32 PRINCIPLES OF MODERN MARKETING PART 3
By Nadji Tehrani
As indicated in previous editorials, it is our paramount responsibility
as the industry’s preeminent and pioneering publication, since 1982,
to address the greatest needs of our industry.
My close contact with — and observation of — the industry has always convinced me that
the greatest needs of our industry as well as many other industries is having an outstanding
marketing department. As I have stated before:
If you don’t market, you don’t exist. And, today, if you are not on
the first page of the leading search engines, you don’t exist.
To the extent that our editorial resources for this publication have expanded significantly, I truly
believe that our outstanding and renowned editors are covering every possible, crucial aspect of
the industry in the best possible way. Therefore, to prevent being redundant, I have decided to
continue to focus on marketing, which I believe is not only the greatest need of contact/CRM
centers, but also most particularly, the need of technology providing companies. Unfortunately,
technology-driven companies are always focusing on building a better mousetrap only to find
out that the mouse died 15 years ago!! Hopefully, someday, they will all realize that before they
develop any product, they have to verify that the marketplace actually needs that product and
they also have to market it because no product no matter how great, will sell itself.
Now we again turn our attention to our continuing coverage of the Top 36 New Principles of
Modern Marketing. In our last installment we left off with number 11, so this month we present
numbers 12 through 16.
Rule 12 – Focus on Awareness
As indicated above, one of the greatest weaknesses of high-technology companies is the notion
that "our product is good enough and people will find out about it," by osmosis I suppose!
There is no such thing as developing a great product and
expecting it to sell itself.
It will never happen. Just to prove my point, I wanted to share a portion of an advertisement
that was developed by McGraw-Hill 50 years ago titled, "The Man in the Chair." The man
in the chair is positioned as a buyer who is providing several reasons why he cannot buy your
products. Some of those reasons are as follows:
• "I don’t know who you are."
• "I don’t know your company."
• "I don’t know your company’s products."
• "I don’t know your company’s customers."
• "I don’t know your company’s record."
• "I don’t know your company’s reputation."
• "I don’t know what your company stands for. Now — what was it that you wanted to sell me?"
Consequently, it should be crystal clear that no one will buy anything from you unless all
of the above concerns are answered and the only way to do that is via integrated marketing,
which we shall discuss later on in this editorial.
Rule 13 – Positioning and
Differentiation
In order to better appreciate how great the
role of positioning and differentiation is
may I suggest that you read my editorial
titled, "Every Company Wants to be
a Peacock in the Land of Penguins, but
Few of them Know How to Do it Right"
(www.tmcnet.com/2370.1).
Having stated the above, we need to understand
that today in this super competitive
marketplace, if you do not give a reason
to your potential buyers why they should
buy your products, they simply will not
choose your products over your competitor’s
product. In other words, you must
find what makes your product unique and
translate that in terms of benefits to your
potential buyer and then communicate the
benefits and the differentiation factor to
the marketplace around the clock 24/7. In
other words, positioning and differentiation
are not part-time jobs. You need to do it
every day, every minute, every month, every
year, 24/7 to be successful.
Rule 14 – Focus on Relationship
Marketing
Even if you apply all of the 36 marketing
principles that will be described in these
editorials, if you do not have a well natured
relationship with your customers and your
customer base, you may face great difficulty
selling your products and services. The
reason is that 75% of buying decisions are
made "based on emotion." In other words,
even if you have the best product in the
marketplace and your competitor has a
better relationship with your prospect, 75%
of the time, your prospect will buy your
competitor’s product. Therefore, you need
to do everything humanly possible and affordable
to build a solid relationship and a
continuous relationship with your prospects
and customers. Otherwise, all bets are off.
Rule 15 – Avoid AF, Build a Functional
Advertising and
Marketing Campaign
I suppose you are wondering what does
AF stand for. AF basically stands for "artsy
fartsy" in advertising. One of the greatest
mistakes made in advertising is that complete
control is given to the creative people
to design an advertisement that looks extremely
pretty and perhaps beautiful, but it
doesn’t say anything and it is not functionally
effective. Seasoned marketing people
will tell you that there is much more to
developing an effective advertisement
than making it look artsy fartsy. An AF
ad may win advertising awards just based
on looks, but when it comes to productivity,
they are practically useless unless good
copy and graphic communication skills are
blended with uniqueness and convincing
creativity in the copy. If you would like to
take your advertisement to the next level,
you need to be so creative that it would
become a memorable advertisement for
years to come. A good example of such an
ad is the above mentioned comments from
the McGraw-Hill advertisement. This ad
was so effective. It was true 50 years ago,
and it is true today. Therefore, anyone
who has anything to do with marketing
and advertising must refer to this ad as the
"raison d’être" of marketing (the reason for
existence in marketing).
Rule 16 – Try to Outsmart, Outthink
and Outsell your Competition
Obviously, this is much easier said than done.
However, if you truly are interested in dominating
your marketplace, there is no shortcut
to this rule.
Not only do you need to outsmart, outthink
and outsell your competition, but also, you
need to dominate online, print and trade
show marketing. This is the most effective
solution to market domination that exists
today in my opinion.
With so many global competitors around
today, being a copycat will not get you
anywhere. So you need to outsmart your
competition and be original. To truly outthink
and out-market your competition,
you must dominate the three areas mentioned
above such as online, in print and in
person at trade shows. Then, if you do all of
that, you should be on your way to success
provided that you have an effective sales
department that can effectively bring in
the orders. In other words, even if you do
everything requested above and your sales
department is extremely weak, nothing will
sell and all marketing dollars are wasted. So
there is a cause and effect relationship here.
Without effective marketing, there will be
no qualified sales lead generation and without
qualified sales lead generation, the sales
people will have nothing to sell with.
As always, I welcome your comments. Please email them to me at [email protected].
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