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Getting it wrong is easy
How to Get Marketing Right
by John Graham
Experienced marketers shake their heads in amazement. “How could a
first-class company run an ad like that?” That refers to
an ad that is 100% focused on them. It’s all about who they are and
what they do.
Whether it’s an ad, a proposal, a newsletter, an email bulletin, a
brochure or a web site, the story is the same. It’s all about them.
As soon as we turn the page and see such an ad or click into a web site
that’s filled to overflowing with the “it’s all about
us” message, we’re gone.
Yet it happens every day. “Seeing potential requires vision”
states the headline for a large financial institution in a national daily
newspaper. And guess who has the vision? Flip the page in the same newspaper
and a major microchip manufacturer gets it right. This company “has
an urgent message for the wired world: unwire.” That resonates. Both
ads required hefty budgets. One made the advertiser feel good; the other
got through to the customer.
In another section of the same newspaper, a full-page ad got it wrong. The
headline stated that the company “extends its CRM leadership.”
Everyone inside that company feels proud. But that doesn’t make sales.
Turn the page and Lexus hits the target with a customer-capturing headline:
“Think cloud nine. With a silver lining.” That pulls the customer
in. We all want a silver lining.
How does it happen that some hit the mark and others can’t find the
target? It’s certainly easy to sell a self-serving ad to a client.
There’s a more accurate explanation, however. Marketer Harry Beckwith
notes, “I cannot walk into most companies without being aware of their
walls. The walls seem to do more than keep the cold air out. They seem to
block out a clear vision of the world.” He goes on to suggest that
there is nothing devious about such behavior. “It’s just that
people talk about what they know, and what people know is their company.”
There’s the rub, as Shakespeare would say. The major problem with
most marketing is that it’s all about the wrong people. The focus
is on what we know best––our company, our products, our service––ourselves.
And somehow or other, we expect the customer to make the right connection
and say, “Ah, ha. That’s exactly what we need.”
Absorbing the self-absorption problem
Self-absorption is no minor problem. It’s perhaps the major impediment
to effective marketing. Its impact is extensive. Here are a few examples:
• A prospective client asks a marketing firm executive if he
had done some work for a particular company. “I hope you didn’t
do their brochure. It was full of the “we” word. Fortunately,
he hadn’t. It was written and designed in house and was all about
“us” instead of “them,” the customer.
•
Most business letters are all about “us,” too. They are about
what “we” sell and what a good deal “we” give our
customers, and that we are a leader in “our” industry. On and
on it goes. This is no small matter, either. One recent letter contained
the words “we’re excited” three times as the writer, a
marketer, no less, described internal changes in the company. Who cares
if they’re excited? Does it really make any difference to the customer?
And does it not send a powerful, unavoidable message that the company’s
primary concern is with itself? Oh, yes, this is the same company that seems
to delight in using such terms as “strategic alliance” and “strategic
partner.” The underlying mindset, however, betrays the truth.
• Pick up a press release at random and what are the first words
you see? Chances are it’s the name of the company. As any good PR
intern knows, the opening paragraph should be the hook to grab the reader,
particularly an editor.
• Quite often, top management are
the worst offenders. They want their “truth.” A marketing agency
had worked for months with the marketing director of a well-established
regional insurance broker to develop a new capabilities brochure. What emerged
was an eye-catching, customer-focused marketing piece. Having received approval
to go to print, the marketing firm had the brochure on the press when the
marketing director called and said, “Don’t go any further. The
president wants some changes.” It didn’t take much imagination
to figure what “changes” were going to be made. To start with,
large full color photographs of the Chairman, CEO, and President, not surprisingly,
father, oldest son and youngest son, in that order, were featured in the
new version, along with a detailed history of the company. One president
expressed it this way: “If I’m paying for it, I want it my way.”
As any seasoned marketer will tell you, “That’s more common
than pumpkins at Halloween.”
• The end result of such
“it’s all about us” arrogance is epitomized by the telephone
call that we all get every day. It almost always goes something like this:
“We sent you a letter with some information about our company a couple
of weeks ago. I hope it was of interest to you.” Can the callers be
serious? Perhaps they are because the tone is such that I feel guilty if
I don’t remember the mailing.
The missing message
What all this adds up to is “A Case of the Missing Message.”
What is it that we want customers, prospects, editors, investors, competitors
or anyone else to think when they encounter our company, products and services?
What picture do we want in their heads? What feeling do we want invoked?
Unfortunately, these questions generally go begging. Everyone is so
focused on selling something that the customer is all but forgotten.
We are so self-absorbed that we fail at the task of separating ourselves
from our competitors.
If you ask executives what sets their company apart from others, the answers
are pathetically predictable. After looking at each other in stunned silence,
they mumble something about “our people” or “our service.”
When thinking about these companies, there’s no confusion. The image
is crystal clear:
• Sony (innovation and design)
•
Volvo (safety)
• Southwestern Airlines (low fares)
•
Pepperidge Farms (quality)
• Godiva (great chocolate)
•
Mont Blanc (superb writing instruments)
• Wal-Mart (low prices)
• Starbucks (enjoyable experience)
• Maytag (quality)
But what about these companies? What do we think about when we think about
them and their products or services? Are the images impeccable and crystal
clear when you think of these brands?
• General Motors
• Mr. Coffee
• Kodak
• K-Mart
• Cadillac
Even when we boldly announce the benefits of doing business with us, self-absorption
may color our thinking. Value-added, for example, comes out what we decide
is valuable, not what customers really want. What does the customer value?
Isn’t that the only important question?
The “price is too high” problem may be another indication of
self-absorption.
Although salespeople pass along the message to management that a customer
is going with the competitor because “our price is too high,”
there’s reason to doubt that price is actually the bullet that shoots
down a sale. More often than not, the customer is sending a totally different
message: low perceived value. It’s simply tied with a pretty
“the price is too high” ribbon.
No company is deliberately self-absorbed. It happens because we’re
captured by the ideas, culture, opinions, perceptions and history that surround
and encapsulate us. We are captured and don’t know it.
Every type of business has its own language. Even companies possess parochial
vocabularies to make communication easier. Without even realizing it, we
are always talking to ourselves. We are literally fish out of water, when
we encounter new vocabularies, ideas, histories and cultures.
Again, without being conscious that it’s happening, we assume that
others think like we do, and we have difficulty understanding how anyone
could possibly hold a position contrary to our own.
We get our business information from our peers. It’s normal––we
talk to people like ourselves. Is it any wonder that we have trouble telling
the story so that it makes sense to customers, prospects and anyone else?
The Versailles Peace Conference that followed World War I was held in the
great Hall of Mirrors. Years later, someone noted the failure at Versailles
might have been avoided if it had taken place in a hall of windows, where
the delegates could have looked out at the needs of the world instead of
being preoccupied with themselves.
Getting it right
The marketing task is one of raising the blinds and throwing open the windows
to let in the lights, smells, images, problems, news, and everything else
so that we become one with the real world and it becomes part of us.
The answers to effective marketing are out there.
© 2004 Graham Communications
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John R. Graham is president of Graham Communications,
a marketing services and sales consulting firm. Mr. Graham is the
author of four books on marketing and sales, including Break the Rules
Selling: Success Strategies that Beat the Competition (Superior Books).
Mr. Graham writes for a variety of marketing and sales columns for
business and trade publications and he presents his Magnet Power presentations
at company and association meetings. He can be contacted at 40 Oval
Rd., Quincy, MA 02170; by telephone at 617-328-0069; by fax at 617-471-1504;
or by email at j_graham@grahamcomm.com. The web site is grahamcomm.com. |
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