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!

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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!

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‘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.

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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!

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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

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There are many many marketing sites and blogs. All seem to suffer from the same faults: from checklists of must do’s to achieve marketing success; rants from a particular standpoint especially those who mistake the technique and the technology for the solution; white papers masquerading as a marketing truth but essentially espousing the benefits of only one particular software product and well you know what I mean. To my mind they demean the noble art and practice of marketing.

Thus this blog aims to be the counterpoint, to recognise that marketing is always about achieving superiority in the customers’ mind, in the media and in the market place.

This is Marketing Superior.
Looking for the good, championing the best, aiming to drive out the bad

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