Jumping to solutions

JUMPING TO SOLUTIONS

Imagine: The products developed, the packaging’s designed and printed, the brochures are done, the web site Is live, the pricing is sorted, there’s good margin, the caps and balloons are ordered, there’s orders in the system (BUT sales aren’t meeting budget) ………………..  here it comes…… let’s talk to a marketing person!

Can anyone see the irony?

I’ve worked with some impressive blue chipped brands and there are two things I know, it’s tough out there and a well thought out plan (beyond caps and balloons and giveaways) is critical!  Jumping to solutions is quite frankly the easy part, but not necessarily the safest!

Here are some key questions I ask…..

Define marketing to me?

Is your market growing?

Explain your customers to me?

Why should they buy from you?

Explain your customers to me again?

Why wouldn’t they buy from you?

Where do they buy?

Explain your customers to me again? (This is a deliberate repetition not a typo!)

Describe success (and don’t tell me it’s a journey)

What NEW products or services do you have planned?

Explain the market you exist in, five years from now?

Marketing’s changed! What you say, how you say it, where you say it and why you do what you do should be the questions you’re asking.  Never has it been more important to understand your customers.

Don’t order the caps, balloons and brochures just yet, invest in some planning up front and speak to a marketing consultant.

The Great Divide

THE GREAT DIVIDE

One thing that never ceases to amaze me is the great divide that exists between the two great and wonderful disciplines sales and marketing!

To explain my argument let’s take a look at the famous brand  – coke. Launched in 1886 it was sold in a pharmacy, sampled on the streets, pronounced “excellent” and sold for five cents a glass. Carbonated water was added which produced a “Delicious and Refreshing,” drink still reverberated in ad campaigns today! Fancy that!

During the first year sales were $50 expenses were $70.  It made a loss!

Whose fault , sales or marketing? Was it the packaging, sampling cost, the hand painted signs, the raw materials, the selling price, the margin, the cost structure, the sales people they needed to sell more,  they give away too much.

Well what we do know – coke didn’t crash and burn.  In fact by the late 1890s, ads were in the local papers, merchandising of the product was in full swing, coupons for free samples were handed out.  While all this was going on someone was selling coke and it wasn’t the marketers; they were busy in the office going over the costing and price and creating new strategies and campaigns.  The sales people were travelling and selling to farms and lumber camps up and down the Mississippi River.  Demand started to outstrip supply. Sales were doing their part.   The marketers were very busy and they believed the campaigns and sampling were responsible for creating the trial and interest without marketing sales would be down!

Hang on a minute!  Aren’t we forgetting the manufacturing and bottling technique.  This revolutionised the product and transformed the humble soda parlour drink. Bottling meant it could reach far and wide and didn’t need to rely on customers coming into it, it could go to the customer. Distribution capabilities exploded, mass marketing was needed, sales people were really important now!  They were out and about and selling and marketing was happy because they had the money to spend on their campaigning.

Popularity grew and grew and the development of even higher-speed bottling machinery and increasingly efficient transportation was needed to fuel demand and to serve (that’s sales) more customers.

But seriously is it simply marketing and sales.  No, it’s lawyers, business acumen, contracts, machines, factories, engineers and lest we forget the customers! They all contributed to making a funny black fizzy liquid go forth and conquer.

Today, cokes bottling system is one of the largest, most widespread production and distribution networks in the world and coke is the highest valued brand.  But I ask can any one discipline be it sales, marketing, engineering, production, manufacturing, dare I say accounting take credit – I think not.  When all is said and done what you do have to have is a great product.

Sales and marketing it’s time to kiss and make up!

Power to the B2B

Power to the consumer marketers – Boo Who.  Big awards, clever ads, great packaging designs, new product development projects, big budgets, fancy ad agency’s … the list goes on.

Effective B2B marketing is just as important and, even if I do say so myself, more discerning.  First of all you need to ‘really’ get to know and understand your data base.  With a little digging, a good clean and basic market intelligence your message will hit your customer with the right message, the right medium and at the right time.

Attending trade shows, direct mail outs, industry advertising (in relevant publications), is all good but still very much a mass approach. What about one to one communication? It’s gaining momentum, and it’s getting results.

Blending the traditional approach underpinned by a personal message is the way to go – but – don’t be cheesy – be sincere and don’t stalk!  You need substance and the message needs to be relevant!

Clever direct marketing should deliver specifics and that’s where a clean and well versed data base comes in.

So how’s this for an example?

Customer reads an article about your business or product in an industry magazine,  a corporate/creative gift arrives, they Google and your company comes up first, they attend an industry function (and you are the sponsor), they receive an SMS informing them of something that’s relevant, they click on your web site to find out more and there it is a personal website with specific offers for them, your company representative calls – no introduction necessary!

Success – where does it hail from?

Some people believe if it’s a good idea it will succeed. Many a mighty have fallen with this philosophy. Success comes from many factors.  You need the right product in the right place at the right time and at the right price and customers need to be willing to buy!

Good old fashioned luck also plays a part in the success equation.

For what it’s worth…. I think, successful new product development requires a team of people working collaboratively. and that doesn’t mean that bigger is better.  Yes bigger  have more engineers, lawyers, budgets, sales teams, brand names but they often work less effectively.  They’re attending more meetings, focussing on organisational issues and the daily decisions rather than what’s best for the business.

Competition today is fierce and the sequential process used to be that the new product development project passed through a chain of departments – engineering – finance – manufacturing – marketing – but that’s falling by the way.

Things done concurrently where everyone works together is faster, builds better products and speed to market is quicker. The smaller team communicates better and decisions get made.  You know the old saying, if you don’t want to make a decision, form a committee!

New product development benefits from leveraging too ie: using outside resources.  This reduces the need for permanent fixed overheads and allows businesses to expand and contract as needed.

The Japanese excelled at this.  Look at VCR production in the 80’s. How many brands where there?  Dozens.  They were able to produce a complex machine very quickly because they sourced the innards from one supplier who specialised in designing and producing the mini bits.  Proof that external specialists can be extremely valuable in getting the project done.

But these small entrepreneurial Japanese companies got bigger and more bureaucratic and the edge for manufacturing has slipped.

So move over Japan let’s say a quick G’day to China, oh and by the way, please stand up and make way for India!

Change – what’s it all mean?

Over the last decade marketing has seen some almighty changes.  Product lifecycles have gone from years to months, manufacturing from around the corner to around the globe and distribution – well, that’s a story and a half, it hasn’t just evolved, a new beast has exploded and quickly – the Internet.

I like to call it the “5 P’s and I”!

Our humble master, the consumer, can make purchases and enjoy them within minutes!   We can manufacture in Asia, have a call centre in India, a designer in Europe and market to a global stage.

With the economy in recession, recovery, depression, turning the corner (take your pick) what does it all mean? Looking for the win/wins and being fast and flexible is more critical now than ever.

We need to be more aware and seek a better approach to re shape, embrace and react even before change happens.  Forward thinking’s the key or, you may know it simply as “strategic planning”.

The bitter pill of hindsight raises its ugly head here with poor old Polaroid!  Pioneering the humble plastic pocket camera in the sixties and seventies they designed, manufactured and marketed household pocket cameras and launched into the market with gusto and enthusiasm.

So what happened?

One word “digital”!  Instead of embracing the threat as an opportunity Polaroid minimised its significance.

By the time they acknowledged it, it was too late. Polaroid declared bankruptcy in 2001.