us that though the delivery mechanisms may change, the core principles stay the same.
While there is significant hype about new forms of marketing, whether it be new media, word-of-mouth, or simply new places to plaster ads (i.e. cell phones, urinals, bases in baseball stadiums), there is a risk in all the hype. People are again forgetting the basic principles of marketing that still apply and are more important than ever. Like core principles in the universe (i.e. do unto others as you would have them do unto you), there are core principles in marketing that never change – despite the tactics. Many of the technology tools available today, such as Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn didn’t even exist 5 years ago. The tools may change, but if you understand the principles you can be successful no matter what the hot new technology is.
In the following pages, you will hear familiar terms, such as “positioning”, “customer segmentation”, and “customer experience”. Do not be alarmed! These are simply some of the core principles of marketing that, when applied correctly in the new paradigm, are just as powerful and more relevant than ever.
In this book, I introduce two separate models. The first model will help you develop a company worth talking about. This is the strategy component. Before you do anything online or off, you have to create something worthy of our attention, worthy of our passion, and worthy enough to pass along. Otherwise, you will merely create the “noise before defeat.” The second model takes the buzz-worthy organization you have now created, and shows you how to deputize your own customers to take your message out and spread the word. This is the tactical component that will help you achieve a quick “route to victory.”
There were many who were too comfy in the existing power structure and existing paradigm. Marketers controlled the message, the medium, and the content. Today, they are no longer in the conversation, and that elicits great fear in executive corridors and ad agency war rooms. However, those that embrace and implement the following models and principles will find that it is an amazing time in our profession. Never before have we been able to engage with each consumer on a one-to-one basis. Never before have we had the key influencers in our target market gathered together in a central location. Never before has a message been able to spread so quickly.
All you need are the tools… the tools of the revolution.
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Marketing From The Navel
I often get asked about our strange name. Many times I even get blank stares when I explain the term “navel-gazing”. However, I chose the name of my company and my book very carefully, and it wasn’t just because I wanted to make people giggle (OK, it was partly that).
For those who know me, they know I have worked with dozens of companies all over the world. Through my experiences, I have seen both amazing successes and giant failures (and been involved in both). Throughout these experiences, I identified a pattern. For a while, I couldn’t put it into words. I tried “Honest Marketing” or “Transparent Marketing”, but none of those really fit.
I finally realized that each of the companies who were successful marketed from the inside out, where the ones who failed miserably were the ones who marketed from the outside in. In other words, the companies who succeeded developed their internal tools, processes, and culture and used marketing tactics to simply communicate what they had already become. THe companies that failed wanted their communications to reflect an image of what they wish they were or what the customer wanted them to be – they wanted to put lipstick on the pig.
There are many who come to Navel Marketing for our social media marketing services. Without fail, however, they have missed many of the steps it takes to create a company worth talking about. So we start at the beginning. We start by creating a cause, identifying what truly makes them unique, and creating a culture that reflects their vision (for a complete list of steps to create a “buzz-worthy” company, see the Navel Model). Once these steps are completed, the tactics are the easy part.
I have seen a lot written lately about what constitutes a true “social media marketer”. I even wrote about this fact a month or so ago myself. Many base it on their knowledge of the tools or their proprensity to approach marketing as a conversation. However, it is my belief that they are all still lacking core component – what are you going to converse about? What about you is worth talking about?
Whether you use social media, advertising, public relations, direct response, or any other form of marketing, it all starts with strategy. It all starts with creating a company worth talking about. Once you’ve done that, the rest falls into place.
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A Company with a Cause
For those of you familiar with the Navel Marketing Model, creating a cause is the pinnacle of any marketing strategy. Customers buy products but evangelists buy causes – they buy into something. Whenever anyone asks me what they should write about on a blog, we start with the cause. When a company asks me what they should promote, we step back to the cause. When a company is struggling with their brand, we create a cause and rally around it.
In the transparent marketplace in which we operate today, companies need a “higher, holier calling” that goes beyond making money. They need to stand for something. They need to “make meaning,” as Guy Kawasaki would say.
Recently I was approached by a marketing automation software company, called InfusionSoft to become a certified consultant for their software. Once I investigated the product and its capabilities, I was blown away. This was something that I wish I had known about sooner, for both my own businesses and for many of my clients.
I had the chance to spend last week in certification training trying to understand the software and the best methods for implementing. What really impressed me, however, was the company itself. It has been around for about 7 years and started as a custom software house. It launched a product based on a project for a mortgage broker. Since then, the company has grown exponentially. It has attracted venture capital as well as the attention and endorsement of several well known authors and marketing consultants.
Early on, InfusionSoft figured out its cause and has had the discipline to stick to it. The cause: “Revolutionize the way small businesses grow”. So many companies avoid focus because it is difficult, there are so many opportunities out there, and they are afraid of alienating a portion of the markeplace. As the famous saying goes, “the more you narrow your focus, the more you broaden your appeal.”
As you listen to the founders tell their story, it is amazing to hear how they felt the pain of running a small business and how they built a solution around helping small businesses grow without adding staff and helping fix the inherent issues around follow-up failures in small business marketing.
However, it doesn’t stop with pitching their product. They have been touring the country with their Marketing Revolution Tour where they are teaching companies tips and tricks for changing the way they market. They sponsored a Fix your Follow-Up Tour with noted author Dan Kennedy where they paid to have Dan teach successful marketing principles in 4 cities within 4 days. The CEO of InfusionSoft, Clate Mask, even wrote a very compelling eBook that they are distributing free of charge on their website that highlights 9 proven techniques to double your sales. This is not to mention the dozens of other webinars, seminars, and speeches they give around the country to further the cause.
Their growth is a testament to selling the cause, or the InfusionSoft Dream, as they like to call it. This is a company the is prime example of cause marketing at its finest. Build a cause and then educate, advocate, and innovate around that cause.
What other companies have you seen that are built around a cause?
