Posts tagged ‘Marketing’
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?
Are The 4 Ps Dead?
(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)
The 4 Ps
In 1960, a concept was introduced by E. Jerome McCarthy that identified the four basic tenants of marketing as Product, Price, Place, and Promotion or, as it is more commonly known, the 4 Ps. Anyone who has ever taken a marketing class from then until now is taught the 4 P’s as the basic overview of marketing. These simple questions are what make up the basics of marketing:
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What kind of product are we going to produce?
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What is the right price for this product?
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How are we going to distribute this product?
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How are we going to promote and sell this product?
The purpose of McCarthy’s model was to further the understanding that marketing is much more than selling and advertising. In actuality, Selling and advertising only make up the promotion component of McCarthy’s model. According to McCarthy in his book Basic Marketing: A Global-Managerial Approach, “The aim of marketing is to identify customers’ needs – and to meet those needs so well that the product almost sells itself.” Easy enough, right?
The truth is that today many marketers are declaring the 4 P’s dead, or at least no longer relevant. There are many marketers who have even added more P’s to the mix, such as people, process, physical presence, or (as the word-of-mouth/social media crowd like to say) participation. The big question is can any product almost sell itself, or are there other critical factors in the new reality of the consumer movement?
The Missing Ingredient
While the 4 Ps offer a good basic framework for understanding the all encompassing nature of marketing, they are missing one key ingredient that has been made blatantly apparent by the consumer revolution – the consumer’s involvement in the process. The 4 Ps are segmented like an organizational chart, chopping up the functions of marketing in 4 bite-size chunks. But what about the fickle nature of the consumer? What if what meets their needs well one day doesn’t the next? What if your product is priced correctly, but so are the other 123 options on the market? What if the best person to design your product is the consumer? What if the consumer discovers your product is manufactured in sweat shops in India by 8 year-olds because someone walked in with a camera phone and then posted it on YouTube, their blog, and their Facebook page?
As I mentioned before, the world has changed since advertising’s glory days in E. Jerome McCarthy’s 1960s. However, many marketers have not. I have had the opportunity on many occasions to guest lecture in a university marketing class or judge a high school or college marketing class and am disappointed, to say the least, to see that our marketing education has not kept pace with the changing nature of marketing. Marketing educators still spend the majority of their time on the 4 Ps (with some attention paid to segmentation) and then dive into advertising. Some might say that this is indicative of the average age of the tenured professor, the fact that so few educators are practicing marketers within the wild west of the last 5 years, and some might even say it is a flaw in the system.
According to the existing system, educators lump this new reality of the consumer revolution into “interactive marketing”, because a significant portion of it occurs online. What they fail to see is that we need to re-address the underlying models upon which marketing is based. It goes beyond adding more “Ps”, but needs to address the new reality that we as marketers face today. We need a model that helps us understand the X factor that the consumer plays in the marketing process. We need a model that helps us connect with and engage the consumer in ways that they are most comfortable with. We need a model that helps cut through the clutter that exists in the commoditized markets in which we compete by tapping into the ability of human beings to influence each other.
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How to Arm Customers to Spread the Word
Up to this point, I have emphasized the Navel Model for creating a company worth talking about. It is critical that you do this piece first. As the great military strategist, Sun Tzu, once said, “Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” Most literature in the marketing realm is about tactics. In social media, people go right to Twitter and Facebook. In advertising they go right to the 30 second spot or the full page print ad. However, in order to have successful tactics, the strategic pieces need to be in place first.
Once you have created an organization worth talking about, the next step is to arm your customers to spread the word. It doesn’t matter what the medium is, the process remains the same. The six steps below work especially well in social media, but also work in public relations, advertising, direct marketing, or any other medium. The six steps below are also not linear but are circular because they are not always done in order. By implementing the steps below, you can better find your target influencers, arm them with tools to spread the word, and amplify their efforts.
- Publish – There is an argument in the social media space about whether content is king or conversation is king. The reality is that both are important for successful word-of-mouth. Content without conversation is advertising – it’s one way. Conversation with content is chatter. It is social media strictly for the social benefit. The first step is to publish great content. With all of the tools available today, there are many mediums you can use – it simply depends on your audience. If they have time to read and revisit often, then right a blog. If they are more inclined to download content and listen at a later date, then a podcast may be the best option. If they learn visually and your content is meant to be demonstrated, then produce a video series, or vidcast. For tools, check out WordPress, Libsyn, and YouTube. If you want to know what to write your content about, always think “educate and advocate.” Provide educational insights, how to’s, or insider information. When advocating, look to the cause you created in your Navel Model.
- Syndicate – Now that you have produced great content, step 2 is to find all the places you can share that content. Obviously, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or other online communities are a natural fit, however, also consider how you can share this content in your advertising, PR, and direct marketing efforts. Link to it within your social communities. Use snippets in advertising. Use it to pitch editors to cover important topics about your company or industry.
- Integrate – The amazing thing about where technology has come from in the recent past is that today, everything talks to each other. That means you can spend less time and get better results from your efforts. By integrating your blog utility with your social communities, every time a new post is created on the blog, it can automatically be posted to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and more. Every time you Tweet it can update your status in Facebook, both your personal profile and your business pages. The key with integration is to amplify your efforts.
- Converse – Referring back to the argument under “Publish”, once you have great content, the next step is to talk about it. Talk about your content. Talk about others’ content. Talk about a recent lesson you learned in your business. The key is to talk. Dare to be human; to be more than just a brand. The more personal you can be, the more others will grow in affinity for your brand and share it with others.
- Help - This is the concept upon which social media was built – people helping people. The Golden Rule is as applicable in social media as anywhere else. The more that you help others, the more benefit you receive in return. This is where you solidify your customer evangelists. It can be something as simple as re-Tweeting their Tweets or something more complex, like writing a blog post about them. You can answer questions on LinkedIn (and syndicate by linking to your content) or you can comment on another person’s blog. These are all forms of help.
- Monitor – Lastly, one of the most powerful aspects of social media is that it is infinitely searchable. I can monitor conversations going on almost anywhere in the social web and (politely) engage in the conversation. I can measure how much chatter there is online about a particular brand. I can even automate monitoring so that I am instantly notified when a conversation is taking place. The ability to monitor online conversations is one of the most important aspects of the social web and the reason it is one of the fastest growing marketing mediums today.
With the six steps above, you create great content, share it in as many places as you can, make your technologies talk to each other, engage with others, be helpful, and monitor conversations in order to start the cycle all over again. If you have done your previous work, such as creating a position, cause, culture, and message, you’ll know what to share and converse about. While you may go through the Navel Model only once in a while, the above steps will be a daily to do list.
With the six steps above, you can adequately arm your customers to quickly spread your message for you. Which do you do already and which could you improve upon?
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What They Don’t Teach You In School… About Marketing
Over the last couple of weeks, I have lectured in 3 different college marketing classes (I have 2 more scheduled) and judged a high school marketing competition. Based on these encounters with mushy young minds, I was able to make a few general observations about the status of our educational system as it relates to marketing. Some of the observations were good, and some not so good. However, I walked away with a general frustration at a lack of the solid marketing principles upon which brands are built today in our educational system.
Don’t get me wrong, while there are some great teachers out there who pour their heart and soul into helping students learn and apply the right knowledge, I think some are a little farther removed from the real world of marketing. In fact, I think it is changing so quickly, it may have passed them by entirely.
Based on my experiences over the last few weeks, here are a few key principles that I don’t feel like teachers spend enough time on in school:
- Positioning - It seems common sense that a class on marketing would start with “what makes you different than everyone else?” I believe that teachers spend WAY too much time on the 4 P’s (Product, Price, Place, Promotion). While these are the basic building blocks of marketing, you first have to understand where to build. I believe that any beginning class on marketing should be 80/20: 80% positioning and 20% 4 P’s. Most of the high school marketers built their plans around the 4 P’s but with no thought to differentiation. In my opinion (or IMO for you short hand freaks), positioning is the blood that runs through the veins of marketing. Thank you to the Godfathers of positioning, Al Ries and Jack Trout, for blessing us with this morsel of wisdom almost 40 years ago.
- Focused Segmentation - Again, this is another component that receives cursory attention in school, but is critical to the success of any marketing effort. The more focused your target market, the easier your job becomes as a marketer. Start with demographics, narrow your focus with psychographics, then pinpoint with buying emotions. As the ole’ cliche goes in marketing, “the more you narrow your focus, the more you broaden your appeal.” In my view, marketing is a very simple concept. Identify what truly makes you unique (positioning), find out who cares about it (segmentation), and figure out how they get their information. That leads me to the next point.
- Marketing is About Conversations - This was one of my greatest frustrations, with both high school and college students. Whenever they developed their marketing mix, they went right to TV, Radio, Billboard, Print, oh.. and some Internet stuff. Why? Because that is the way their parents and their parents’ parents did it. This is where the previous 2 pieces come into play. If you do any sort of of research, people are skipping TV commercials or watching it online, buying satellite radio or iPods so they don’t have to listen to radio commercials, and getting their news and information online rather than from the printed newspaper or magazine. Not that these can’t still be effective, but stop and think about where the target gets its information from first. Second, think about how you can talk WITH them, not AT them. The reason social media has exploded is because consumers want transparency, not carefully crafted marketing spin.
- The Cause - This is a theme I talk quite a bit about in my interactions with clients as well as students. In order for any brand to become outrageously successful, it has to create customer evangelists. However, most marketing efforts are focused on “speeds and feeds”, if you will. Customers buy products, and will buy your competitors’ products whenever they are cheaper or more convenient, but evangelists buy causes, or buy into causes. Evangelists have to be passionate about something in order to be evangelists. Who get’s passionate about a “good quality product” or “good customer service”? What is the higher, holier calling to what you do? What is the altruistic meaning behind why you are in business? And don’t start into your “mission statement” because that ain’t it either. What is the real reason people buy your product? That is your cause.
- Social Media - To the credit of the college professors, this is the topic they wanted me to come and talk to their classes about. However, most of them were clueless about how to integrate it into marketing efforts. They knew it was a powerful medium, they just didn’t know how to use it. I remember giving seminars 5 years ago about what a blog or a podcast was and now people come to me hungry for information on how to use social media tools. It is a nice change, but those who educate our nation’s youth need to be up to speed on what social media means to 21st century brands. They need to integrate case studies into their classes and, most importantly, need to be users of social media themselves. (As a side note, I was shocked with how few students knew about Twitter, but were avid Facebook users)
- The Simple, Repeatable Message - Unfortunately, most would insert the word “tagline” here but a simple, repeatable message is not a tagline. It is a one line answer to the question, “what is it that you do?”. Too much of marketing today is what Bill Bernbach called “irrelevant brilliance”. It is all about snarky quips and provacative phrases. They miss the simple answer to “why should I buy from you?” Creatives often step over (or on) the simple, repeatable message in favor of some mythical creature called “the big idea”. Don’t get me wrong, your marketing efforts should be wrapped around a consistent, compelling theme but you don’t need to create complex out of simple.
These are just a few of the things that I wish they taught more of, or better, in school. It would sure make what our youth are paying for their educations worth the price.
As a side note, I somewhat broke the rules in the high school marketing competition, but I did it consistently. I took the time with each team to enlighten them as to the principles above. Hopefully they walked away from our interaction with a little more clarity as to what marketing is all about. I thought that was much more important than how many points they received.
What about you? What nugget of marketing wisdom have you learned that you wish they taught you in school?
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Once you go Mac, you never go back
Those of you who have read my blog posts for a while know that I am a big fan of Apple. Of all the companies out there who deliver on a successful Navel Strategy, Apple is one of the best. From a marketing guy’s perspective, I admire their ability to consistently create passionate and raving fans for their products.
I made the plunge about 2 years ago and got an iPod. I had tried several other MP3 players, but I discovered that Apple just did it better. I had already started using iTunes, so it was a natural integration.
Next, in October of last year I bought an iPhone (yes, after they dropped the price – one of the things that finally pushed me over the edge). I was absolutely blown away by the design, functionality, and most of all – the service.
Well, I have finally stopped dipping my toe in the water and bought a MacBook laptop. Many of you know I have been threatening for a while, but I finally made the plunge.
Lest this blog post turns into a review of the MacBook, I just wanted to simply say that I am again blown away. Apple just does things differently. They think differently – no they think better. It is absolutely amazing how intuitive it is.
However, I don’t think that I am alone in my evolution. I have gone from satisfied customer, to loyal customer, to evangelist. I started with the bite size-chunk (iPod) and moved my way along the product line. Now I must finally admit, I am a raving fan, an evangelist, a Mac freak, or whatever other terminology you feel comfortable.
I also found out I am not alone. I am completing my MBA through Thunderbird School of Global Management right now and they even have a Thundermacs (Mac Addicts) message board specifically for lunatics like me. I have found that they are not the only ones, either. Mac forums are all over the web.
There are few brands that I evangelize, simply because most fail miserably in trying to win my affections. However, both Apple and Google have done it with great products, great cultures, and great customer interaction.
The Mystery of a Blog – Revealed
Brian Brown over at the Pajama Market Blog did a great job of producing a video that explains the basics of what a blog is. For those of you who wake up at night in a cold sweat with the word “blog” falling weakly from your lips, this is a good overview.
In summary, here are the basics:
- It’s a Web site. This might seem too obvious, but for technophobes it might need to be said.
- Adding articles is like writing an email. It’s as simple as writing a title, writing a message, attaching an image and hitting send.
- Readers can post comments. This interactive element differentiates blogs from many other Web sites.
- Readers can subscribe. They don’t have to check in all the time since they always know when new content goes up.
Thanks to the MarketingProfs eNewsletter for the summary.
Blogging is Not a Marketing Tactic
There has been a lot of publicity given to new media technologies like blogging, podcasting, wikis, etc. These technologies have been wholeheartedly embraced by the marketing world as additional avenues for spreading a carefully crafted message.
The reality is that blogging is not a marketing tactic in the sense that marketers are accustomed to (i.e. controlled message with a controlled delivery). Some marketers have gone as far as starting a “blog” that looks like nothing more than a press release or brochure. Take the “blog” on CBH Homes‘ website. I would be hard pressed to find a more carefully thought out message than in a White House press briefing. The biggest red flag is the inability to leave a comment. To steal from the political lexicon, I would call this a BINO (Blog In Name Only).
What marketers need to come to understand is the 3-fold mission of new media:
- Education
- Transparency
- Conversation
I would throw Entertainment in there as a fourth one if we were talk consumer to consumer, but we are talking either business to consumer or business to business. In either case, entertainment has been way over done and is largely irrelevant in driving a brand.
First, new media is the new form of education.Stephen Covey has said before that by reading more books, you are able to get inside some of the greatest minds in history. I would say the same is true today, only that the medium has changed from books to blogs. I have heard the criticism that this form of social networking is all based on opinion and hearsay, however, the same could be said of every book ever written (and I have read some very well researched blogs). More than anything blogging and podcasting have given marketers a “value-added marketing” medium to be able to provide value in exchange for time and attention. That value, more than not, is often in the form of education.
Second, in a commodity world like ours, everything begins blends together so that the only thing left to compete on is price. Take the real estate world for an example. I can buy the same house from any of the thousands of real estate agents locally for the same price. The only true differentiation is relationships in that world. By using new media, I can more easily build a relationship with my readers by allowing them inside my head to see how I think and how I approach problems. When I consult with professionals on blogging, the first thing I tell them is “don’t think, just write.” The best blogs are stream of consciousness. They are simply getting what is in my head down on paper (digitally, of course). Transparency drives familiarity which drives relationships and, no matter what business you are in, you can always use more relationships.
Lastly, carrying the relationship theme through, new media is ideal for conversations. Real, raw, conspicuous conversations. The negative comments are as valuable as the positive ones. It gives you the chance to show the world how you handle pressure. It also allows you to hone your own ideas.
I have heard the criticism that blogging and new media are a lot of hype, that they are not truly effective for marketing. I would agree and disagree. Are they another medium for your 30 second spot? No. Are they an avenue for building a relationship with someone and providing value to your target market? Absolutely. If you try to pitch without first earning the right, you will get “run”. The blogoshpere has a very high BS radar. If you truly want to see a benefit for your business from blogging, educate, be transparent, and start conversations.
It All Begins With a Cause
I have worked with many companies and I am amazed at how many of them think that marketing is akin to Martha Stewart’s resurrected reputation, the alien landings at Roswell, or the Red Sox winning the World Series. In short, they think it’s magic. I don’t know how many times I have heard, “Can’t you guys just come in and do that word-of-mouth marketing stuff?”
The reality is that the formula is fairly simple. However, the first step can always be the most difficult: creating a cause. Customers will buy products from you, but evangelists buy into a cause or a “higher, holier calling.” This means creating a altruistic vision or “making meaning” as Guy Kawasaki likes to say. It’s a reason for being beyond just making money.
If you truly want to begin the process of change within your company, start by coming up with a cause. Whether it is “daily meaningful activities” like Roaring Springs, or “stick it to the man (a.k.a. Bill Gates)” like you Mac users out there, there has to be something that your customers can rally around. What’s your cause?
