Don’t Let Your Opinion Overly Influence Your Judgment

Your opinions are subjective, based on various forms of input, i.e. physical, emotional, intellectual, etc.  Sometimes, after many years of creating marketing strategies and executing marketing plans, you feel you’ve attained the rank of expert, and believe that you know best based on your opinions.  That’s when you may start to get into trouble, and actually reduce your value to your company or clients.

Opinions are not necessarily wisdom.  Experience is great, but it is only one data source when making a judgment. You must go beyond opinion and gather new objective data for every situation in which you find yourself.  Why?  Because only dead things are static and unchanging, and whatever market you are in is very much alive, especially today.

"You cannot step twice into the same stream." Heraclitus

I realize this may seem like a blinding glimpse of the obvious, but how many times have you seen a colleague just “phone it in”, instead of do the heavy lifting of gathering all the appropriate information before plotting a course of action?

It is the truly wise person who uses his/her experienced-based opinions, in combination with new, objective data, to make business judgments.  If you short cut the judgment process, you could end up short cutting your career.

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Add Understanding To Truth

Let’s start with truth.  It’s a wonderful, unavoidable, exhilarating, depressing, freeing, and confining thing … and most important as a marketer, it will always find a way to surface.  So begin by acknowledging exactly what your products and services are; no more, no less.  If your products and services range from best-in-class to good-enough, then you have something with which to work.  But products are not enough by themselves … “build it and they will come” works mostly in the movies, and not in the market.  Playing fast and loose with the truth is a short-term strategy usually ending in disaster.  Planting your feet firmly in the truth, and then helping others understand the importance of where you are, is the key to robust, long-term growth.

Back when I was doing corporate marketing in a beer company, we had a CFO who wanted to focus only on the facts, and “let others interpret them the way they want.”  To make a long story short, after a stagnating stock price for a couple of years, the CEO finally let us write the quarterly earnings release.  We added understanding to the CFO’s facts (the truth), and the stock price again substantially outpaced the market.  Why?  Because the market again came to understand why we were a great company with good products.  As a side note, when I started at Anheuser-Busch in 1981 the share price was $38.00.  Over the years the stock split 24 to 1 and was sold to In Bev in 2008 for $70.00 per share.  That is a 4400% increase  … and the company is 160 years old.

The moral of this blog is simple: understand the truth about what you have to offer, and find a way to communicate understanding of the truth, and how this truth adds value to your customers/stakeholders.  That is how to maximize your company’s potential.

So, How Do You Start With The End In Mind?

Every business consultant worth his salt will tell you to start your planning with the end in mind. (See Chris Brogan) “The easiest way to solve a maze,” they say, “is to start at the end.”  Truer words were never spoken, but why is it so few people actually start at the end and map their way back to the beginning? Why, because it requires imagining every possible scenario from then until now.  Too complicated / time-consuming for most to do.  Everyone starts with good intentions, but the shear breadth of what they would have to do is too daunting.

Here is a way to break down this task, and actually have a chance at completing the most important phase of it.  No matter what you end goal is (market share; revenue; growth percentage; etc.) there are nine areas that you have to clearly picture to achieve your end game:

1. Customers – who are they, how many of them do you need, where are they, how do you segment them, how profitable are they, what’s your average revenue per customer?
2. Sales Force – who are they, how many of them do you need, where are they, how are they structured, what’s their average sales per person, what role does online sales provide, what are your anticipated online revenues, what channels are used for online sales?
3. Marketing Communications – What channels of communication are most effective in reaching those customers, who is creating your messages, what are the key messages you send, how many customers should receive your messages?
4. Branding – What are your brand promises, what is your value proposition, who owns branding at your company, what are the brand extensions you utilize?
5. Customer Service – who are your service personnel, how many of them do you need, where are they, how are they structured?
6. Operations – Who are your suppliers, how is your product or service produced, how is it distributed, what are the timing parameters for distribution,  what is your backup system?
7. Accounting – What method(s) of pricing do you use, what are your payment terms, who does your accounting, to what information do you need time-sensitive access, who does your collection, how do you bring customers and vendors on board?
8. Legal – Who provides legal guidance, who are your go-to attorneys for problems, what are the requirements and restrictions under which you operate/sell?
9. Administration – How is the company structured, who owns the previously discussed functions, how does the company compensate the organization?

Now that you’ve answered these questions, you’re ready to march back to the beginning.  The easiest route is to clearly picture the environment you’ve created with those answers, and decide how you will go about creating that environment from your starting point.  It’s not exactly what the consultants had in mind, but it takes the best part of what they suggest, and gives you a less challenging way to get there.

Developing Uncommon Vision

Creativity is seeing common things in uncommon ways.  It’s that simple.  It’s that hard.

James by Close Chuck

Close-up of James’ eye

 So, how do you learn to see common things in uncommon ways, particularly regarding your marketing efforts? First, deconstruct whatever you’re focusing upon, whether it’s a  product or marketing activity  … break it down to its basic elements –size, shape, color, materials, resources, timing, audience, goals,  personnel,  expense, etc.  Next, exchange some, or all, those elements for random examples of the same element (bigger, rounder, sooner, etc.). At this point, you should start to see some openings in the way that product or activity is perceived that weren’t obvious.

Now take a different tack: Imagine that product or activity moving into an environment where it would never normally be found.  How would it be received?  What would its affect be?

Take it a little farther: What is its opposite from that product or activity?  Decide what elements make it different from its opposite.   What happens if you incorporate some of those differences into your product or activity?

You’ve just done four things:

1. You’ve opened yourself up to looking at your products and the way you market them from their basic elements outward.
2. You’ve realized the environment in which they reside often defines them.
3. You’ve decided some of what makes your products and marketing activities different.
4. And most important of all, you’ve discovered alternatives.

That’s how you see common things in uncommon ways, and it didn’t require another creative genius to point them out. 

As with any rigorous exercise, always do a little stretching (intellectually) to warm up.  Read a case study on great marketing, go to an art gallery, or check out some classic ad campaigns on YouTube.  Eventually, uncommon vision will become second nature to you.

Anyone else have good creativity development ideas for marketers you’d like to discuss?

www.orogenmarketing.com

Propellers Or Anchors: What’s Attached To Your Marketing?

Propellers and anchors have specific and opposite functions: One is designed to move you, and the other is designed to hold you in place.  Being held in place is not necessarily bad, but it is not moving you ahead. Sometimes companies are confused about what is really a propeller, and what is really an anchor. 

Here are a few ways marketing components (activities, resources, functions, and channels) can be identified as one or the other:

Marketing Component	Anchor	Propeller
Channel Partners	Service existing customers without expanding customer base or product set	Bring new customers and customer ideas to the table; finds new ways to service customers
Advertising Agencies	Same ad campaign/ads; same brand look and feel; same media; same personnel	Provide new research-based campaigns/ads; update brand elements; new ways to reach target audiences; new perspectives from new personnel
Pricing	Totally predictable without any variation	Test market segments to determine receptivity to new approaches and methods
Sales Promotion	Predictable and annually repeated	New timing; new components; new offerings
Public Relations Agencies	Same media list; same events; same conferences; same personnel	Introduction to new journalists; identifying appropriate new events and conferences; adding personnel with insight and industry connections
Personal Selling	Same sales presentations; same incentives; same personnel	Customer-specific, updated sales presentations; updated salary compensation and incentives; new selling tools
Direct Marketing	Same catalog/direct mail piece layout; same copy; same timing; same distribution list	New formats/creative; test different timing; expanded customer list

Every good ship needs both, but when the progress being made isn’t up to expectations, take a look at the things you’ve deployed in your marketing.  What was once a propeller could now be an anchor.

Sand Castle Marketing And How To Avoid It

A client of mine, Dana Barciz, recently used a phrase I haven’t heard before:  Sand Castle Marketing.  Sand Castle Marketing is when you build a beautiful marketing plan, and the wave of budget concern/re-prioritization washes ashore and sweeps away a good portion of your hard work.  If you’ve been around marketing for a few years, you know exactly what it is.  The question I’m going to address is how to avoid it.

The answer lies in three parts:

1. Don’t build your castle too close to the water’s edge;
2. Create an infrastructure allowing you to take your basic design and remodel it quickly if the wave hits; and
3. Knowing if you’re on a beach, a wave will get you someday.

Don’t build your castle too close to the water’s edge.  Sell-in to all senior management that your marketing efforts aren’t discretionary budget items, but integral to sales. Use facts and customer testimonials to do it.  Capture the high ground by spending time and effort selling internally as well as externally.  It goes without saying you have to have a good track record to do it.

Create an infrastructure that will allow you to take your basic design and remodel it quickly if the wave hits.  As part of your planning process establish the pillars upon which your plan rests, know the levers that give you the opportunity to quickly move new plans into action, identify alternatives to all your resources/materials, and determine priorities.  If you do this you will be able to move quickly, and senior management will appreciate it.

Knowing if you’re on a beach, a wave will get you someday.  It happens.  Be prepared to handle it professionally and your management team will be impressed.  Don’t resort to histrionics, because you may end up as history.

A Client’s Bill Of Rights

I’ve written about what it takes to be a great client .  Here is a list of 15 “Rights” you, as the client,  should expect from a great marketing agency.  This is also a way to tell if you are working with a top-notch firm:

1. Intellectual honesty, with discretion.
2. Good surprises from great work.
3. Confidentiality, in all circumstances and forever.
4. Competitive/Industry intelligence, often unsolicited.
5. Knowing who will be working on your business from day one, and not high-level sell-in with lower-level service.
6. Having the attention of the right people at the agency whenever you need it.
7. Slightly more value than for what you’ve been billed … great agencies always supply value-adds.
8. Respect for everyone in your organization.
9. Realistic expectation of time lines, and remaining true to them.
10. Upfront pricing, with adjustments noted in advance; no billing surprises.
11. If necessary, having all invoices explained with detailed documentation.
12. A clear understanding you exclusively own the work for which you’ve paid.
13. Strict adherence to all performance guarantees unless re-negotiated.
14. The agency understands they are like baseball managers: As long as they are regularly winning, they stay employed.
15. A graceful separation, if necessary, demonstrating mutual respect.

Some of these would be included in your work agreement, but others reflect the way the relationship is handled and the commitment the agency has to you.

I haven’t included “results” guarantees because they are usually complicated and don’t work out as intended.  What they often do is hasten the end of the relationship.

Please feel free to add something if I’ve missed it.

www.orogenmarketing.com