Three Keys to Winning Marketing Strategy

The four P's of marketing are:

• Product
• Price
• Position (distribution)
• Promotion

Usually depicted in a ven diagram with four overlapping circles.

They were originally introduced by Harvard advertising professor Neil H. Borden in 1964 in his article The Concept of the Marketing Mix.

These four key elements have been at the core of marketing strategy since then.

Today, the four P's (alone) don't work.


The new mix for marketing strategy is:

1. Your secret sauce
2. Buyers' purchase decision process
3. Buyers' demands

1. Your Secret Sauce

Why do your current customers buy from you? Do you really know? We've found most companies get this wrong. They think it's product or price and it turns out to be speed, reliability or something else much deeper.

What your customer's value about you is your secret sauce. You must find out what this is and focus on promoting it.

2. Buyers' Demands

Buyers are in control. Still holding on? Think you can control the message? Get over it. You can't. What you must learn is what buyers are seeking. What do they want? For most, it's content. They want answers to important questions. If you provide the answers, buyers will find you.

3. Buyers' Purchase Decision Process

Finally, you must understand the buyers purchase decision process. It consists of:

1. Discovery
2. Information
3. Endorsement
4. Proof/Demo

Where does the buyer go for each stage of the process and what are they seeking? This process determines media channels and influences content.

Bringing All Together

Once you know your secret sauce, your buyers demands, and your buyers purchase decision process, you can know formulate a marketing strategy that will have a much higher success rate than if you simply used the four P's.

Strategy: Lost in Translation?

Senior executives complain they don't understand why their managers can't execute. While managers complain that senior executives don't understand what it takes to win in the real world. Result: Failure to launch...anything.

The victim of this communication breakdown is strategy.

What's happening here?

The secret lies in the narrow-focused world of the manager. Much like Larry the Cable Guy, the manager lives in the world of "Git'r done!" And the pure workload for the manager has been doubled in the past 10 years. Managers are working with much smaller staffs, and being asked to perform more work. For most of them, their day never ends. With their Blackberry's they're connected 24/7. Their role has been reduced to simply moving rocks as fast as they can.
Senior executives still believe managers are thought leaders, innovators and organizers.

On the flip side, the world of the C-suite has grown more complex. Winning strategies integrate market dynamics with product development with manufacturing with distribution with marketing. When a senior executive explains their strategic priorities to a manager, the manager is trying to figure out how much more work that means and how they're going to get it done.

The marketing manager doesn't understand the manufacturing manager's world. What's worse, managers no longer are learning. They don't have time. Senior executives have become the learners. They introduce new ideas to their managers. 10 years ago it was the managers responsibility to bring new ideas to senior management. Not anymore.

This is not a lack of communication. This is a complete systemic breakdown. No one has time to "run the business". Everyone is spending all of their time just getting things out the door.

Why can't companies innovate? They have no time.

How Companies Are Solving the Problem

One of the ways senior executives are addressing this problem is with outsourcing. Not to India, but to specialized service firms that are focused on "program development and execution."

Outsourcing has largely been limited to tasks. But now companies recognize they need specialists to fill the gaps between C-suite strategic objectives and their "tactical" managers. These specialists bring the following value to the company:

• Strategic expertise
• Awareness/command of new technology and techniques
• Ability to construct tactical programs that will fulfill strategy
• Ability to define specific tasks for each key area within the company
• Ability to supplement expertise and workforce where and when needed
• Performance measurement

Be aware: Your accounting firm cannot do this. Nor can your consulting firm. This takes strategic expertise. Individuals who take an enterprise-wide view of strategic priorities. Individuals who think like the C-suite, who see the connections between market dynamics, finance, manufacturing and product development--and can create a solution that reduces risk and increases success percentage.

If you feel lost in translation. You need to find one of these firms quickly.

Letters to the C-Suite

One of the top challenges for the C-suite in 2009 is finding a way to use social media to help their companies. One of the biggest barriers is understanding how to use it. Not only is it a different language but a different culture. Without a guide in this new world it is easy to make what appears to be a logical move and end up offending your social media contacts.

So I was excited when I found this FREE white paper by ExactTarget.

ExactTarget is a provider of on-demand email and one-to-one marketing solutions. They recently released this white paper Letters to the C-Suite: Sage Advice For Uncertain Times, a free reference guide featuring thirteen marketing experts offering advice on how to emerge successful in 2009. The letters are designed to assist executives and marketers in determining how they should market in an uncertain economy.

The letters are short, focused and very powerful. They're written by leading marketing authors, industry experts and well-known thought leaders.

Topics addressed include best practices in social media, tips for enhancing company websites, messaging advice and the importance of innovation and experimentation.

I'd recommend it for my C-suite friends.

How to Get Content Right

My favorite blog right now is Junta42 by Joe Pulizzi. He really provides the strategy behind the vast jungle of social media tools. It is all about content--but the right kind of content.

A client recently called in a panic saying one of their competitor's web sites was using the same tools we were using with our client. "It's the same!" our client told us. Perhaps. Visually it appeared to be following the Hubspot model, but when you examined the content the difference was clear.

They'd missed it!

Their content was still product-centric and promotional.

The biggest challenge facing marketers trying to win in the social media space is the dramatic shift in messaging strategy. It's no longer "your message", it's the "buyers' message". Marketers are really struggling with this. They are using the new tools and new media, but they are still using the same old messaging strategy and it isn't working.

Here's a simple way to determine if your content is right. Great content satifies these five criteria:

1. Is the content about a customer problem, challenge, or pain that may or may not be directly connected to your product or service?

2. Does the content provide answers to the questions your customers are asking?

3. Is your content honest; absent of spin, persuasion, and adjectives?

4. Is it easy to find and access?

5. Is it complete, providing the full details (good and bad)?

Next time you are developing content for your web site, blog or social media world, ask yourself these five questions and see where you are.

Without Credit, Prices Get Real

In a recent AP article on msnbc.com, an observant reporter weighed whether the post-Christmas sell off would create a lingering devaluation of retail products.

"Our sense of what is fair and what is a good deal has changed," said Michal Ann Strahilevitz, professor of marketing at the Golden Gate University's Ageno School of Business. She said that a sale has to be at least 70 percent off to be considered a bargain now.

The deep price cuts are making shoppers question the true value of items. If they can get $200 jeans at 60 percent off, will they be willing to pay the original price next fall?

"It is a vicious cycle that no one wants to continue," said Gilbert Harrison, chairman of Financo Inc., an investment banking firm specializing in retailing.

Okay, weak holiday sales result in price-slashing to move inventory. Standard practice, right?

But what if something else was at work here. What if it had to do with credit--but only as a catalyst? The availability of credit has made it easier for buyers to pay more for products than they normally would with cash. So are retail prices "real"?

With the credit crisis, many consumers are avoiding adding credit at all costs. Their value decisions are now "cash" decisions. Could their view of price and value have suddenly changed? If you talk to Sam Bowers, it has. Sam is a nationally recognized economist. His take is the growth of the social media space has optimized price shopping and buyers have become ruthless. As he so often says, "Give me a product and in 30 minutes online I can find five competitors offering the same product and their best prices."

Buyers want what they want, and only what they want--no more and no less. They want it to be easy. And they want the best price. As a retailer, ask yourself, "How many of my products fit this criteria?"

It's interesting to note that when brick and mortar retail sales dropped 20+% in December, online sales rose 4.6%.

Dumb Money or Greed Fails

The following was posted yesterday by Newsweek online.

The Road to Zell
How the Tribune deal went so bad, so fast.

By Daniel Gross | Newsweek Web Exclusive
Dec 9, 2008 | Updated: 2:41 p.m. ET Dec 9, 2008

What's the difference between Smart Money and Dumb Money? Twelve months, the popping of a credit bubble, and about $800 million.

In the run up of asset prices, which ended about a year ago, everyone was a genius. Hedge fund managers felt wise for borrowing large sums of money and buying stocks, commodities, or pretty much anything that went up. Private equity barons bought companies, issued debt to pay themselves dividends, and were hailed as master investors. Heck, even millions of homeowners felt like Einsteins for refinancing at lower rates. And hardly anyone was deemed smarter than Sam Zell.



The Chicago-based real estate investor, nicknamed the Grave Dancer for his delight in picking up dead businesses and reviving them, built Equity Office Properties, a collection of high-end office buildings. In February 2007, Zell was lauded as a genius for unloading the company in an all-cash transaction valued at about $38 billion (Blackstone put in $6.4 billion in cash and borrowed the rest), after a frenzied bidding process. But Zell wasn't content to take his winnings and stow them under the mattress. Having benefited from the dumb money culture—people willing to pay high prices for leveraged assets in the hope and expectation that they'd be able to sell them to other debt-fueled buyers at even higher prices—Zell loudly plunged right back into it. (Regular readers of this column should expect to hear more about the culture of dumb money—I've got an electronic book about it in the works with the Free Press.) In December 2007, Zell closed on the $8.2 billion acquisition of the Tribune Co., putting in $315 million of his own money and borrowing much of the rest. Make no mistake about it, The Tribune Company was a classic dumb money play, and not just because its main assets were declining newspapers.

Read More >>

Surrender Control to Your Customer

We were in a meeting with Envano an innovative social media marketing firm and the owner shared Joe Pulizzi's book Get Content. Get Customers. with us. Turns out one of their clients is featured in the book.

I am a big fan of Joe Pulizzi. Other than the fact that he is enormously articulate, he's right. Here's a summary of his take on content:

Content marketing is not easy because you actually have to listen to your customers and know what their challenges are. You cannot solve your marketing woes through buying advertising space. You must make a connection to your customers, and get new customers, by focusing on their true pain points and healing them with information.

There are millions of "social media experts" out there. Unfortunately, the majority are experts on tools, devices, and technology. Very few are experts on understanding the customer. Why? Because it's hard.

The recent Johnson & Johnson Motrin debacle is a great example.

Why Understanding the Customer is Hard.

Getting insights about the customer is not the challenge. A wealth of data is readily available. The real barrier is "surrendering control". I would argue that marketers know what their customers' want, but the marketers are unwilling to surrender control. Johnson & Johnson's ad agency tried to tell the customer who they are (or control brand perception) and it blew up in their face. Recently, we did a market study for an ad agency and gave them the unvarnished truth about the customer and the tools needed to engage them (lots of social media). They responded that they didn't want that. They either didn't know how to do what we recommended or didn't know how to make money doing it. They asked us to change the report to include tools they knew how to produce and could make money doing. WARNING! This is the norm not the exception.

Technology Isn't the Answer

Now the opposite of the example above is also true. Don't look to the new world of social media to solve the problem. It is not a solution. It is a wonderful tool to help marketers solve the problem. The problem is engaging the customer. The other problem is all the resources (vendors) available to help marketers don't care about engaging the customer, they only care about selling the services they offer.

Don't Try to Be the Smartest Person in the Room

The day's of Darren Stevens are over. Marketers don't need to be geniuses trying to create the next "big idea". They simply need to listen to their customers and give them what they want--not what marketers want to sell.

It's About Content.

As Joe Pulizzi points out, it is all about content; content that is meaningful and valuable to the customer. To do that, you must be willing to surrender control to the customer.

Keep up the good work Joe!