Speaking of Marketing

What Happens to Your Customers Happens to You

The title statement really is true, isn't it.  The health of your business is a reflection of the health of your customers' businesses.

So, gulp, how are your customers reacting to the global economic meltdown?  The more important question, really: If their attitudes are changing, and they probably are, what are you doing to stay a step ahead--to stay relevant?  Before you spend any more of your budget, make sure what you're telling your prospects and how you're telling them (your marketing message and methods) have changed along with their current state of mind. 

If your message is wrong you'll shoot blanks.  Never mind the bigger ads, additional website traffic, larger mailings, whatever, you spend money on.  Once you get your message right, then take a look at what needs boosting or changing, then put your budget behind a campaign that connects.

I’ve been through my share of booms and busts over the past 25 years.  I'm a bit like the doctor who doesn't get too excited about your broken leg because he's seen lots of them and, after all, it's not his leg that's broken!

 

We can help you sort out your options and get moving forward, quickly.  I’ve learned a few important lessons when things get tough:

 

You’re always better off acting sooner than later.  The changes you make are always for the better.  Every client I’ve been with through tough times has felt the changes we made made their business fundamentally better.

 

The first thing you should look to is your message.  Things slow down when your customers start buying for different reasons.  If your message isn’t changing with the reasons customers buy. . .well then. . .they start buying from companies that give them reasons that make more sense.  Sound familiar from page one?  It should, it's that important.

 

The changes you make on your own often don’t go far enough.  “But we did this, this and this, and sales have continued to slide.”  I hear that a lot. Without an outside, objective opinion, most changes are nudges when pushes are required to generate results. 

 

Who else is buying what you sell?  There are always customer types that sort of just found you that you’ve never paid much attention to.  Trust me, they can become your new best friends!

 

You may need to fundamentally change your value proposition.  No client I’ve ever worked with willingly embraces this because it’s hard.  But it’s always, always worth it.  Before you say oh, we couldn’t do that, understand it’s rare when you can’t do something that changes and improves your value proposition.

 

People still buy what you sell.  Maybe not as many are buying right now and, while most are likely buying for different reasons, people still buy what you sell.  So the question is how are you going to adjust?

 

I'm not a doom-sayer.  I'm not an "I choose not to participate in the recession" type guy either.  Folks, it is what it is.  I first wrote about "a changing economy" in December of 2007 offering that "things are tougher now than 18 months ago."  And they were.  And things will likely get tougher than they are now.  Well, I say again, folks, it is what it is.  We all need to get over it and start now, not later, look to your message first before you start spending money, guard against making too small a change and be open to changing your value proposition.

 

A Rose is a Rose is a Rose. . .now, about how you define what business you're in?

Gertrude Stein wrote those words in 1913, at least the rose is a rose part, in a poem titled Sacred Emily.  She explained (paraphrased): the "rose is a rose. . ." line alludes to the fact that words change meanings as a culture changes.  To her parents, a rose was a flower.  To her generation a rose was also a woman's name and a color.

Okay, now about how this applies to marketing-

Words matter.  Be mindful of how you define what business you're in.  Example:

     Record store = Tower Records  (remember Tower??)

     Music store = iTunes

Moral of the story: Tower Records would have been far better served if they changed the definition of what business they were in from the record business to the music business.  Perhaps that would have caused them to embrace online and digital downloads sooner.  iTunes, by the way, is the largest music store on the planet.

Tower isn't unusual.  How many times have we seen leading companies fall behind because the things they sold started being sold a different way?  Madonna just signed a $120 million deal with Live Nation.  Jay Z just signed a monster contract with the same company.  Live Nation is a concert promotions company expanding the business they're in to include all revenue streams from artists' music.

And the beat goes on. . .

Are you "in the record business or the music business?"   

Interesting, Obvious Take on Strategy

John Spence wrote an interesting but obvious piece for Change This in which his thesis is right on, if not painfully obvious: no single strategy will carry your business forever.  When I first read that I, like you just did, was struck with how obvious it is.  But think about how few of us really embrace it or, more accurately, how much we resist embracing it.  Especially now.

I suppose it's human nature not to act until the pain is great.  For many business owners things have become very difficult right now.  There's lots of reasons, real and imagined, for customers to slow down.  And they have.  Regardless of the reason, for many, many companies their customers' buying motivations have changed, sometimes profoundly.

So, obviously when this happens we change our strategy, right?  Well, yeah, sort of.  Or, well, yeah, finally!  I preach to my clients and do my best to practice changing along with your customers' buying motivations.  My speech:

If you call yourself a good marketer, you need to know how to move forward--grow--in good and bad times.  And moving forward in good and bad times will look very different.  So, when things change, quit whining and set about finding out how you have to change to realign your message with what's important to your customers right now.

Does Marketing Suck?

Yes, marketing, or stipulating most marketing as practiced today, does indeed suck. 

That does not mean, however, marketing is inherently bad or evil.  No.  Just poor execution.

Jason Calacanis, tech big shot and founder of Mahalo (and I think a pretty bright guy), has been railed against by the SEO community for his comments about time spent creating content to draw visitors versus chasing the holy grail: Google's algorithm. 

Chill my peeps!  Successful marketing, marketing that produces results, springs from a combination of disciplines done well.  You can drive tons of traffic to a site with lame content and enjoy zero results (leads).  And, you can dedicate your life to awesome content and starve before enough traffic builds to create leads.

I encourage my clients and anyone who will listen that as responsible marketers we MUST address the entire buying cycle to generate results.  Your little piece might be driving traffic, message, design, sales, whatever.  But it all needs to make sense to the prospect or you won't have a customer.

So, sing with me, "Cumbiya. . ."

Take What the Marketplace Gives You

Maybe I'm watching too much football. . .

You’ve heard commentators and quarterbacks use this phrase:

           Take what the defense gives you.

Meaning, for example, if you're a "passing team" and the defense is all over your receivers (in effect, giving you the run), start running the ball instead of forcing the pass.

If your sales are slowing, just like the quarterback who isn't gaining yards under the current game plan, you need to change something.  But what?

Typically, it's one or more of just a few things: your message; the market you’re targeting; and/or your product value proposition.

Change Your Message- This is the first place you should look.  It’s normally the easiest fix, although I’d hesitate to call any of these three particularly easy.  You tout one or more reasons why customers should buy from you.  As your customers’ world changes, so change the reasons they buy.  For example, during times of expansion and growth service might be important (don’t slow us down!) and they may be willing to pay a bit more.  When things slow, price may become important.  You get the idea.  But you have to ask—your customers, that is, to find out what’s important now.

Change Your Target Market-  If your current customers aren't buying, who is?  I know, it isn't as simple as that.  But in many cases you do have secondary types of customers who differ from your primary customer base.  Does it make sense to go after them?  Yes, you may have to change your message and promotional materials a bit.  But compare sitting around wringing your hands while a few hundred grand of sales slip away to spending a few thousand to get those sales from somewhere else.

Change Your Product Value Proposition- This is something few owners really want to do.  That is, fundamentally change your product to better meet the needs of your customer.  For some, it's not an option.  But, before you put yourself in that category, know that that group is far smaller than you think. 

Bundle services with your product.  Make it easier to buy.  Take some of the risk away.  Find a product that’s twice as good for half the price.  How would you compete if you were just entering the market and didn't have all the emotional investment in how you do what you do?

So, you’re working the game plan and nothing’s happening.  Things are looking bleak.  When this happens many owners stop their marketing instead of changing their marketing.  Don’t ever throw good money after bad.  But stopping instead of changing your marketing is just plain stupid.  It’s a bit like not sending your offense out on the field because you aren’t gaining yardage.  If you were the coach you’d never do that, right?

Look to your message first. Talk to some customers.  Have they changed why they’re buying or are they just not buying for a while?  Who else is buying?  How can you change/expand your product value proposition to appeal to customers who are still buying? 

Now, get out there and get back in the game!  Doing nothing is not an option.

Swan Dives, CDs and Marketing

During the 90s music companies feasted on profits generated from CD sales.  Now, with music more popular than ever, music companies are crying the blues. 

What happened?

We all know what happened: digital music downloads.

But why did it happen—the crying the blues part?  Music companies desperately hung on to CDs while digital downloads did to the CD what CDs did to cassette tapes.

Those of you old enough to know music during the pre-CD era, when man shared the earth with such things as cassette tapes, know why CDs were such a hit.  CDs were a quantum leap in flexibility and convenience: skip around your album to avoid crappy songs or replay your favorites; 5-CD players; durability; heck, you could even create CDs with just your favorite songs.

Music companies forgot why the CD became so popular, so they couldn’t recognize and adopt the next quantum leap in flexibility and convenience.

My point isn’t to wag my finger at big music companies; it’s to wag my finger at me and you.  We all have products or ways we do things that have been successful for us that are too easy to hang on to too long. 

My point is to:

· Encourage you to focus not on the products or ways you do things themselves, but on why they’ve been successful.

· So you can move to the next product or way of doing something that shares the attributes that made your current product or way you do things successful.

Makes sense, right?  But it’s hard, especially early, to adopt something new.  Music companies, as a example, are finally starting to embrace digital downloading in a serious way.  But not until Apple took 22% of ALL music sales.  It was easy to scoff at selling one song at a time via iTunes when it was new.  But all the sudden they’re the new 400 pound gorilla.

What new way of doing things, product or service does this mean for you?  I don’t know, but, you do.  That’s right, you know.  It’s that thing that’s been rolling around in your head.  That thing you’ve been hearing about.  That thing that sounded ridiculous at first, but isn’t so ridiculous the more you hear about it.  Yeah, that thing.

Now, you don’t have to do a swan dive into the next new thing.  But put your toe in.  Start to experiment.  Starting today.  Because it won’t be too long until you’ll have to do a swan dive just to keep up.

Not too good at swan dives?  Neither am I.  So, let’s get started. . .and we can help!

Hamilton

Guitars and Marketing?!

Ken Parker makes custom guitars.  He's the type of person I seek out to learn from, regardless of profession: a relentless student of his craft; passionate; guitars are his oxygen.

Anyway, I read a quote by him that struck me: "A good guitar is in agreement with itself."  All the "little things" are right--in agreement: stiff wood for the back and softer, thinner wood for the front of the body; hard wood neck; the right pickup; nuts made from a material that has the same vibratory characteristics as elephant tusk (moose bone); and about a million other things that make a Parker guitar worth what you'd pay for a Camry. . .

Good marketing is also in agreement with itself.  I call it congruency, but it's the same message.  Good marketing is an authentic reflection of what's unique about you communicated in ways consistent with how your customers expect to learn about companies like you.  And good marketing achieves a consistency across the entire customer experience.

Like creating a good guitar that is in agreement with itself, creating good marketing ain't that easy.  But if marketing is what you do, why aspire to anything less?

Hitch up your guts and . . .

I had the pleasure of working with a wonderful sales trainer years ago, Dr. Carl G. Stevens (recent textbook).  He had many great "old school" sayings.  One he used with special impact when he wanted to preface something that needed hard work to accomplish:  You need to hitch up your guts and ________.

Point well taken.  Simple, but true.  To excel you need to hustle, focus and not give up.  Seth Godin's new book, The Dip, makes this same point (his pdf summary).

Many owners give up on their marketing too soon.  How many times have I heard Direct mail doesn't work or We tried pay-per-click, spent a lot of money and got nothing!?   Most of the time.  Which, typically, is part of the reason I'm talking to them.

You need to hitch up your guts and test, test, test!  There are people out there looking for your product or service.  They search on the Internet and don't throw every piece of mail away.  In each case there are LOTS of things that can go wrong--take your response to zero--and you need to work through them.

The Other Side of Marketing

There are two "sides" of marketing.  That's poorly put, but here's what I mean. . .and this is the point of the post.  Most owner-led companies define marketing narrowly: ads, brochures, message, website, etc.  The "other side" of marketing is who you are, your niche, your value proposition.

The problem: fiddling with your marketing in the narrow area without giving equal time to the other can weaken your marketing's effectiveness.

Case in point-  A local physician invited us into a practice he had just purchased (for high six figures) wanting our help to attract more patients.  The practice had two potentially unique value propositions, based on new treatment modalities they were equipped and trained to offer.

We proposed digging into why current patients had been attracted to each modality (defining the other side of his marketing) with the goal of creating a unique value proposition that would then suggest a specific target patient, message, methods, etc. (the narrow area of marketing).  The value proposition informs everything else.  Without alignment between who you are and what is important to your target customer (right now--because things change!), the kind of ad you place, where you place it, what kind of brochure you send, etc., are all moot.

Well, back to the physician.  I was thinking value proposition and he was thinking clever ad ideas.  I declined the engagement.

More on this topic.

Good Marketing: Is Your Story Interesting?

You know the Geico Caveman--they guy who gets upset when he hears their slogan "So easy a caveman can do it."  ABC is making a sitcom staring the caveman (Fortune Magazine, April 2, 2007, pg 26).

Whether it makes it as a show or not, Geico is getting a huge shot of PR as a result.  But that's not the real story, at least for me.  It brings up a teaching point: story.  This is happening because the Geico campaign has a story to it (company slogan upsets current-day cavemen, we all enjoy seeing them in situations where they are acting very human--funny).

What's your story?  Story is important--critical--to the communication process.  Our brains "sort" people and companies to make sense from the waterfall of information coming at them every day.  And they do it quickly.  Is your story: in business 25 years, committed to quality, larger selection than anyone and a price leader?  That's boring and NOT fundamentally different than EVERY OTHER COMPANY in your category.  It might not be true of every other company, but that's what they're saying.

Why did you start your company?  What defines you?  What can you say about your company or product that nobody else can say?  That's your story.