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The Marketing Challenge
Making sales by making customers
by John Graham
Why do some companies embrace marketing with commitment and enthusiasm,
while others ignore it almost scornfully? Even firms with marketing departments
can act as if marketing is a “soft” function, one that can be
stripped away to a bare budget at a moment’s notice if necessary.
One can sense, at times, that marketing is viewed as a crutch and something
of an affront to the Tarzan types who eschew rifles on the hunt. Accepting
assistance is seen as a sign of weakness or inadequacy. They think they
must do it all themselves.
In effect, there’s a feeling that relying on marketing is suggesting
that the big, strong crowd is not up to doing the job, particularly when
it comes to sales.
Is marketing a sign of weakness? No company is more concerned about sales
than Dell. Yet, Dell makes marketing a top priority. In fact, Dell is omnipresent.
Its online ads are everywhere on the web, as are its inserts. Dell catalogs
fill mailboxes and its newspaper and magazine ads are pervasive.
Then there’s Boca Burgers, a brand of veggie patties. Many who have
taken a bite of a veggie burger have recoiled in horror. “It’s
the taste of cardboard,” they say. “Never again.” So how
does Boca meet the challenge of convincing the health-minded that its burger
is different, that it looks and tastes like a “real” burger?
One solution is the supermarket taste test. Set up card tables in supermarkets
and let customers try the product for themselves. Then hand them discount
coupons and direct people to the Boca Burger display case.
A marketing executive took time out from his weekly grocery shopping to
see how consumers responded to the Boca Burger promotion. It was working.
“Hey, that tastes great,” said one man. “Is it really
made from vegetables? It’s hard to believe. Where did you say I can
find them?” There were non-believers, to be sure. Yet, the older man
passing out Boca Burgers was doing his job of creating customers and
making sales.
Or, take the case of Kia and Hyundai. How did these two South Korean car
companies transform themselves from “hot potatoes” into “hot
brands” almost literally overnight?
The answer is simple. These auto manufacturers invested in their brands.
The change from no sales to record sales was driven by marketing.
How are they convincing doubting consumers that their products are vastly
improved? Both companies came out with new, exciting, attractively priced,
high value vehicles protected by extraordinary 10-year, 100,000 mile warranties.
While other auto manufacturers can’t kick-start sales with ballooning
incentives, Hyundai and Kia have consumers standing in line to buy their
products.
This is an almost incomprehensible switch from a few years ago when the
names Kia and Hyundai stood for junk. It’s marketing that’s
driving their success today.
Even with a longstanding track record, H-P has embraced marketing with renewed
passion following its acquisition of Compaq. The company is out to protect
and strengthen its preeminent place in printers against attacks from Dell,
now that it has its own printer line. H-P took out 10 full pages of full-color
advertising in the Wall Street Journal and other newspapers, a
practice that IBM has also been using with its new mainframes.
These substantial investments don’t occur because energetic ad reps
drop by to take marketing executives to lunch. All this is both deliberate
and strategic. The goal is to sell products by protecting and building the
brand.
“Half of the market value of the Fortune 250 is tied
to intangible assets,” states a McKinsey & Company report. “For
some of the world’s best known companies, the figure is even higher.”
With Coca-Cola and other companies, it’s the brand that enhances the
company’s value.
How marketing changes the way companies
think
In a highly competitive marketplace, marketing deals with the most basic
of all business problems––how to stand out from the crowd. As
marketer Al Ries says, “A brand program should be designed to differentiate
your cow from all the other cows on the range. Even if all the
cattle on the range look alike.”
The objective of marketing is for the customer to want your cow, car or
greeting card. In a word, branding is about making customers––those
who want your products or services.
Here are examples of
how it works:
• Focus on what customers value.
Many companies take enormous pride in “value-added,” as if what
they’re offering should knock the customer’s socks off. Unfortunately,
these are the people who are impressed by “value-added,” not
the customer.
“We bring lots of value,” said the sales
manager after taking a customer to lunch. The comment didn’t impress
the customer. Not once had the sales executive asked the customer what was
important to him.
Feedstuffs, the leading trade publication in the animal feed industry,
recognized that its readers were looking for help in marketing, sales and
business issues. By broadening its focus, the publication captured new readers
and held on to existing subscribers. In the same way, Feedstuffs
abandoned its hospitality suite at an annual industry trade show in favor
of sponsoring a business seminar.
The only value that’s of any value is what’s important to the
customer.
• Make a commitment to consistency.
Companies seem to suffer from a form of “attention deficiency,”
particularly when it comes to marketing initiatives.
Ford, for example, has brought back the logo it abandoned some years ago.
What caused Ford to abandon its original logo? Did someone come up with
another “great idea”? There are often valid reasons for changing
corporate identity. At the same time, there may be equally valid reasons
for leaving it alone.
Staying on course is often a serious problem in marketing. It’s easy
to be seduced into trying something new and “different.” It’s
difficult to stay on track.
A company relied on direct mail as its main technique for identifying new
prospects. After using a particular database for some time, it folded in
a second one. Almost immediately, a series of positive responses arrived.
“That new list is really working,” noted the president. “They
weren’t from the new list,” reported the project manager. “They
came from the fourth mailing of the original list.”
The company’s original marketing strategy of consistency was correct.
Each mailing focused on a single facet, a central concept. Taken together,
the total responses from all four mailings were significant, the direct
result of persistence.
• Focus on attraction building.
Getting customers to take action is never easy and it’s getting more
difficult by the day. Frustrated salespeople complain that it takes extraordinary
patience to get a buying decision. Nothing happens fast. One reason, of
course, is a lack of time. “Everything gets pushed back until it finally
falls off the desk,” says one company president. “Then we deal
with it.”
No one can be sure today when a customer is ready to sign the order. This
is why it’s essential to include a response mechanism with every
communication. It can be an email link in an email bulletin, a fax back
form with a letter, or several contact possibilities in an ad. Making action
easy is critical.
Always having an offer for something free gets the customer thinking and
involved. It’s a way of starting a “conversation” with
the prospect.
It has been pointed out that customers often follow a pattern. They see,
hear or read something. If they are interested, they visit a web site. Depending
on what they see, they may take the next step and make direct contact by
email, mail or telephone, whatever is most convenient.
In other words, the essential marketing task is one of attraction building.
The major issue, perhaps, is that companies often view marketing as an activity,
rather than a function. Like a wellness program, for example, it’s
nice to have around and makes everyone feel good, but it’s not critical
to the operation of the business. In other words, the company can survive
without it. Marketing is often viewed in a similar way.
But why are consumers willing to pay more for a Sony product or a Swiss
Army knife? Why do consumers pass by an array of less expensive detergents
and reach for Tide? The decision isn’t based on objective data that
Tide cleans clothes better than the others. It’s because we believe
it does a better job.
The priority for every company is making customers, those who reach for
the Tide, stand in line for a Kia, or ask for Skye vodka. That’s the
marketing function.
© 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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