The two most important (and underused) words in marketing are “So what?”

The idea is to ask “so what” until you can’t take your questioning another step.  For example:

Our tires have a special tread pattern.  (So what?)

So they channel water away from underneath the tire.  (So what?)

So the tire makes better contact with the road.  (So what?)

So the car will steer better when it’s raining.  (So what?)

So you’re less likely to have an accident.  (So what?)

So you’re less likely to be hurt, or killed, or have to repair your car.

Aha!  We’ve finally arrived at the real benefit of our special tread pattern.  The thing that we should be communicating to prospects.  Yet, how many times have you seen advertising that stopped short of that “Aha!” benefit and advertised one of the earlier, less effective benefits instead?

And “So what?” doesn’t just apply to product benefits.  Think about a mission statement that says:

“We will provide excellent customer service.”  (So what?)

So customers’ problems will be solved more quickly.  (So what?)

So they will be happier with us.  (So what?)

So they will buy more of our products.  (So what?)

So we will make more money.  (So what?)

So we can continue to be successful as a company.  (So what?)

So you can continue to receive a paycheck.

And there’s your “Aha!”  If you want your mission statement to resonate with employees, this is the point you should be making. 

“So what?” isn’t hard to apply, but it is amazing how seldom people make use of it.  Make sure you are one of them!

Your CMO can help you apply this technique to your marketing. 

(So what?) 

So your job will be more secure and you will get promoted!

Don't waste your time...

...reading this month's marketing thought if you can complete the following statement in ten words or less :

"What makes my product or service better than anyone else's is _______________________."

OK, I assume you weren't able to do it, or you'd have quit reading.

You're not alone-most companies haven't identified a unique competitive advantage. And even if they have, it often suffers from one of two additional problems:

1) The advantage they've identified isn't meaningful to their audience ("Who cares if your car can parallel park itself?"), or

2) They can't deliver on their supposed advantage ("No, your customer service isn't world-class. In fact, it's dismal...")

This isn't just an academic exercise. The ability to articulate, execute, and publicize a competitive advantage has a huge effect on your marketing spend. The more desirable and unique your offering is, the less you have to spend to generate awareness.

Don't get me wrong, you'll still have to advertise. But when everyone's advertising collateral is saying the same thing, the only way to stand out is to say it more often, to say it in bigger advertisements, to provide more giveaways, and so on. If you've got a believable, relevant, unique (or even relatively unique) feature or benefit, you don't need to outshout the competition. And that means lower marketing costs.

And remember, parity products sell on price. Products with a competitive advantage can command premium pricing. So whether you're interested in cutting (marketing) costs or pumping up revenue, creating a competitive advantage is key.

Strategy first. Warehouse second.

You know I’m a big proponent of (centralized) data warehousing and what it can do for a business. But the key is the “what it can do” part of that sentence. Too often, companies want to start with centralizing the data, when they should be starting with how they’re going to use it.

Consumers (rarely) react to a single contact. Their relationship to your company will normally depend on the sum of all their experiences with it. You need to understand that sum, and what goes into it. The way to do that is to:
1) identify and map out all the ways a customer can interact with your company throughout the customer lifecycle,
2) create a strategy to link and optimize these touch points, and
3) then create the infrastructure to implement your strategy

These interactions will involve tools like your website, email, snail mail, telephone, social media, and face-to-face. They will take place during proactive and reactive interactions with people in your sales, marketing, accounting, operations, distribution, legal, and other departments.

Prospects and customers are not all the same. Which of them are “influentials?” Which are “advocates?” Who is profitable? Who is costing you money? How do you want to interact with each of these groups during every potential contact with you?

Sound complicated? It is. But would you rather have your prospect and customer relationships developing randomly (as they do for most companies), or under your direction?

The more you understand, guide, and control the contacts that create a customer’s relationship with your company, the more successful you are going to be. That idea is simple, it’s the execution that’s hard. But the more you embrace that execution, the greater the competitive advantage you will generate.

Your CMO can help you map your interactions and better control their outcomes to create more profitable relationships with prospects and customers. Give me a call and we’ll talk about it!

Two key elements of Innovation

It’s a fast-paced world out there these days, and standing still is a good way to get run over. That makes innovation more important than ever. Whether you’re trying to identify new products or services, save money, or improve efficiency, innovation is the best way to increase your competitive advantage.

But most companies lack even the most basic structure to generate innovation. Here are two things that basic structure requires:

1) Ideas! And not just from the managers. Ideas should come from all levels--just offer a reward and see how many you get (it doesn’t even have to be a big reward). [Interesting anecdote: The military once offered its members 1% of the first year’s annual savings for innovative ideas which were implemented. They stopped the program because too many of their key non-coms were retiring on the millions of dollars awarded.]

One free way to foster innovation is to make it one of the job objectives evaluated for each person’s annual review. You can even challenge your vendors to submit ideas. Think about asking for different types of ideas in different years. “What would make us more efficient?” or “How can we save money?” or “What would make our job easier?” for example.

Publish the ideas in an (internal) forum available to your employees. You’ll reduce duplication and encourage synergy (“Instead of this, what if we did that…”)
2) An evaluation system: You won’t be able to implement every idea you get. Nor should you. So you need a system to evaluate and prioritize ideas. Two very basic measures are relevance to your corporate goal(s) and projected return on invested resources. Ideas should not necessarily be ranked on how well they make use of current organizational resources or expertise--that may be too limiting.

Make sure employees know the evaluation criteria. Over time, they will begin pre-filtering their own ideas, improving the quality of the suggestions you receive.

Final thought: Wouldn’t it be neat if some of our government agencies did this?

Your CMO has been involved in innovation for over 30 years. If you want to jumpstart your innovativeness, get in touch!

Stranger In A Strange (generational) Land

If you visit Japan, or Germany, or Brazil, you expect cultural differences. Same with people of different races or religions. But the cultural gap between generations can still surprise us. I think we unconsciously tend to expect people “like us” to have similar attitudes and wants, no matter what their age. Not so.

Why should a marketer care? Here’s just a sampling of industries and functions where generational differences radically impact the form and usage of products and services:

Retirement communities
Cell phones
Publishing
Restaurants
Automotive
Human Resources
Fund-raising
Volunteer recruitment

If you have been giving thought all along to how generational differences affect your business, that’s great. But it’s my experience that very few people do.

If they give it any thought at all, older marketers tend to lump everyone else into YOUNGER. Younger marketers tend to lump everyone else into OLDER. And middle aged marketers just figure everyone is exactly like them.

Generations are defined by unique core values created by what happened to certain groups of people during their formative years. Most “experts” (there’s no certification or credentials for generation gurus) tend to lump living Americans into the following groups:

G.I. generation Born 1901-1926
Silent generation born 1927-1945
Baby Boomer generation born 1946-1964
Generation X born 1965-1981
Millennial generation born 1982-present

If you’re thinking you’d like to know more, you don’t need to reinvent the wheel. There is a ton of research on the attitudes and behaviors that define the different generations, at least here in the U.S. (generational data for other countries is much harder to find). A good starting place is The Generational Imperative by Chuck Underwood, one of the pioneers in the field. He has specific chapters on his book on how to market to each generation, which can be a convenient short cut.

Want to discuss how your business plan might better reflect generational differences? Give me a call--I’ve already read the book!

Identify bad products by how they’re described.

Good products (or services) don’t have to be “sold.” Their benefits and value are easily recognizable. Just communicate them to people, and they’ll buy.

Bad products don’t have easily recognizable benefits, and their value is far from clear. The solution is, of course, to improve the product. But all too often, the company tries to plaster over product deficiencies with a thick layer of glowing adjectives and disclaimers. No one is fooled, but it enables the company to shift the blame (for poor sales) to the advertising agency.

Pick any undistinguished product you like, and check out the language they are using to describe it. The description will be loaded with glowing, generic adjectives like ‘exceptional,’ ‘stylish,’ ‘sexy,’ and ‘supercharged.” And/or the bottom of the page will be covered in mouse type telling you why/how the product isn’t really what it appears to be, or has some unpleasant side effect (‘some assembly required,’ ‘do not attempt at home,’ or my personal favorite, ‘may cause anal leakage’).

Whether consciously or subliminally, consumers do pick up on these cues. That’s why so much advertising is ineffective. Consumers sense the desperation and deceit, and tune it out. Even if there’s nothing wrong with the product, overheated advertising copy can make the product appear second rate.

Want to know what message your advertising is sending? Give Your CMO a call, and I’ll help you figure it out!

Yes you can. And your customers expect it!

Back in the day of the corner store, proprietors used to know their customers. They didn’t have to ask the customer’s name or address, and probably had a pretty good idea of the customer’s likes and dislikes. If an order had to be delivered, the store probably even knew what time the customer was likely to be home. And customers appreciated that knowledge, and the personal service it made possible.

Flash forward 50 years, and everything had changed. The corner stores were gone; relationships had become impersonal. The store didn’t care who you were, and if you wanted something delivered, you had to supply your name and address (every time, even if you’d just bought something there the day before). Despite a greater selection and lower prices, store loyalty and customer satisfaction declined.

Flash forward to today. Thanks to computers, there is no longer an excuse for uncollected or inaccessible information. And customers know it. So customers have every right to expect the same kind of recognition and personal service their grandparents used to get from the corner store. It doesn’t matter whether they are buying face-to-face or online. They want the fast, easy, personalized service that a well-networked database makes possible.

Sure there are exceptions. Some of us have information we don’t want companies to store, like birthdays, social security numbers, and financial access data. But apart from those, customers have the right to expect you to know them, and treat them like the individuals they are.

So think about your transactional systems (and this goes way beyond purchases to systems which handle functions like customer service, billing, and shipping). When someone gives you information, do you store it? Do you pre-populate forms with known information? Do you keep track of customer preferences, and make suggestions based on them? Do your all of your (appropriate) people have access to the customer’s history? In other words, do you treat customers as the valued individuals/corporations they are, or as anonymous, unappreciated “buying units.”

It takes a lot to turn a prospect into a customer, and to keep that customer. A well designed, well networked, well used database can make that effort a lot easier.

Your CMO has extensive experience in using data to create a more user-friendly customer experience, and can provide some great examples from places “doing it right.” Let’s sit down sometime and talk about how that experience can help improve your customer acquisition and retention!