Fundamental Marketing and Online Marketing, SEM, SEO, and More

Strategy Deals with Why. Tactics Deal with How.

Vantive Corporation was one of the first providers of CRM (customer relationship management) software. When I joined Vantive at the tail end of its life in 1998, their marketing was weak. At that time I was employed as Senior Product Marketing Manager for the CRM products.

At the time it was obvious that the company was floundering without a rudder in the rushing currents that soon became the ocean called the Internet. During those last couple of years of the company, most of the marketing executives had cashed in their stock options and moved on to greener pastures.

Many so-called marketing executives spun in and out through the revolving door. Without any consistent marketing guidelines or plans to navigate the company, the engineering group took the helm by default.

The Internet was just taking off. The engineering group took the initiative to begin redesigning the products for the Web. They were on the right path, but so much more was required to gain and retain customers. Competitors, like Siebel, were raising their flags on the horizon. The engineering group worked to solve technical challenge, but they didn’t know how to deal with clients needs or how to ward off competitors. Many engineers were eager to explain this to me. They were clear minded about the situation.

That’s the sort of thing that happens when marketing leaves the building. Everyone begins to guess what the customers want and need. The engineers were smart guys, but they lacked knowledge about marketing. How did clients break down into groups? The engineers knew the closest competitors, but they did not know how to identify the value propositions of the products and services and to develop them into unique competitive advantages.

Vantive lost its goals and focus. It lost its fundamental principles of marketing. The strategy told the Story of Why—the purpose of the company, its goals. The Story of Why faded away quickly. The marketing tactics lingered on for a while longer. The tactics told the Story of How—the hands on work of gaining and retaining clients.

There were several tools remaining to maintain the tactical aspects of marketing. Most obvious was their own CRM that the sales team used to keep track of the Vantive clients. The sales teams still had the support of the marketing collateral, some PR. What they no longer had though, was a consistent set of marketing methods and guidelines—the marketing plan with its strategic view and its tactical guidelines.

Now, fast forward to today’s marketing in general. We enjoy a whole new set of marketing tools like Facebook, LinkedIn and blogs. SEO (search engine optimization) is also become more sophisticated in helping clients or customers to find companies on the Internet and to learn about products and services.

Now we also implement SEM (search engine marketing). SEM offers an entire toolbox full of methods to market a company and its products and services via a company Website, including search engine optimization (SEO), and the use of many other tools (http://www.support.google.com ). The prominent search engine companies provide many tools for Webmasters: Microsoft’s adCentral or (www.bing.com/toolbox/webmaster ), and Google’s adSense and adWords or ( www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ ), and now Yahoo’s Search Marketing Tools have merged into Microsoft’s Bing Webmaster tools.

These toolkits offer Website analytics for tracking visitor behavior and even for tracking pay per click (PPC) or pay per sales, which focus on online sales components.

By the development of these online marketing and sales tools, marketing as a profession has taken on a new dimension. The trends show how traditional advertisers are beginning to spend more money advertising on the Internet than on most other channels of communications.

Despite these new tools, though, traditional marketing methods still hold the foundations for business strategy. There are no software apps that can develop marketing plans. The plans have to be developed by thinking marketers to achieve unique and innovative advantages in the market.

To avoid the failures of companies like Vantive, marketers need to pay attention to the basics of marketing methods while creating the strategic plans as well as the guidelines for the tactics. The new and wonderful online marketing capabilities deliver fantastic means of tactics in advertising and communications and sales. Nonetheless, they are tactical tools.

Strategy focuses on the why. This is the realm of innovative marketing. It guides us to prevail in a competitive battleground. The new online tools provide us with new tools for tactics in a whole new set of communication channels. Tactics deal with the how.