My Marketing Sucks... Where Do I Start?

Many organizations' marketing efforts either do not exist or produce sub optimal results. There are many reasons for this.  For purpose of this post, we will start by looking at what organizations should to if their marketing efforts consist of hiring sales representatives and hoping that they have a book of business and can close deals.  Unfortunately this is a common practice and most often ends with a couple of superstar sales reps staying with the company for years and the rest falling to the wayside.

Any company (whether new or not) that does not have a real marketing department needs to start by doing 4 things:

• Identify what industry will best be able to find benefit in their product
• Identify the best list of target companies that can afford to buy the product
• Identify who within the target companies will use the product
• Define the most cost effective strategy of communicating value to the final user

Notice that I use certain words, like value, benefit, user.  Marketing is about communicating value.  Business is about providing additional value to a user.  No one will buy a product if they do not see an additional value or benefit for using it.  Great product capabilities, or functionality is not enough.  Google+ is an example that is very relevant.  Google+ offers a number of features that Facebook does not, but so far most people are not deactivating their Facebook accounts for Google+.  The issue of creating and communicating value is the most important issue to understand and master in marketing.  It doesn't matter if you are cold calling, spamming or going door-to-door, you have to provide additional value to the potential customer and communicate it well.  

The next thing on the list is identifying what industry your product will fit in the best.  If your company makes widgets designed for hospitals you may not want to be marketing to the Automotive industry. (Okay, that was an extreme example, but the lesson is the same).  Finding these markets, verticals or targets is not always easy.  I worked for a company that offered so many different software packages that it was very confusing.  Package A, with Feature D&M were best for Industry A, but Package D with Feature A&Z was best for Industry K - huh?

This was so complicated that the majority of the time the Lead Generation Reps would call a company on their list and try to talk to executives on a cold call to try and learn what they were looking for, and then find that package that best fit them - this is putting the cart before the horses!  A better way is to have a clearly defined list of features aligned with industry pains and trends.

Make no mistake about it, finding and understanding these pains and trends are extremely difficult and aligning them to your product is also hard.    If you are a small firm and just starting, you probably have an idea already and the next exercise can help to materialize what you and your team have in your heads into usable knowledge.  The Five Product Levels consists of the following levels:

1. Core Benefit:  What is the most basic benefit that my product offers?
2. Basic Product: What is the most basic form of my product that produces the core benefit?
3. Expected Product:What does the buyer expect from the product?
4. Augmented Product: How does the product exceed the expectations of the user?
5. Potential Product: What could our product be in the future?

These questions can give you a start.  Translating the answers into marketable material will take a little bit of creativity.  There are so many channels to use to push you value proposition to the world that is daunting at times.  My advice is choose one (or two), and master that.  Make sure it is measurable and produces results - quickly!  If your product is truly complicated, in a big-boy industry and selling to corporate giants cold calling can work. Just be sure to train your lead generation reps to get an interested contact on the phone with a knowledgeable and experienced sales rep as soon as possible.  Email marketing may work if you are smaller, but I would not start sending spam to corporations - their firewalls are too good to produce results.  Webinars can be fun, but it is really hard to make sure you have the right people there unless you cold call and personal invite each one.  Doing that, negates the need for a webinar because if there is any interest it is better to do a personalized one.

So, true to the nature of business, there are always more questions than answers.  Good executives are good, not because they have all of the answers, but because they can find them and figure out complex problems.  If your marketing sucks your activities and value proposition is most likely not aligned with what the market is looking for.  Figure that our (Product, Market Need, Value) and then realign and your results will improve.  If they don't, you should be working in marketing.

Lap Dances Are NOT Expansable!

A while back I was sent a youtube video called "A Few Good Salesmen." If any of haven't seen it, watch it right away. You will either love it or be offended by it - either way it is worth watching. 

I bring this up because a lot of people have a bad impression of sales people and unfortunately rightfully so.  No one likes to be sold, and although entertaining the late Billy Mays was he was not a sales person.   He was a pitch man, not a salesman… there is a big difference.  Additionally, in corporate America, sales people are disliked because of lavish bonuses and sometimes favoratism. My point and perspective is that sales is the only part of the business that generates revenue - everything else is overhead. The sales team pays for their own salary and arguably, your too… thank them the next time you get the chance. Lead generation is a close 2nd, depending on the organizational structure. I am in debt to my organization (figuratively) if you add up my salary, benefits and bonuses minus revenue generated, but we are just now getting past the start up phase and I am not too far behind the brake even point. Marketing is not a revenue generating group within an organization as their job (again depending on the organization) is to provide sales the necessary info (brochures, product info, flyers and other material) to close deals and generate revenue. Yes (I think I know what you are thinking) sale and marketing have to work hand-in-hand and going on step further, lead generation should be the bridge between sales and marketing, but that is another blog. 

Back to the point. Sales people have a bad reputation for selling people (think of a used car sales person or Dwight from The Office) by not motivating people to buy. Here’s what I mean, people love to spend money, right?  If you can do three things (the last being the most important), you should go far in sales. People will give you their ATM PIN if they trust you and no one will ever trust you if they don't like you, you can't get someone to like you unless you engage them. Forget about impressing them ... That what used car sales people and marketing do... instead engage them, ask them how they are doing and listen.  On a cold call (another future blog) your first question should be “How are you?” – and LISTEN!  Build some rapport, then some trust, and then you can motivate them to see the benefits, build the business case and to be the champion for you. More importantly, you will gain a trusted friend and advisor forever.  I have connections that I have never sold anything to that have given me recommendations and still talk to on a regular basis... 

Good, no sorry, GREAT sales people are able to find the real reason that you want or need to buy something.  You can’t sell ice to an Eskimo unless you first realize that all of their ice is contaminated or something like that.  Really great sales people are able to understand you business, your needs and pains that you may not even realize.  It doesn’t matter if you are selling the enterprise software, cars or the Awesome Auger – the point is to find out what the buying motive is and then help your future customer see the benefits.  We get in trouble (sales people) when we find a pain and exploit it to sell a bunch of stuff they don’t need, or knowingly go through with a deal that we cannot deliver.

So you can do it this... Or you can take your contacts/prospects out for lap dances and try to expense them.

Just my $0.02 worth ;)

JS