Marketing – Taking Aim
by Ilene Chunko
In this economy, almost every business is either struggling to stay “even” or looking for new customer segments, or new sources of revenue. What they want is “more sales”, and therefore look for salespeople to deliver.
What they often overlook, especially in the business-to-business environment is marketing. Marketing is not only advertising, nor is marketing creating pretty brochures, websites or other forms of collateral . . . those activities to develop awareness and create communications across multiple channels are the result of the essence marketing. True marketing is both an art and a science.
The science is the research, analysis, and synthesis of market trends, unfulfilled customer demand, competition and how your product(s) or services(s) are positioned in that environment. The outcome of the analysis is tactics and key messages that can be used to help sell your product.
The art of marketing comes from the creative ways to “package” your product or service by branding, advertising, image, catch-phrases and communicating that through the myriad of possible channels.
Sales on the other hand is looking at each customer, and determining how they can persuade them to sign on the dotted-line. Marketing is an assist to open the doors, create awareness, and arm Sales with information. In the B2B space, many times a sale is made because of the perception of a salespersons’ credibility and trustworthiness, rather than the product alone. Sales has to get close to a potential customer account, understand the customers’ decision making process, and the key pain points or opportunities the product or service might resolve. In the salesperson’s world it’s all about the specific account and helping a potential customer see a benefit. Marketing is also often used on an account by account basis, but only after the broader analytical foundation has been established.
For consumer companies, where a product or service can often be purchased from many different outlets, that same perception of value or trust that a salesperson creates in the B2B space must be created more robustly by marketing for the brand.
I find more and more companies are asking for more marketing but are really referring to new websites, campaigns or collateral to help them increase sales. The error I see repeated is that they want these marketing communication tools without the prerequisite of the research, analysis and synthesis of market opportunities or threats. These creative activities are a waste if not properly informed and directed by the analytical-side of marketing …it’s like firing a gun when you don’t know the target.
Especially in these economic times, if you want to use your marketing dollars effectively, never skip the analytical tasks. Once you know where to aim you lower the risk and improve the outcome; whereas firing without tends to miss the intended target.
Big Juicy Fish Syndrome
by Ilene Chunko
How many times have you heard someone with a great idea for a new product or service say, the first client they need to get is Walmart, Home Depot, GE or some other huge corporation. I have seen this behavior many times and I’ve nicknamed it the “Big Juicy Fish” syndrome. Honestly, selling something new to one of these giants can tie a new business and a new product up in knots. The length of time it takes to work through these behemoth bureaucracies, meet their standards, and have them test your product means you are expanding an enormous effort for zero revenue. In addition, from the marketing viewpoint, you’re risking your reputation. Should something go wrong with the pilot, or your customer service is not operating smoothly, or whatever … a bad impression with one of these giant companies is very hard to recover from.
I prefer to see my clients test their new product and do a roll-out to smaller, more local businesses at the beginning. These types of businesses usually have a much shorter sales cycle, make their decisions faster and are more forgiving of the glitches that can happen when something new is introduced. The trade-off is near-term cash flow in place of large sales. However these, smaller sales can provide both stability and experience for a new venture, product or service, preparing them for the hurdles and extended time-frames involved when tackling sales to a large corporation.
As they say, you only have one chance at making a good first impression and this is especially true in our internet connected market. So before you go full-tilt to get your new product known, why not reduce your risk by taking an interim step and ensuring you are ready.
The big juicy fish are still out there, you’d just be saving them for another day.
