TEN SECRETS of SUPERIOR MARKETING

It’s funny how every marketing text book seems just to lay out the elements of marketing and then illustrate them with case histories and most marketing consultants just say they do marketing.
Yet, if you are a marketer, you don’t just do marketing! Marketing is about launching and growing…
And do be successful the aim is to achieve superiority over your competitors and the market. On staying in front and doing that little bit extra….
 

Here are my 10 secrets of achieving marketing superiority…

1) Build a FOUNDATION. Superior marketers always start with the customer.

 
All marketing starts and ends with the customer’ never forget it. Constantly remind yourself ‘Think Customer’. This fundamental is so often forgotten – sales sees only products and the potential to purchase whilst many companies are more concerned with what they do and make not what they can do for their customers.
 

2) Build the LOGIC of the product. Superior marketers make the product work for itself.

 
For all business what is a provided is a product of use or a service of value. So before you leap to branding lock in the logic of the performance of what you sell. What does it do? How well does it do it? And of course translate these attributes into benefits. The simple concept of itemising and setting the attributes is just the start you can go on to select different ones for different customers (yes targeting messages as well as the customers themselves!) and then choose the most efficient media to deliver them. Stay with the logic! Do not confuse products with brands. REMEMBER PRODUCTS DO. BRANDS ARE. And one brand can encompass many products just like a Virgin!

3) The brand is FAMILY! Superior Marketers know their brand ensuring everyone else knows it too.

Too many people use the word brand when they simply mean logo. Brands are made of sterner stuff. The brand is the beating heart of Marketing and its secret is EMOTION.
Think of it this way if a product is a person with certain traits and ways then a brand is a friend.
Friends we recognise in so many ways; the way they speak and dress; how they go about things and because they are friends our emotional attachment to them and the values we see in them. So set out to be the customer’s friend with your brand – be recognisable and consistent with a fair yet friendly tone of voice. Just think… we recognise our friends by their name and sometimes that name is used by several, yet it takes on a different meaning for each individual. So it is with brands and logos. The logo as a symbol is important for words themselves were originally symbols, ask any Chinaman!
Yet realise the brand lives beyond graphic realisation into state of ‘being’. So make your brand live by expanding and espousing its values in everything. Starting with the products that carry its ‘family’ name.

4) RECOGNISE your Customer. Superior Marketers know how…

You cannot know enough about the customer. So be hungry for information. Even if your research budget is a big fat zero. You should look, watch, read as much as you can about your brand and products. How sold? Who buys it where and who the competitors are? What else to do they do and buy? Use this knowledge to think through and create your own psychographic and behavioural model for each group. Build up a body of knowledge then visualise each group even give them a name to easily remember them and for all to recognise. Then every time you produce anything in marketing put yourself in the mind of the customer. Make this recognition the basis of your marketing plan not what happens in the media or the marketplace.

5) Right MESSAGE. Right MEDIA. Get it right!

The superior marketer always asks ‘What outcome do I expect from this communication?’
Is it for example ‘to visit a show house’ not actually to buy the house? Or is to consider an alternative to the way you currently do something which will mean buying a new product.
Too often an ad or a leaflet and especially a web site contains all there is to know without first engaging the potential customer leading them into the direction of the purchase; which means too much new media has too much content. Many start the journey from acquiring knowledge on the web so it’s better to re-assure and build confidence and not bombard with information.

6) PLAN – it’s all a PROJECT.

Planning marketing needs to be done on an annual basis with the key elements plotted and costed. In terms of management noting what has been spent / committed is always advisable. But at the heart of management of marketing is to see it as a project and use the tools and develop the skills of project management balancing in company and agency / supplier involvement.
The start of any project is the scoping and briefing. So the superior marketer works hard on briefing, passing the understanding on to all those involved. For planning I use a format of, what I have called, a ‘Product News Event’ which embraces all activity for a finite period and the year plan is made up of a series of them. This also makes evaluation easier by have the outcomes, responses and results collated in tandem with the actual activity and messages used. This is facilitated if you separate out the structure designed to achieve the targets and the creative designed to meet the objectives.
Next time you plan you can view structure and creativity separately so as to more readily adapt and improve your work. And remember always implement with the greatest care especially just before you publish!

7) There’s a MARKET in marketing.

This affects us in two ways. Firstly as today there are so many channels and so many suppliers and ever more specialists that being a superior marketer generalist takes both the ever insatiable desire to be knowledgeable but also an approach that recognises the market and its conditions. So several quotes are the order of the day but the brief should recognise that you do not know all there is to know and that you rely on the proposals to make the most of the suppliers’ excellence in the discipline. But in doing so build and foster relationships. Marketing always comes down to people and the people with whom you work are vital to your success. That includes your staff (most marketers are always looking to leave) and your suppliers who if they are very good could work for your competitors!
Secondly the competition. Competition watching is a fundamental to superior marketing; from pricing to packaging to distribution to messages and media, keep watching, see who they are using and ask why. That way you‘ll keep your marketing superior.

MEASURE and REMEMBER to ADAPT.

The superior marketer is not mislead by the plethora of data that we are all awash with from the technology lead elements of marketing. View the technology simply as media and come to realise that the creativity of the message is at least as important as a site visit! Learn to collate your measurement around campaigns. Use the measurement in conjunction with the creativity to adapt and develop new more effective campaigns. When asked to set KPI’s and ROI’s the superior marketer easily responds with in cost terms (that is measurable targets) there are only two fundamentals firstly the cost of acquiring a new customer and secondly the cost of getting and incremental unit of business related to establishing the lifetime value of a customer. In terms of the often undervalued qualitative brand values these should be set as objectives and will need external research to accurately measure.

9) Be CREATIVE!

The Holy Grail of all marketing is creativity and it come every facet, not only in advertising and positioning, but in media selection and clever packaging too. Whatever you do look to a superior solution and aim to be creative – even if only in cutting costs!
Good creativity lifts above the masses of messages and transcends budget keep looking for it!
The starting point is the metaphor that encapsulates your message…. Easier said than done but it is the Holy Grail after all!

10) The world has SHIFTED.

What was right yesterday is maybe less right or even more right today. The speed with which new channels arrive are incredibly useful isn’t so much lightning as frightening! Now everything is digital you should see the web as ‘Marketing Central’ from which all things flow. And the superior marketing recognises that in social media it is the customer that drives its use and that should dictate your involvement. What’s right for your customer is right for your marketing – and that is where we came in….

 Some of  you have found some of my ‘secrets’  obvious and some you simply needed reminding of… but perhaps one or two will be of real help to you and your marketing. I hope so…

Be superior out there!

10 NEW WAYS TO USE PPC TO DRIVE SALES

Using good old sales promotion techniques reveals new ways to improve the way you use Google Adwords

Everyone knows that PPC can drive sales and much attention is paid to paying the right amount for the searched for phrases and then getting the optimum ranking. Especially now that online spend has overtaken traditional media. Yet now might actually be the time to start looking at it as a media and not be as constrained in to doing the same as everyone else. By looking creatively at this as simply a form of advertising then it is easy to see that  two key elements of marketing have been shortchanged in the simplistic pursuit of price and position.

They are BRANDING and PROMOTION.

In starting to think what message are you delivering  you can start to think to encourage the click through there and then. For the capability in Google and all PPC campaigns which is most overlooked in terms of message is that of IMMEDIACY. No other media offers the facility to decide upon and offer and allow you to have it on offer right away!

So how to drive sales with immediacy in mind? It is really quite simple – just make an offer! Make it immediate and call for action now. So all of these ideas come from  the old Sales Promoters Almanac…. Think of each of them in the context of your brand and product and what you can and should offer in the context of the constraints of the Adwords  struture.

No 1 Only 10 products left… Order today to get the best price

Driving response through implied shortage will bring out the true potential buyer

No 2 Hurry only 48 hours to go

Time running out is a constant theme is all of our lives so why not harness it creativley to drive buyers to your site rather than another

No 3 Save £10 today

Everyone wnats a saving so offer it as a reward for simply taking action. By the way just like ‘tomorrow never comes’ then ‘today is always today’ !

No 4 Buy one get one free … if you apply today

Here again is an offer yet now introducing the most powerful word in marketing FREE but in its BOGOF form costs less to you the marketer. For FREE can be sued ijn so many ways..

No 5 Free Audit, Service or Survey

Simply offer and introdcution to your service as an incetive to vsist your site. In fact it may well be an offer you are already making on your site that you are now to use in the PPC campaign

No 6 Free Gift

This can be offered simply for visting the site with registration or with a purchase. You could consider making it a mystery gift using perhaps those leftover premiums from last years promotions to be revealed only when on the landing page!

Yet there is another very powerful word in the marketing lexicon we have yet to use – WINFor with today’s loose interpreatation of the Betting & Gaming Law in the UK means basically….

NO PURCHASE NECESSARY  BUT ONLY ONE ENTRY A DAY

So win in a free draw can be useed to encourage a site visit. And WIN can be used in many ways as a simple prize fund with only a site visit required with nothing to buy just take a look and of cousre you can choose the prize fund to suit you…

No 7  Win a holiday

No 8  Win £100

From many years of  running draws and competitions I can tell you that whilst we all in the end would prefer the cash likelihood to enter is higher with a tangible prize.

No 9  Win a saving

The saving could be on a product or extra points in the loyalty scheme or a voucher /money-off coupon

No 10  The first 100 vsitors get a free…

Give the market the impression that you ar a busy site and encourage traffic at the same time.

Over to you

Now you have the diea of using PROMOTIONAL TECHNIQUES as part of your PPC campaigsn and BRINGING OUT THE OFFERS ALREADY ON THE SITE you will be easily able to devsie your own offers realting to your BRAND, product or service. Howver now you will do so safe in the knowledge that you are gaining a competitive advantage over your competitors and Google makes it immediate!

Well I didi say that these ideas come from the Old Sales Promoters Almanac so in trues sales promotion style her is an EXTRA idea…

No 11 Impacful Landing Page

OK no so much an idea as a means of implementing I grant you but as a landing page may well be much easier to produce / change that the site istself and it will increase promotional impact I commend it to you. And in the hope that you might consider using Sales Promotion more actively on line!

I indebted to my friends at Sleeping Giant Media who understand more about PPC than anyone I know for input

Does your brand stand out for what it stands for?

The rise and rise of on line spend and the counterbalancing decline in offline ‘traditional’ media creates as much of a dilemma as it does an opportunity.So many things are changing can you be sure…that your brand stands out for what it stands for?

The IAB says that in the first half of 2009 UK internet advertising accounted for 24% of ALL ad spending ( up from 18.7 % in 2008) whilst TV was 22%  Press – 18.5% and Direct Mail -  11.5%. This is the first time digital ad spend has overtaken the other channels anywhere in the world. And off that online spend paid for search (PPC) accounts for 60%.

Now this is being driven by a number of factors accountability, apparent ease and accessibility to the process and that ever growing usage of online by a broadband enhanced populous.

Just look at the chart to see how much it has grown across the country and through all strata of the population.

Yet many still  adhere to the ‘menu across the top –  fill every space’ format for their web site and a time when we  are being shown that in reality online TV is here with BBC iPlayer making the unmissable unmissable ( I just love the slogan as near perfect as you can be). Indeed this very weekend the ENGLAND v UKRAINE football match is ONLY available on line.

So time to really evaluate what your web site is! No longer should it be what you do when you have done everything else!

In fact it is time to really re-appraise all of marketing activity

So two major questions are raised how to plan and what happens to the brand. Let’s look at them individually in a little more detail.  (This is a big subject that I will return to, I’m sure.)

No 1 What is the optimum mix of spending to be most cost effective?

This fast evolution of  fast  online speeds coupled with faster  computers means brilliant images, greater capacity and quick access.

So time to see everything as starting digitally because now in effect it does anyway and that the web site now becomes Marketing Central and that everything emanates from it. The web site  must now become MARKETING CENTRAL. Then time to re-evaluate you marketing messages, target customers and appropriate media. Only by fully understanding this will you be able to plan YOUR marketing most effectively. A simple example search advertising only works well when the thing being searched for is known, axiomatic you might say but problematic if you want to launch a new product.

No 2 How do I maintain my Brand and it’s effectiveness on line?

All the attributes of a brand with its appearance and logo but more importantly the values that support and build it come under pressure on line. Google is the only brand it allows on its search pages and then it constrains even further by making all adds conform to the

same number of digits.

Whilst web developers everywhere insist on basically the same type faces and using old fashioned static  logos design for print ( although if you would believe Kellogg each one is handwritten but then you would have to ask at least Ford and Coke too!

I highlight these as world famous iconic brands with so much behind them yet each in their own way recognise that the brand itself needs substantiating and supporting.  Just how much do you understand your brand, what it stands for… what is actually behind the logo itself? Because the logo maybe all that will be there to differentiate and substantiate your offering. Even then it will be reduced to its smallest form – the icon.

So it is time to look more closely and thoroughly at your brand;-

As the more it appears on line the more its will be starved of all the things it needs to grow. Reduced to series of images and logical copy the brand is in danger of just becoming simply a symbol in and off  itself.

So what does your brand stand for? Make sure you know and that your customers know. Then work harder, much harder….

Making your brand stand out for what it stands for….

The customer always wins in the end….

I like a pint. Mind you I mean a proper pint. None of your same tasting over advertised heavliy branded yet ersatz lagers. I mean a real ale -conditioned in the cask no less.It has just been announced  that sales of  cask conditioned ales sales have risen year on year for the first time for many a year. This growth has been fuelled by a growth in micro breweries ( there  are now over 700 of them )  serving their local area and beyond, encouraged all the while by a die hard group of customers organised through CAMRA. Of course there are some national/ regional brands like Fullers London Pride, Courage Best , Timothy Taylor Landlord and Sharps Doombar. Only a couple of which have received a modicum of media support, both of which are on the take… ‘pride’ or ‘courage’!

The big 4 breweries, driven by the simplified demands of the highly geared national pub groups, with the notable exception of  Witherspoons,  have marketed to the hilt their lager ranges.  Yet it is real ale that is growing  even whilst many  pubs are closing. Is this a triumph of PRODUCT over BRAND?

Yes is the answer but it is also, and more so, the triumph of the CUSTOMER.

For at the heart and the start of MARKETING is recognising what the customer wants and giving it to them.

So customer satisfaction should always drive the brand not distribution savings and reductive retailer demands.

Look more closely and you will find that the local breweries themselves are almost playing around with branding through strange and ever strange names ( dogbolter springs to mind) as well as quirky font bages.  Fulfilling some of the needs of brands RECOGNITION  and DIFFERENTIATION. Whilst not being able to afford other mainstream marketing activity other methods are being used remarkably well.

Take for instance my local brewer Rebellion in Marlow… they operate a club which allows members to bring 3 guests 4 times a year to drink free.

SAMPLING, RECOMMENDATION and WORD OF MOUTH to satisfy the most stringent marketer as well as they use the events to drive home quality by giving tours and presentations too.

So top quality marketing and a great night out for many increasingly LOYAL CUSTOMERS.   I am sure that all the words in capital letters would have appeared in the planning for any of the national brands yet by combining great prodcuts with local marketing and the basic elements of branding it is the micro breweries that are winning.

But the big breweries could so easly raise their game with the power of the internet. For instance to drive sampling and sessions. Just ask Pizza Hut and Zizzis! Full restaurants thanks to  ever changing on line vouchers.

We all need reminding that marketing starts and ends with the customer.

So let’s be happy to celebate a victory for customers all round. Oh your round? I’d like a pint!

Google wants to give me £30

I recently received a mail shot from Google. It was highly targeted, the offer was very sepcific and opportunties to mal-redeeem were zero. All very professional to warm the cockles of any DM specialist. Yet it troubled me in a number of ways which lead me to question the actulal effectiveness of it and then in turn the marketing thinking behind it.
The targeting was good but I am already an active user of Adwords. So the message was almost trite and certainly patronising to me as a marketing consultant ( and presumably to all others in marketng too ) and the offer was unsuable as the t+c’s stipulated that it could only be used by accounts of less than 14 days old. What’s more ( or less ) is that the offer of £30 free* advertising was reduced by £5 in set up costs. Free is a 4 letter word FREE not 5 as in FREE*!
But so much for the actual offer obviously targeted to a NEW user not me. The actual sales pitch for this new media to me is not how effective it is but focussed solely on how easy it is to set up and operate.
And that’s a pattern that you see with all Google output they in effect tell you nothing about how effectively their media works they leave up to you to sepnd and work it out for yourself . Experimenting at their rates with your budget to learn what works. Even the most spohisticated PPC agencies do just that. Imagine any newspaper, magazine or TV station NOT giving information about effectievenes and case histories. And if you want to contact Google for more advice they will of course let you email them but there are no other contact deatils avavailble. In fact the return address on the envelope was the handling house in as much to say don’t bother us just get on with it.
And of course we do but increasingly we are seeing PPC in a new light and it’s a theme I shall return to

The increasing importance of the pub!

With Pubs closing down at the rate of 1 a day one wonders if the usage has gone up following Claire’s comment below…

‘Nearly a quarter use their mobile to work from the pub, 25% have sent emails and made work calls whilst on public transport and 13% even work from the doctors.
A survey of over 1,000 UK workers released yesterday by 3 Business has uncovered that 31% of all people feel it is essential to be contactable by work, whenever and wherever they are. The survey also found that 23% of people have answered calls or sent emails whilst down the pub, 25% have worked on public transport and 13% have even sent emails and made work calls from the doctor’s surgery. ‘

The survey also revealed that 7% of all people questioned, which equates to 4m people across the UK, have taken time out in the middle of a date to take a work phone call. An intriguing 4% of people have even managed to send emails and speak to work colleagues whilst having a waxing or tanning session.

The marketing impilcations of this mean that the stimulation or suggestion of purchase at the right time and spot remain an as yet an under utilised oportunity.

Help is at hand

When I first became a marketing director I thought I knew most of what I should of Marketing. Of course we all know you never know enough especially about the customer and there is always someone who knows more than you especially in all things internet!

There I was got the top job in Marketing and rearing to go but like all these things it proved not to be that simple.

I soon found there were not only so many things to remember and recall but a whole new set of demands for which I was not in the slightest prepared. They ranged from those of quite simply being a director and working as part of a board through to structuring the function or considering acquisition as much as advertising as the means of growth.

No problem I thought get on to Amazon and get The Marketing Directors Handbook, well there was a problem as the book did not then exist.

So as my experiences grew I decided that I should go about producing the said book but it was too big a project to do alone and indeed two heads are better than one. So I was very appreciative of the collaboration of Guy Tomlinson who walks the talk at www.marketingdirectors.co.uk
For the past two years or more we have been writing the book so that now The Marketing Directors Handbook is about to be published and is now listed on Amazon.

So the next time you need to know the likes of the best ways of dealing with Merger & Acquisition or working with the Financial Director or quite simply best advice on a re-branding project, it is all in the book. It is intended to be helpful not only to Marketing Directors…

Essential for Marketing Directors

Valuable for ambitious Marketing Managers

Powerful reference for CEOs and Financial Directors

If you would like to know more and register for an advance copy go to The Marketing Directors Handbook.

The book is written in a friendly tone giving advice rather than instruction with many charts and examples. We are sure you will find it very helpful and all the help you will need to be the best marketing director you can be, get the job or manage the board.

Brands: The love hate relationship

Marketing magazine (UK May 14th) has just published a table of the brands we love most and the brands we hate most. Interestingly but perhaps not surprisingly may brands feature in both lists.

I have a new Ford Mondeo – brilliant car – so I was interested in where Ford as a brand was in the tables. Almost in an identical position @ 32 and 33.

Why is this?

Well it goes without saying that the larger the brand footprint the more people will have been exposed to it. But those who have not got a ‘new’ Ford may still have old views of the product and the brand, and need to justify to themselves that the extra £10,000 they paid for the equivalent Audi or BMW was really worth it. So is that really the value of a brand or lack of it?Yet in understanding brands properly, not simple the using of a name and a logo, we have to engage the emotional values.

The best way of understanding the importance of brand and product is to see

PRODUCTS AS PEOPLE and BRANDS AS FRIENDS

Now with friends the reason we like them is often the reason we don’t like some other people.

Marketing Superior thought: You don’t have a brand unless people have an emotional bond to it. But remember human emotions are fickle so be very careful how you play with them. That is why brand development is one of the key elements of marketing but it doesn’t stop it from being the most mis-understood and the most valued prize.

Ask Ford I’m sure they would like to get an extra £10,000 for every Mondeo!

Branding at the weekend

It is a marketer’s lot that we are never really off the job. Take a glorious weekend a couple of weeks ago… ‘Let’s go to the fair and there is a beer festival on at the pub in the village’ Perfect!!
Yet there were marketing lessons lurking there. Firstly at the fair. No ordinary fair, it was Carters Steam Fair. Every show and every caravan consistently decked out in a superb colour combination of ochre and orange with a strong identifiable logo everywhere with a powerful description. No brand manual, I’ll bet just a family business certain and proud of its identity.
A lesson to every one of us – pride is one of the most important factors in branding and implementation.

Over at the beer festival I started musing where had the phenomenon of the beer festival come from? I reasoned thus…with the headlong pursuit of lagers, cheaper to produce and easier to serve but with the key differentiation being in the expensively won image sustained by TV advertising the big brewers did not support their bitter brands. So into the gap came every Tom Dick and Harry with their micro brewery and silly names yet with a good and interesting product self-selected by the publican. By the way the gap may have been widened by the big brewers practice of guest beers.

Marketing Superior thought; In a big market leave a consumer gap and it will be filled.
So that was how I came to have a pint of Old Tom and thoroughly enjoyable it was too.
Now back to work!

What’s the difference between MARKETING & SALES?

Have you ever wondered why you see many Sales & Marketing Directors and no Marketing & Sales Directors?

Yet it seems there is a constant debate as to what are the differences between Sales and Marketing.

In practice a Sales & Marketing Director will be responsible for the production of the marketing collateral required to support the sales effort, vital of course, but marketing kicks in long before that point. Although it does explain what so many people feel that marketing is dying or has been simply subjugated to this narrow function. Yet the brand has never been more important and the customer has more opportunities to exercise choice than ever before. Perhaps it is best summed up that marketing should spend more time thinking so that sales doing can be more effective.

Just compare these two lists:-

Firstly this is what Sales see as its priorities…
SALES

Targets
Units
Products
Benefits
Buyer
Turnover

Whilst Marketing sees these as being important

MARKETING
Objectives
Market share
Brand
USP & values
Customer
Profit
Objectives

What do you think?

And how to we all work to achieve a better overall relationship between the two functions?

These ideas are taken from The Marketing Directors Handbook shortly to be published see www.themarketingdirectors.co.uk/handbook.htm for details