TECHAMMER.COM

Catch Customers Who Slip Through the Cracks: Part I

2012-02-02T22:13:14Z

Utter the word "bureaucracy," and people wince. Everyone has heard nightmare stories of long waits, lost documents, and unhelpful staff at some agency or other. In fact the vast majority of bureaucratic transactions are handled without a hitch. The problem is that when things work properly, no one notices, but a few poorly handled problems can trash the reputation of an otherwise well-run operation.

Now, here’s why this matters to marketers everywhere: your website is, in a very real sense, a cousin to the Department of Motor Vehicles. Both are systems designed to handle a large number of customers in a routine manner. Your website’s navigation options are the lines at the DMV. You’ve got forms; the DMV has forms. And if customers don’t follow the rules designed into your site, they probably won’t get what they came for.

The good news is that your website handles more visitors, more quickly, and during more hours of day than was possible before the Internet. But, like the DMV, you get no credit for things that work; only blame for things that don’t. And that blame can cost you business and destroy your reputation. The solution is two-fold. First, you need to make sure that navigation on your site works, that directions are clear, and that you have the processing power to keep things flowing smoothly. However, there will still be visitors with problems that don’t fit the categories in your drop-down menus, and for these you need backup.

Backup can take many forms. Decades ago, agencies deployed the "ombudsman," an advocate for clients who fell through the cracks of normal operations. Today automated call-handling systems let callers dial "0" for operator. In the early days of the Internet, online site maps provided an "aerial" site view for those who’d gotten lost in the maze.

Today’s web sites can include phone and live online chat options. Whatever you offer, however (unless you are Zappos.com— over 175 million hits when you Google ‘world’s best service zappos’) you may still not be famous for extraordinary service. But if you don’t make your site friendly, even for those whose needs don’t quite fit the menus, there’s a good chance that you’ll pay a price and never even know it.

Airports and Websites: Same Challenge

2012-01-30T19:12:55Z

I don’t love airports; I don’t know many people who do. But you have to admire the way most of them function. Consider the challenges they face: thousands of passengers, each with his or her own itinerary; hundreds of flights; dozens of gates; and assorted services, from baggage and security to food service and gifts. Passengers may be passing through for the very first time, everyone has time constraints, and live assistance can be hard to find.

Sound familiar? Change a few words and it could describe a successful B-to-B website: lots of options and lots of visitors, each with his or her own agenda. Like an airport, a B-to-B website is just a means to an end for folks with places to go. But unlike the airport, where the traveler has already paid for a ticket and is obligated to stay until flight time, a website visitor can leave with a click, taking his or her business someplace else.

Most airports are miracles of site design. Some use a hub-and-spoke architecture to shorten the distance between gates. Those that are strung like beads—LAX, DFW, and KCI for example—provide bus or rail shuttles to speed travel between terminals. And within terminals many offer moving walkways to speed up transit. As in an airport, a website visitor wants to get from point to point without unnecessary stops in between. In other words, the fewer clicks the less frustration, which means happier customers and, potentially, more business.

Fewer clicks is fine but only if people know which clicks will get them where they’re going. That’s another area in which airports excel. Almost anywhere in any airport, you can turn 360 degrees and know where you are. Signage is large, clear, and ubiquitous. Terminals, gates, ticketing, baggage claim, restrooms, shops, and ground transportation are all clearly marked.

Effective website builders design for ease of use, but no one knows your customers like you do. Be a customer and tour your website. Is it clear? Simple? Efficient? Do links take you where they say they will? Are navigation tools available everywhere, or does a visitor have to backtrack to get reach their next stop? And finally—this is the tough part—will it all make sense to someone who doesn’t know your site and offerings as well as you do? It’s a useful exercise, especially if the answers aren’t what you’d like them to be. The good news is that it may not take many incremental sales to make up the cost of renovation.

Selling through Outside Channels

2012-01-23T19:00:21Z

Outside distributors can give you instant access to markets that might be costly, time-consuming, or even impossible to reach with a direct sales force. But along with its benefits, external distribution poses some challenges. Effective salespeople are "optimizing engines." For multi-line distributors, that may mean that if they have products that are easier to sell than yours, that may be where they focus their energy. In other words, if you want distributors to sell your product, you should make it as easy as possible to sell.

Of course this means having a competitive product, properly priced, effectively delivered, and well supported—all of the same challenges you would face using a direct sales force. And you have to make sure that reps are well compensated, but compensation only goes so far in making up for a difficult sale. In many cases, excellent marketing support may be one of the most cost-effective ways to boost sales through outside distribution channels.

That means good outreach to prospective buyers, effective collateral that tracks with the steps in your sales cycle, and an effective web presence. In short, it means off-loading as much of the process as possible to marketing and allowing sales staff to focus on the individualized aspects of selling and closing sales.

Principles

2011-07-06T19:06:44Z

Some time ago a college-level student working on a careers project asked me to answer some written questions about the work I do. The final question was "What do you think is important about effective writing in the business world?" I actually had to ponder a bit to come up with a concise answer, but I'm glad I did. My answer was as follows:

Before you start writing, ask yourself "What am I trying to accomplish?" If you can’t answer the question, you’re not ready to start writing.
Write to convey necessary information, not to demonstrate how much you know.
Keep in mind that your readers probably don’t know as much about the topic as you do. If they did, they wouldn’t need to read what you are writing. Don’t tangle them up in jargon.
On the other hand, they probably know more in some areas than you do. Don't patronize.
Your readers may not be as fascinated by the topic as you are. You have to seize their attention and hold it every step of the way. Once you lose them, they’re gone and they’re probably not coming back.
A good way to grab attention is to start out by addressing what the reader wants or needs. As wise man once said, "You may be selling ¼" drill bits, but all your buyer really wants is ¼" holes."
Don’t throw in the kitchen sink. Make your most important point(s) and then shut up. Whether I’m writing a five-word headline or a 5000-word paper, I ask my client "If the reader comes away from this with just one new idea, what would you like that idea to be?"

Writing for the Screen

2010-11-15T19:32:00Z

Video as a marketing tool

Accessible production tools and high-speed Internet have made video a potentially powerful tech marketing tool. It can be used for everything from product introduction to user education to online sales. But to use video effectively, you have to understand its strengths, its limitations, and what you are trying to accomplish.

Because it works in two channels simultaneously—sight and sound—video can deliver information quickly and powerfully. Its visual component can convey complex ideas that would be difficult in text alone. And movement/animation makes it particularly suitable for explaining technical processes.

Help the viewer keep up

Keep in mind, however, that video moves at a predetermined pace. It is a moving train, and if the viewer falls off, catching up can be difficult. In other words, you must help the viewer keep up with the information flow. That doesn’t mean slowing down. Rather, you need to nail down concepts as you go by establishing a structure, clearly defining your points along the way and summarizing as you finish.

Establish key points

Take, for example, a short video about high-tech manufacturing capabilities that addresses five key point: experience, innovation, capacity, quality control, and support. You could begin each segment with a piece of on-screen text, such as "Innovation." This is followed by narration and images supporting that point. The video literally tells the viewer in advance what message to take from each section.

Summarize and close

In our example, after all of the segments have been presented, the five titles are again presented, both verbally and as text, reiterating and reinforcing the five components of the pitch. The presentation then closes, offering the viewer the opportunity to request additional information or a sales contact.

Tell Me a Story: a Right Brained Approach to Marketing

2010-11-15T19:24:00Z

In his book A Whole New Mind, author Daniel Pink suggests that the Information Age, the heyday of the logical, sequential, left brain, is ending. In its place, we are entering the Conceptual Age, one that will, increasingly, cater to, and be served by, the intuitive, synthesizing right brain. One of the reasons for this transition may be the accelerating rate of change. The left brain’s methodical processes are thorough, but they can also be painstakingly slow. In a world in which technologies emerge and change seemingly overnight, that’s a luxury most of us can no longer afford. Accuracy still counts, but unless you are planning a moon shot or picking wild mushrooms absolute certainty at the expense of timeliness can be costly.

Fortunately, the human mind is equipped to effectively balance speed and accuracy. The tools are in the brain’s right hemisphere, which makes intuitive leaps by analogy and pattern recognition. Even in unfamiliar circumstances your right brain recognizes similarities you can use to guide yourself toward smart choices. You can then turn those intuitions over to the "logical left" for verification and still save time over a primarily left-brained approach.

Several years ago I got see how effortlessly the right brain works, as customer after customer tried to exit a store by pushing a door that actually opened inward. The designer had put matching horizontal handles on both the outside and the inside of the glass door, apparently forgetting that we’ve all been trained to pull a vertical handle and push a horizontal one. The customers’ right brains were telling them to push in order to get out. In this case, that was an incorrect choice, but the fault wasn’t the customers’; it was the designer’s.

If you want an example of just how ineffective the left brain can be, just look at many product manuals. Too often, they are technically precise yet virtually unusable. Successful products tell us how they work, at least at a basic level. Components look like what they are. Symbols, shapes, and positioning of buttons, tell us what each one does, drawing on our previous experience. In other words, they inform our right brains by analogy.

Similarly, effective technology marketing speaks, at least in part, to the right brain. It tells a story. While aspects of the product itself—its bits and bytes and speeds and feeds—may be important in the later phases of decision-making, by the time that happens many contenders will have been eliminated. The finalists will very likely be those that appealed, to some extent, to the synthesizing right brain by presenting scenarios, analogies, and, yes, story. Bottom line: the more effectively you understand the observer’s world and put him or her in the picture with your solution, the more likely you are to still be in the running when the left-brained part of the process begins.

Cobra vs. Creeping Charlie

2010-08-30T20:15:00Z

Ground Ivy...sounds charming, like something you might actually want to grow. In fact, by its common name, "Creeping Charlie," it is one of the most hated weeds known. Of over 200,000 hits on Google, most include phrases like "how to get rid of," and over 1200 include the term "nightmare." But call it Ground Ivy, place an ad in the Sunday supplements, emphasize its ease of cultivation, and you could make a fortune.

A slang term for "name" is "handle," and a name is the handle by which prospects carry the information you give them about your product. Names make a difference; they are the shorthand by which prospects will remember your product, and it’s up to you to tell your prospect what that memory should be. Of course you have to be able to back your play. In the 1980s, Radio Shack’s under-powered TRS80 computer was quickly dubbed the "Trash 80." Before it’s early-80s horsepower boost, the supposedly-sporty Honda Prelude was widely referred to as the Quaalude. (For those too young to remember, Quaalude was a popular tranquilizer.) Firebirds, Mustangs, and Cobras, on the other hand, lived up to their names, and those names persisted, often for decades.

Not every technology product is a Mustang, but if your product can support a memorable title, why pass up to opportunity? After all, you can’t keep competitors from duplicating your features, but you can trademark a name. If you need to differentiate sizes or capacities, name the product family, offering, for example, Titanium 220, 340, and 450 models.

Finally, try to make your designations meaningful to your customers. An exception that (hopefully) proves the rule is the traditional naming of Porsche car models, for example their 356, 911, 928, and 944 models. The only pattern to the numbers is that they keep getting higher while the sizes, prices, and capabilities of the cars they represent seem to move up and down at random. The reason is simple: Porsche engineers number the blueprints coming out of their design shop in sequence. Most blueprints never become production models; hence the gaps in the numbering. But when a car does go into production, its original blueprint number becomes the model designation. Porsche can get away with that because, well, they’re Porsche. I, on the other hand, am not Porsche, and chances are, you aren’t either.

Direct Mail in Verse

2009-05-26T19:40:00Z

As promised, an example of poetic marketing (predating the Web). The following was a series of six postcards I wrote to introduce payroll managers to the NCS TimeScan Plus system, a system that allowed timecards to be scanned instead of manually key entered. Each postcard was a simple white-on-black presentation of the verse, a two-line description of the TimeScan product, and a toll-free contact number.

The aim was to pave the way for an outbound phone sales campaign for TimeScan Plus, but the direct mail campaign drew an unexpected volume of inbound calls from prospective customers that kept sales reps busy for several weeks.

Card #1
The average payroll manager is quite immune to terrors
except the possibility of data input errors.
This might explain why they replace key entry done by hand
with TimeScan Plus from NCS so data can be scanned.

Card #2
The weather forecast may be wrong or umpires blow the call.
It's inconvenient, but won't cause democracy to fall.
But if you'd care to see the roots of civilization strained,
on any given payday let the paychecks be detained.

Card #3
When buses run late or the planes are delayed,
we might get upset but the memories will fade.
But payday is different. Those checks are on time
or it's more than a problem; it's almost a crime.

If hand data entry is taking you days
we'll show you an easy way out of the maze.
Our scanner is sure to relieve your distress
which is what you expect when you call NCS.

Card #4
Payroll data, it's a chore to keep the figures straight,
with terminations, hires and changes to accommodate.
Just getting timely input done's a constant source of stress
until you try the TimeScan Plus from - who else - NCS.

Card #5
Every company has as a litany
"Let us endeavor to do more with less."
May we suggest that to scan data readily
into your payroll you call NCS.

Card #6
A slip of the finger, a blink of the eye
may seem to be infinitesimal,
but the impact can be absolutely profound
if the point where you tripped is a decimal.

Poetry Break

2009-05-18T20:21:00Z

What, you may ask, does poetry have to do with marketing? Actually, there are links between rhyme and persuasion, but you’ll have to read two more blog entries to find out what they all are. In the meantime, think of this as a small diversion, and couldn’t we all use a bit of diversion these days!

45 years ago, the late John Updike wrote a short poem called Cosmic Gall. The subject matter, particle physics, is unusual for poetry, but it was the rhyme scheme that really caught my attention: just two rhymes through the entire piece, in apparently random order.

Cosmic Gall

Neutrinos, they are very small.
They have no charge and have no mass
And do not interact at all.

The earth is just a silly ball
To them, through which they simply pass,
Like dustmaids down a drafty hall
Or photons through a sheet of glass.

They snub the most exquisite gas,
Ignore the most substantial wall,
Cold-shoulder steel and sounding brass,
Insult the stallion in his stall.

And, scorning barriers of class,
Infiltrate you and me! Like tall
And painless guillotines, they fall
Down through our heads into the grass.

At night, they enter at Nepal
And pierce the lover and his lass
From underneath the bed—you call
It wonderful; I call it crass.

John Updike
Telephone Poles and Other Poems, 1963

In honor of a writer I’ve always admired, I offer my own version, treating the same topic and employing a similarly random rhyme scheme.

Updike-like

Neutrinos are all quite minute.
Along with mass they have no weight,
and through all substances they shoot,
unhampered, at a rapid rate.

A headlong gallop is their gait
They never pause but always scoot,
maintaining an unruffled state
though Satan were in hot pursuit.

Through concrete block and armor plate
and through the entire globe to boot
they blow like wind through iron grate
not deviating from their route.

Their nature’s subject to debate
though as they pass we should salute.
They give no hint, remaining mute,
and rush, unstopping, toward their fate.

I wonder, should we give a hoot
or let such queries sit and wait
while sober scholars ruminate
and worlds grow cold and questions moot?

Greg Kagan
2005

As promised, the next two blog entries will address poetry and marketing.

Branding: an Overview

2009-05-14T21:22:00Z

What is branding?
Branding is the creation and communication of a simple, positive image for your product or service. Your brand can be stated overtly (for example, in a name or tagline) or implied throughout your marketing.

Why brand?
Branding helps buyers make complicated decisions. It tells prospects what to expect from you and lets you focus your marketing on a well-defined market. Some examples:
Porsche = fast                         Volvo = safe
Marlboro = rugged                    Virginia Slims = feminine
Los Angeles = glamorous         San Francisco = hip
Calvin Klein = stylish                Wrangler = functional
Men’s Wearhouse = low price   Nordstroms = personal service

What makes branding work?
Successful branding must be accurate and verifiable or your customers and prospects will come to doubt both your brand and your reliability. (If you’re going to call yourself Budget Rent-a-Car, you’d better have low prices.)

It should be something you know your customers care about. (Subway has tapped into the market for healthy fast food, but McDonalds discovered – remember McLean? -- that burger buyers are not that health conscious.)
While your arguments can be complex, your brand itself should be simple
    Subway – Eat fresh (health)
    Avis – We try harder (service)
    Energizer – Still going (longevity)

Branding takes time. (You brand grows in credibility as your performance supports your claims.)

You must be able to defend your brand against attack. (K-mart spent years establishing a "low price" brand image and then lost it when Wal-Mart beat them at their own game.)

Be Prepared
A brand is not what you want customers to believe. It’s what you can make them believe. Customers will not accept a brand identity on your say-so; you have to earn their acceptance. And once you’ve earned that acceptance, you have to keep supporting it. Competitors won’t necessarily "honor" your brand. If they think they can take it away from you, they will. In short, establishing a brand is telling people who you are and, by extension, who they are.

The Bottom Line
Branding is like jumping off a cliff. If it doesn’t fly, don’t count on a smooth landing. Check and double check to be sure you’ve chosen the right brand for your operation and your market – appropriate, clear, credible, and defensible – before you jump.

Know Your Capitals

2008-12-15T22:10:00Z

Knowing exactly what and when to capitalize has always been somewhat problematic, but the recent proliferation of informal communication, e.g., email, has added to the problem. One area that seems to stump a lot of us is job titles.

When in doubt, the default seems to be to capitalize, but there actually is a clear and simple rule. When the job title is literally a title, it is capitalized; otherwise, it is not. For example, in the sentence "John Allard is vice president of operation, the job is not part of John’s title and is not capitalized. On the other hand, in the sentence "Vice President of Operations John Allard visited the Phoenix office," it is John’s title and is capitalized.

Actually, most of us easily recognize the difference in some specific instances. We intuitively know that the title would be capitalized in referring to Queen Elizabeth, but that it would not in saying she became queen in 1952. Similarly, we would refer to someone as "Dr. Michaels," but not capitalize in writing that he is a doctor at the Uptown Clinic. Easy, right?

Marketing Consultant Greg Kagan (Or, if you prefer, Greg Kagan, marketing consultant)

Good Comedy, Good Advertising, Same Secret: Timing

2008-11-26T00:35:00Z

Successful marketing doesn’t just reach the right audience, it reaches them at the right time. Johnny Morris, the founder of the Bass Pro Shops chain, got his start by locating displays of fishing tackle in a chain of liquor stores after noticing fishermen stopping in on the way to the lake. In New York City, hundreds of small merchants keep umbrellas in the back room and drag them out to the sidewalk at the first sign of rain. Both are examples of timely marketing

In technology marketing, however, it’s harder to know when a prospect will need your product or service. One solution is to keep your message in front of the prospect and, like a billboard, be there when the need arises. In 1993, as a novice freelance writer, I sent writing samples to creative directors at advertising agencies. "I liked your samples," I heard over and over. "I put them in the file." After hearing that a few dozen times I had coffee mugs made. One side bore my logo, contact information, and a list of services. The other read "Try putting this in the file." The message on any bulky item might have worked for a week by being clever. But on a coffee mug, it stayed on directors’ desks and brought me business for years.

Proto Labs, a Maple Plain MN producer of injection molded plastic parts and prototypes, uses a multi-faceted approach to keeping prospects’ attention. The company produces a quarterly journal, sends out monthly design tips, produces a variety of molded desktop toys demonstrating the company’s capabilities, and is producing an informative wall calendar. The company’s process is unique, but staying in front of prospective customers has helped earn multiple appearances on the Inc. 500 and Inc. 5000 lists of fastest-growing privately held companies.

Woody Allen said, "80 percent of success is showing up." In fact, showing up isn’t enough; you have to deliver the goods. But showing up when your prospect is receptive is 99 percent of getting the opportunity to deliver the goods.

What Drives Your Company?

2008-11-24T19:40:00Z

Technology companies tend to evolve from product-driven to sales-driven to marketing-driven. The process starts when you introduce an innovative technology—the proverbial "better mousetrap"—and, as the proverb suggests, the world beats a path to your door. This is the product-driven phase of development. All you have to do is show up and hungry prospects will buy. Because your product is unique, margins are substantial, so sales and marketing can be (and often are) inefficient, even sloppy, and you still make a profit.

Once you’ve sold to the early adopters and your product has developed some competition, sales are harder to come by. Margins get slimmer. This is the sales-driven phase, in which you rely on your sales force to identify prospects, overcome objections, and take on the competition, and the primary role of marketing is to support sales.

As the market matures, the challenge is to maintain leadership and expand your market while avoiding commoditization. This is where marketing can be a powerful strategic resource, analyzing the market, positioning the company and its products, and communicating both internally and externally to help reduce the cost of sales and maximize revenue. This is the final, marketing-driven phase of development.

Because technology companies are oriented toward innovative product, they run the risk of stalling in the product- or sales-driven phase of development and losing ground as the market matures. Early adoption of a marketing focus—even before competition gets a foothold—helps you maintain leadership, expand and control your market(s), and master competition and change. Marketing can assume an expanded role as the market matures, but the final transition to marketing-driven is a strategic choice that must be made at the highest levels of the organization.

Marketing is from Mercury; Sales is from Saturn

2008-11-19T23:09:00Z

It’s like marriage: sales and marketing are linked for life in a relationship with common goals but sometimes don’t see eye to eye. As a salesman, I couldn’t understand how marketing could be so unresponsive to perfectly reasonable requests. Later, as a marketer, I suddenly saw the sales force as a bunch of prima donnas, expecting everyone to jump through hoops to deliver impossible results overnight.

The problem is that marketing runs on the organization’s timetable, while salespeople often have to operate on customers’ schedules. And while sales does bring in the orders that pay everyone’s salaries, they depend on marketing to provide the tools. And when too many of your tools are last-minute special orders, you end up with $400 hammers.

The more reactive marketing becomes, the fewer resources are left for critical strategic activities. As a result, sales and marketing both end up operating in crisis mode, cost of sales climbs, revenues fall, and margins shrink. Unfortunately, it’s a hard cycle to break. As they say, when you’re butt-deep in alligators it’s hard to focus on draining the swamp.

The solution is a corporate version of marriage counseling. sales has to take the time to articulate their processes and define their needs. Marketing needs to understand and internalize the sales process enough to become proactive. It necessary, a third party can help facilitate the process so it doesn’t impact ongoing sales or marketing operations.

The goal is a marketing operation that can work with product management to anticipate the needs of the sales force, have the bandwidth to meet any remaining needs that arise unexpectedly, and still focus on ongoing operations and strategic planning. Sales and marketing will always come from different planets, but their interaction can be, like the solar system, orderly and self-sustaining.

...As Others See Us

2008-11-17T18:06:00Z

O wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us
To see oursels as others see us
It wad frae monie a blunder free us

—Robert Burns

If you can wade through the Scottish dialect, poet Robert Burns makes a good point. He probably wasn't thinking about corporations, but marketing communication determines how others see us, and since we put thousands of dollars into marcomm, it just makes sense to take a few minutes to see ourselves as prospects will.

Have you ever wondered who pays to advertise on a billboard half hidden behind a tree? Or printed in text too small to read from the highway? It probably looked great in the agency’s or art department’s presentation, but drivers don’t see billboards on an easel at the front of a boardroom.

The same applies to ads, brochures, email, direct mail, and web sites. Your prospect doesn’t see your ad or mailer in the middle of a large presentation board. It’s on page 87 of a magazine or in a stack of mail on a cluttered desk. Your brochure is going home from the tradeshow in a canvas bag full of your competitor’s brochures. And your Internet ad may appear next to a dancing skeleton in a venue where visitors arrive with a click and leave the same way.

Let’s face it; this isn’t Tiffany & Co.; it’s the midway at the state fair. You’re in competition with every other seller out there, and job number one is to be noticed.

Words and images make a difference. If you haven’t read it yet, check out Positioning by Jack Trout and Al Reis. It’s been updated several times since it first came out around 1980, but even the oldest version can be an eye-opener.

In the meantime, get someone to trim that tree in front of your billboard.

Sun Tzu, Strategy, and The Art of War

2008-11-11T23:13:00Z

The Art of War, attributed to Sun Tzu, was written about 2500 years ago. Since then it has been translated into dozens of languages and has influenced countless military leaders. A few decades ago, it became popular reading in business circles and, since then, has embedded itself in popular culture, showing up in venues from The Sopranos to WWE Smackdown to Family Guy.

One could reasonably ask how relevant the English translation of a French translation of a 2500 year-old Chinese book on war is to those facing the challenges of today’s business. The real question is whether such a work is relevant at all. The answer is: even after 2500 years it is still relevant because it addresses strategy, and strategy doesn’t change—over time, across geography, or from one arena of competition to another. Tactics, on the other hand change constantly. Sun Tzu’s spies peeped through keyholes while today’s interpret satellite intercepts. The tactics have changed, but knowledge of your opponent’s plans is always good strategy.

If the longevity of Sun Tzu’s work teaches us one thing, it is that strategy always comes first. In war, weapons, troops, and transport are tactical; knowing what hill to take (and why) is strategic. Similarly, product, pricing, placement, and promotion are marketing tactics; strategy is identifying and understanding your market.

Welcome to Niche World

2008-11-07T16:07:00Z

Remember the game King of the Hill in which one player, holding the high ground, can fend off an army of challengers? That kind of positional advantage is the reason it’s hard to compete with a market leader. In established markets, leaders stake out the high ground, creating obstacles for challengers. The solution, of course, is to define your own market and become its leader.

In the 1970s, European and Japanese automakers challenged America’s "Big Three" by carving out niches within the overall market. Volkswagen was the economy car; Mercedes was the luxury car; Volvo was the safe car; BMW was the performance sedan; Porsche was the performance sports car. Over the years, some of those companies have stuck to their niches. Others—Toyota for example—have built on niche success and become leaders in the overall automotive market.

The logic is unassailable. Niche production lets you focus on high-profit products. Niche marketing lets you direct marketing efforts where they have the greatest chance of success. And with the advent of the Internet, niche selling has become easier to execute, allowing a focused seller to identify and reach customers across the globe.

It’s a strategy that works best when executed by the entire organization. Research knows where to look, product development knows what to make, marcomm knows what to say, and sales knows what and where to sell. The result is less waste, lower costs, increased sales, and higher margins.

It’s the 21^st Century. Do you know where your markets are?

Three Little Words

2008-11-04T10:42:00Z

Professional sales is a painstaking process, and for good reason. Assumptions can be costly.

I was covering Phoenix from an office in Los Angeles. I had been flying to Arizona several times a month working on a million-dollar sale of a system for the Phoenix office of a New York-based company. For several months, the company president had been flying in from New York to meet me and discuss the project. He finally called and said "I think it’s time to wrap this up. Bring your top technical guy and top financial guy. We’ll go over the system configuration and contract and hopefully send you away with a signature."

We set the meeting for 9:00 AM the following Monday. I met our financial guy from Dallas and technical guy from San Francisco at the Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport, and we arrived at the customer’s office at 8:55. "Hi," I said to the receptionist. "We’re here to see Harry." That’s when I heard those three little words.

"Harry’s not here," she said. "Harry’s in his office in New York. He’s been waiting there with our attorney and a couple of board members since 9:00 AM New York time."

Of course I had assumed that we would meet where we always met, in Phoenix. Fortunately Harry was willing to reschedule the meeting a week later in New York, where he signed a million-dollar contract two days before the end of our fiscal year.

My failure to ask one simple question had almost cost me most of a year’s quota and my company a million dollars of revenue for the fiscal year. The experience made me a lot more methodical in managing my business and, I believe, earned me the right to warn you not to assume, especially when a few simple questions can clear up any ambiguity.

That said, I wish you clarity and that you never get to hear those three little words.

Taglines: Say Hello to my Little Friend

2008-11-01T19:20:00Z

What’s in a name? Sometimes not much, especially these days. Organizations large and small go by their initials, clumps of Latin- or Greek-derived syllables, the names of their founders, or types of fruit. Unfortunately, none of these do much to define the organization or its products. In crowded global markets, this lack of inherent identity adds to the already-considerable challenge of branding.

A well-chosen and effectively deployed tagline can go a long way toward defining and differentiating a company in the minds of customers, conveying in a few carefully chosen words a mission, vision, or promise.

Think about memorable taglines like:

GE’s "We bring good things to life," replaced in 2004 with "Imagination at Work
Dupont’s "Better Things for Better Living...Through Chemistry," changed in 1982 but still widely remembered
Nike’s "Just do it"
Chevy trucks’ "Like a rock"

The company names are merely a couple of initials and the names of a 19^th century chemist, a Greek goddess, and a long-forgotten race-car driver. The taglines, on the other hand, offer action, durability, good things, and better living.

Think of your tagline as a tiny publicist accompanying your company or product name on marketing missions. Like a star, the name has merely to make an appearance, while the tagline does the work of proclaiming its virtues.

Taglines can live on for years, but are relatively easy to change when their time comes. A good one delivers more sheer marketing power per word than anything else you’ll ever deploy. So, while finding the right one can take a little time and research, the payback is well worth the effort.

Building a Pyramid of Ideas

2008-10-29T20:14:00Z

How We Learn
The human mind is a categorizing machine. It takes complicated experiences—being bitten by the neighbor’s sheepdog—and stores them in summarized form for future use. The result can be specific and useful (stay away from growling dogs), specific and not very useful (stay away from sheepdogs), or non-specific and even less useful (don’t leave the house).

Categorizing as a Marketing Tool
The mind uses a similar categorizing approach in assimilating marketing information, but the way information is presented can help determine the retained message. This is critical in long-form presentations like brochures or whitepapers, from which the reader is unlikely to retain all the detail you present. If, for example, you write a paper supporting a technology that is fast, secure, and cost-effective, you could devote a detailed section to each of the three attributes. The reader will probably not record the details presented in each section. But, as described in a previous entry, if you make convincing arguments the reader will record the conclusion of each section. (Headings can help define your key points.)

Persuasive Presentation
As you conclude the presentation, you now have a reader who accepts that this technology is fast, that it is secure, and that it is cost-effective. All you need do to complete the logical argument is summarize, linking the attributes—speed, safety, and economy—to the technology. The reader may remember your key points or simply that this is a superior technology, but by effectively structuring the presentation you have brought to bear a great deal of information without expecting the reader to memorize more than a few key points. In short, no matter how complex your argument, your presentation can help keep it simple.