Monday, January 28, 2013
Brand Flexibility
Amazon's brand has been relatively focused on publishing...well...also consumer goods from clothing to appliance resale. And now B2B Cloud Computer services.
Brands can stretch and flex to include various lines of products and services. Consider the Virgin Group. And then there are a lot of other very old, huge corporations like GE...their brand applies to major shares in a dozen of unrelated industries from locomotives, jet turbines, household appliances to financing, banking and then there are other industries where the GE brand is shrouded by the brands acquired such as ABC, NBC, Universal, CNN...
Sunday, November 4, 2012
No Marketing Plan—Only Clever Tactics
You may have already read at least one of the many books by Tom Peters. He was especially popular during the 80s with books like: Thriving on Chaos (1987) or Passion for Excellence (1985). In his book, In Search of Excellence (1982), he listed some forty companies with what he called “excellence in performance.” But by the late 80s only a handful of the companies in Peters’ list remained, and most had disappeared as noted by Richard T. Pascale Managing on the Edge). Tom Peters’ books promoted a management style focused on tactics.
Peters’ tactical approach may have helped managers in a short period in the early 80s, but today the business environment continues to morph into more complexity and competition. Strategic management has become more necessary in an aggressive and dynamic environment.
Strategy calls for an industry wide view over time and a continuous process of monitoring and navigating the business. No one type of strategic style dominates. The concepts of strategy function well depending on the context of the business in its environment.
The Vantive Corporation, founded in 1990, had also disappeared, like so many of Peters’ “companies of excellence.” It vanished into the ashes of the companies that ran on some sort of ‘thriving chaos’ at that time when high-performance tactics were in vogue. To use Vantive as an example now is like setting up a crime scene investigation after the bodies are long gone and all that is left are memories and ghosts. And in a since, now, as where Vantive is concerned, I’m a Monday armchair quarterback. Nevertheless it serves to illuminate how trends in management styles need to change and lead a company ahead the shifting currents.
In the case of Vantive, senior management had left the building and new CEOs came and went. Perhaps one of the reasons is simply that they could no longer navigate the company merely with clever tactics. They were at a loss about what to do next. They needed a map and compass. They needed to adapt to new management styles. Swift adaptations would have enabled them to lead the growth of the Internet rather than slip behind. By the late 90s, they could have seized that idea of cloud computing, like Salesforce.com.
In the 1970s and 80s, the business environment grew relatively easily compared to the present. Now the marketability of products and services in the new millennium faces a global, competitive economy.
During my days at Vantive, I witnessed how Vantive, once the leader and arguably the inventor of CRM software, was running on the fumes of tactics, but without much, if any, company-wide strategic approach or even strategic marketing planning. New, formidable competitors began to raise their heads over the horizon and with a broader, more adaptive style.
Siebel Systems began to pass by Vantive by 1996 on the new freeways of competition. Thomas Siebel most likely began to apply a more strategic approach to management, creating products more closely adapted to the clients’ needs. Siebel had Vantive as a set of basic applications that, nevertheless, required redesign. By using detailed feedback from clients, Siebel Systems developed a suite of products, delivering more refined and sophisticated requirements of the CRM marketing.
As a product marketing manager of the CRM products, I had never seen a Vantive marketing plan and never heard of one. One manager did write a nice analysis of the telecommunications industry as a potential market. In his book, Taking Careof eBusiness(2001), Thomas Spiebel pointed out that Siebel Systems did maintain a corporate strategy plan and a strategic marketing plan and also took into account its clients’ strategic marketing and sales plans.
If a Vantive marketing plan did exist, I never saw one, which is equivalent to none existed, since Marketing Plans should be shared with at least the senior and the middle level managers. Developing and maintaining a Marketing Plan would have been best practice at the time. Since Vantive Corporation had not adapted to the new competitors and the more sophisticated client requirements, it fell behind.
Had Vantive developed a strategic approach, the company would have benefited with a stronger chance at guiding the tactics as well as a viewing at least three years ahead. This meant that there was hardly a whisper of strategy. Most everyone seemed to be working in the realm of tactics.
Once or twice I eagerly offered to develop a marketing plan. The management above me looked at me as if I were speaking German. Along with a couple of colleagues, I did write a lot of White Papers, some of them describing the benefits of the products for the customers, but even then, I wrote more White Papers focused more on the technology. There was a lot of clamor about the n-tier architecture, which at the time was a hot topic much like cloud computing today. There is a difference between tactics and strategy. The strategic marketing process develops these areas:
As a product marketing manager, part of my responsibilities at Vantive was to visit clients and take notes of what they had to say about the products. This was a great way to learn the clients’ point of view and the requirements for the specific client groups (market segments) for the products. This information becomes highly valuable when preparing the launch for the next product version.
Collecting feedback and suggestions and even complaints from clients was a large part of my job or so I believed. I summarized and categorized the information and used it for the next formal MRD (marketing requirements document), which is used to establish the technical functions and features in practical response to the market needs per each segment. To achieve a good sample of feedback from clients, I canvassed the Bay Area and Silicon Valley clients. It was the area closest to Vantive headquarters in Santa Clara, California.
However, large corporate clients in Europe wanted to voice their concerns and ideas for improving the products. So, my manager approved the expenses for me to visit a number of key accounts in Europe, all of them major corporations.
Before debarking on my European tour, my supervisor tasked me to set an agenda, a plan: arrange with the key software engineers to set a date for the next release for Vantive SFA (sales force automation) and, in particular VOTG (Vantive on the Go). VOTG was a complicated and inefficient software component designed to enable sales or field service professionals to enter new information about clients on their laptops and then later and connect to the network at the time when the Internet was still limited by cables. No wireless solution prevailed yet. Once connected to the Internet VOTG was supposed to synchronize the new client information from the laptop (or even the PDA) to the central database. VOTG did not always function correctly. Sometimes it would synchronize the field data with the central database and sometimes not, depending on several parameters. Meanwhile Siebel had developed a powerful synchronization capability and had it patented. As part of my agenda for my European tour, I was charged to reassure the European clients that a new and improved version of VOTG would be launched on a given date. The competition had clearly bypassed Vantive by then.
When I returned from my European tour, I carefully summarized the feedback from the European clients. I was eager and ready to present the new information garnered from so many key accounts in Europe. I carried out my job dutifully, consisting mostly of specific chores, tactics, but without the substance of a strategy behind it. After all the travel, the expenses and information gathering, though, surprisingly, my supervisors were not interested in the customer feedback. During a long trip through Europe, it turned out also that the managers above me had decided to forget the next new and improved VOTG and most of all any launch date as if they were afraid to tame the monster in the closet.
The inevitable began to take place. It was no huge surprise at the time. The Vantive Corporation fell and an ambulance was driving it to the emergency room. Senior managers were gracefully and politely pointing their fingers at each other and anyone for the disaster. The company became just another piece of flattened road-kill on Strategy Highway. Vantive was flat-lining and PeopleSoft had stepped in to resuscitate it by buying up Vantive’s customer base as well as by re-designing the various software products in the PeopleTools technology. But PeopleSoft, too, was almost as strategically weak as its acquisitions.
In the final autopsy, Vantive died from Strategy Failure. The heart was not given enough care to strengthen it to confront the competitors. It did not adapt to the shifting winds of technology and client demands. In the end, Oracle stepped in a bought out both PeopleSoft and Siebel. Oracle thrives on competition. Larry Ellison’s leadership and aggressive strategy combines textbook plans with the extra kick of the battle plans by the likes of SunTzu.
Peters’ tactical approach may have helped managers in a short period in the early 80s, but today the business environment continues to morph into more complexity and competition. Strategic management has become more necessary in an aggressive and dynamic environment.
Strategy calls for an industry wide view over time and a continuous process of monitoring and navigating the business. No one type of strategic style dominates. The concepts of strategy function well depending on the context of the business in its environment.
In the case of Vantive, senior management had left the building and new CEOs came and went. Perhaps one of the reasons is simply that they could no longer navigate the company merely with clever tactics. They were at a loss about what to do next. They needed a map and compass. They needed to adapt to new management styles. Swift adaptations would have enabled them to lead the growth of the Internet rather than slip behind. By the late 90s, they could have seized that idea of cloud computing, like Salesforce.com.
In the 1970s and 80s, the business environment grew relatively easily compared to the present. Now the marketability of products and services in the new millennium faces a global, competitive economy.
During my days at Vantive, I witnessed how Vantive, once the leader and arguably the inventor of CRM software, was running on the fumes of tactics, but without much, if any, company-wide strategic approach or even strategic marketing planning. New, formidable competitors began to raise their heads over the horizon and with a broader, more adaptive style.
Siebel Systems began to pass by Vantive by 1996 on the new freeways of competition. Thomas Siebel most likely began to apply a more strategic approach to management, creating products more closely adapted to the clients’ needs. Siebel had Vantive as a set of basic applications that, nevertheless, required redesign. By using detailed feedback from clients, Siebel Systems developed a suite of products, delivering more refined and sophisticated requirements of the CRM marketing.
As a product marketing manager of the CRM products, I had never seen a Vantive marketing plan and never heard of one. One manager did write a nice analysis of the telecommunications industry as a potential market. In his book, Taking Careof eBusiness(2001), Thomas Spiebel pointed out that Siebel Systems did maintain a corporate strategy plan and a strategic marketing plan and also took into account its clients’ strategic marketing and sales plans.
If a Vantive marketing plan did exist, I never saw one, which is equivalent to none existed, since Marketing Plans should be shared with at least the senior and the middle level managers. Developing and maintaining a Marketing Plan would have been best practice at the time. Since Vantive Corporation had not adapted to the new competitors and the more sophisticated client requirements, it fell behind.
Had Vantive developed a strategic approach, the company would have benefited with a stronger chance at guiding the tactics as well as a viewing at least three years ahead. This meant that there was hardly a whisper of strategy. Most everyone seemed to be working in the realm of tactics.
Once or twice I eagerly offered to develop a marketing plan. The management above me looked at me as if I were speaking German. Along with a couple of colleagues, I did write a lot of White Papers, some of them describing the benefits of the products for the customers, but even then, I wrote more White Papers focused more on the technology. There was a lot of clamor about the n-tier architecture, which at the time was a hot topic much like cloud computing today. There is a difference between tactics and strategy. The strategic marketing process develops these areas:
- Identifying and defining the markets that match the products delivered by the company
- Qualify and quantify the needs of the groups of clients in these markets
- Develop and articulate the value proposition for these groups
- Communicate the value proposition and the benefits to the clients to everyone in the company involved in delivering the product and services and obtain their buy-in
- Monitor the value delivered and evaluate the process for constant improvements
As a product marketing manager, part of my responsibilities at Vantive was to visit clients and take notes of what they had to say about the products. This was a great way to learn the clients’ point of view and the requirements for the specific client groups (market segments) for the products. This information becomes highly valuable when preparing the launch for the next product version.
Before debarking on my European tour, my supervisor tasked me to set an agenda, a plan: arrange with the key software engineers to set a date for the next release for Vantive SFA (sales force automation) and, in particular VOTG (Vantive on the Go). VOTG was a complicated and inefficient software component designed to enable sales or field service professionals to enter new information about clients on their laptops and then later and connect to the network at the time when the Internet was still limited by cables. No wireless solution prevailed yet. Once connected to the Internet VOTG was supposed to synchronize the new client information from the laptop (or even the PDA) to the central database. VOTG did not always function correctly. Sometimes it would synchronize the field data with the central database and sometimes not, depending on several parameters. Meanwhile Siebel had developed a powerful synchronization capability and had it patented. As part of my agenda for my European tour, I was charged to reassure the European clients that a new and improved version of VOTG would be launched on a given date. The competition had clearly bypassed Vantive by then.
When I returned from my European tour, I carefully summarized the feedback from the European clients. I was eager and ready to present the new information garnered from so many key accounts in Europe. I carried out my job dutifully, consisting mostly of specific chores, tactics, but without the substance of a strategy behind it. After all the travel, the expenses and information gathering, though, surprisingly, my supervisors were not interested in the customer feedback. During a long trip through Europe, it turned out also that the managers above me had decided to forget the next new and improved VOTG and most of all any launch date as if they were afraid to tame the monster in the closet.
In the final autopsy, Vantive died from Strategy Failure. The heart was not given enough care to strengthen it to confront the competitors. It did not adapt to the shifting winds of technology and client demands. In the end, Oracle stepped in a bought out both PeopleSoft and Siebel. Oracle thrives on competition. Larry Ellison’s leadership and aggressive strategy combines textbook plans with the extra kick of the battle plans by the likes of SunTzu.
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Conspicuously Private Branding
Ivy Lee was one of the very first to manage a corporate crisis by writing a press release. By taking a proactive approach, Ivy Lee could write his version of the story in order to take control of the facts. Many journalists then took the text of the press release verbatim as the material for news article.
Many historians credit Ivy Lee for being the originator of modern crisis-control communications. His principal competitor in the new public relations industry was Edward Bernays, a nephew of Sigmund Freud.
In 1914 Ivy Lee entered public relations on a large scale when he was retained by John D. Rockefeller Jr. to represent his family and Standard Oil, ("to burnish the family image"), after the coal mining rebellion in Colorado known as the "Ludlow Massacre". Upton Sinclair dubbed him "Poison Ivy" after Lee tried to send bulletins saying those that died were victims of an overturned stove, when in fact the Colorado militia shot them.
Anyone familiar with U.S. history knows that the Ludlow Massacre occurred when Rockefeller "bought" the state militia and ordered them to squelch the union protest for better working conditions. The militia did its job and killed women, children and fathers--workers in the mines.
Ivy Lee's main goal was to maintain Rockefeller's image, or brand, as an moral, God-fearing family man and a ethical businessman.
This was the fundamental meaning of public relations. Though today's PR is seldom so dramatic as its origins Lee revised the facts in an attempt to cover up what had happened in the massacre. Lee proactively wrote the story of what had taken place by explaining to the media that a stove had caught on fire causing the deaths of so many poor people.
A blog article, from BrandCulture.com, sheds light on this fundamental aspect of Public Relations as a similar approach in our current politics and media. In this case, a current example shows how a proactive public relations and branding helps the Koch Brothers achieve political goals. The case of the Rockefeller PR practices at the beginning of the 1900s illustrates how effective PR and branding can affect people's perception of reality and feelings for a person or an organization.
The Koch Brothers have done little, if anything in the way innovation in their business or even with their lives other than just being born as the heirs of an enormous company and its conglomerates, worth into the billions if not trillions, with an annual revenue over $100B.
The blog article by brandculture demonstrates how a brand cannot be all things to all people. It is revealing how powerful PR and branding can be in motivating people to do surprising things. In the PR and branding developed by the Kochs…or whatever branding firm is serving their designs, we discover how people can be led to believe just about anything.
The Kochs' PR firm uses branding tropes and images like “Path to Freedom” while pursuing extreme right-wing political goals through their numerous “grassroots organizations” like the Tea Party. Most members of the Tea Party do not realize that the Kochs are funding and promoting the it and many other organizations like it. By using effective branding and PR, the Kochs have become successful in their extreme, elitist politics.
The Kochs use these “American pie” phrases to inspire gullible Americans. And these naïve Americans serve the Kochs’ interests while these Middle Class Americans volunteer their time and money unwittingly to deserve their own political interests.
By using effective branding, the Kochs are motivating Middle Class Americans to work for “free” for the Kochs’ Political Agenda, and at the detriment of their own middle class interests.
This reveals how powerful branding and classical rhetoric can be. It can manipulate gullible people into doing the complete opposite of their own intentions. It is ironic, comical and tragic all at the same time.
Sunday, October 21, 2012
Target the Segment -- Launch a Product
While working as I do now, as a marketing and branding consultant, I took the opportunity to help a software company in Southern California by drawing up the Market Requirement Documents and the High-level Technical Requirement Documents. The company needed a redesign and update for their CRM product, which was old and based on the Microsoft Access. Yes. It was time for a serious revision, if not a complete reinvention.
When designing a product, whether software or most any other product, it’s a good idea to make it flexible enough to meet the general functions and features required
by clients in various market segments. Also, it’s a good idea to design the product to accommodate the peculiar and unique requirements of the various segments or markets.
Likewise marketing managers need to consider which segments are more important than others when planning the launch of the new product or a new version.
The table presented here, below, enables marketing managers to consider the priorities of each segment. This table provides a clear and explicit way to analyze the segments. This helps marketing managers to choose which segments (markets) to start in the product launch. This table aids also in considering the priority of the segments in which the product will be sold. The table draws out a more explicit view of the various targeted segments by certain criteria: profitability, grow, in-depth knowledge of the segment, and such.
If you sale and market your products by prioritized vertical markets, this can be especially helpful. In this case, you probably prepare promotional, marketing campaigns to sale the product for the specific needs of the vertical segment.
This chart can help you to visualize and analyze what success factors are important and how they reflect one segment over another. This allows you to make strategic decisions. What segment do you want to penetrate first? Also, it helps to decide how much expenses are reasonable to penetrate and dominate a segment. How much will the product launch cost versus how much revenue is expected to make a profit and the return on the investment to develop the product? How much budget can we allocate for a Market Campaign to launch the product for a specific segment?
As for most any product or service, it seems that the best way to launch is to pick on viable segment and focus on it.
Some companies have concerns about launching a product or service in a way that all segments are penetrated by storm or blitzkrieg or even “shotgun” approach, and thus surprise any of the competitors. However, this concern about the competition will always be there. The competition will always look for ways to crush the other businesses. That’s just part of doing business.
Developing marketing strategy enables your business to encroach certain segments in ways to ward off the competition. There is no other way around it. You have to develop a product and service that responds to and even exceeds the requirements of the segments.
Nevertheless we have to launch a product or service in a business and start turning a profit. That is commonly the main goal. As the competition tries to move into the selected segment, we will have to wage war and fight those battles as they come. Preferably we need to develop a strategy that foresees and prepares for the competitive fight. Meanwhile we have to move on.
You need to show the world that once you enter into to a segment, your business model and strategy allows you to penetrate and dominate it.
You have to show that your business model, your product and service, works and is successful one segment at a time. Once you show success in one or two markets, you gain “street cred” or the reputation of a solid, credible company with attractive products and services. This is what fortifies the brand. By succeeding in penetrating and dominating one segment and the next, it becomes easier to move into a long list of markets. Success breeds success like little bunny rabbits.
Show Success to Create Credibility
By taking baby steps, you create success. That success translates into credibility in the sales teams, the engineering teams, and other teams gain enthusiasm as a company community. The positive attitudes strengthen the momentum.
Once you show the world that you are growing in terms of paying customers, other potential clients or customers will begin to notice you and your brand waxes. As your credibility increases, the more people, sales partners, agents, affiliates as well as clients will want to jump on this new and innovative business. They will want to sell this revolutionary product and service you have to offer.
Setting a goal would be useful, say for example, using milestones in terms of larger and larger numbers of converted clients per month, and this growth reflects a percentage of the market share.
But setting up a goal like this raises the question: what elements do you need to develop a robust Marketing Campaign for the new product or services to take hold on the targeted segment?
You will have to create a complete Project / Schedule for a Marketing Campaign per segment. Make a list of all the items you need to make the Marketing Campaign a great success specifically for the targeted segment.
From this Detailed Project/Marketing Campaign, you can develop a list of all the Cost Items. How much is it going to cost to set up a full blown campaign?
You list everything possible. Once you have a complete list for the campaign, you can discover that your budget might be sufficient for everything on your list. Or it might be too expensive, more than you can afford.
So, you prioritize. What types of Promotion, Advertising and Sales costs make the most impact given the cost constraints? You work with the resources you have. You implement the campaign and move the business forward. No fears.
When designing a product, whether software or most any other product, it’s a good idea to make it flexible enough to meet the general functions and features required
Likewise marketing managers need to consider which segments are more important than others when planning the launch of the new product or a new version.
The table presented here, below, enables marketing managers to consider the priorities of each segment. This table provides a clear and explicit way to analyze the segments. This helps marketing managers to choose which segments (markets) to start in the product launch. This table aids also in considering the priority of the segments in which the product will be sold. The table draws out a more explicit view of the various targeted segments by certain criteria: profitability, grow, in-depth knowledge of the segment, and such.
If you sale and market your products by prioritized vertical markets, this can be especially helpful. In this case, you probably prepare promotional, marketing campaigns to sale the product for the specific needs of the vertical segment.
This chart can help you to visualize and analyze what success factors are important and how they reflect one segment over another. This allows you to make strategic decisions. What segment do you want to penetrate first? Also, it helps to decide how much expenses are reasonable to penetrate and dominate a segment. How much will the product launch cost versus how much revenue is expected to make a profit and the return on the investment to develop the product? How much budget can we allocate for a Market Campaign to launch the product for a specific segment?
As for most any product or service, it seems that the best way to launch is to pick on viable segment and focus on it.
| Segment Analysis & Priority | |||||||||||||
| Analyzing and prioritizing the attractiveness of each segment for your business | |||||||||||||
| A prioritizing tool for launching a new business model, one segment at a time. | |||||||||||||
| Attractiveness | |||||||||||||
| Attributes | Weight | Segment1 | Segment2 | Segment3 | |||||||||
| score | total | score | total | score | total | ||||||||
| Profitability | 20% | 8 | 1.6 | 7 | 1.4 | 8 | 1.6 | ||||||
| Growth | 15% | 6 | 0.9 | 6 | 0.9 | 6 | 0.9 | ||||||
| Size | 25% | 9 | 2.25 | 5 | 1.25 | 6 | 1.5 | ||||||
| Inside knowledge | 30% | 9 | 2.7 | 7 | 2.1 | 5 | 1.5 | ||||||
| Competition | 5% | 7 | 0.35 | 7 | 0.35 | 4 | 0.2 | ||||||
| Cyclicality | 5% | 2.5 | 0.125 | 3 | 0.15 | 2 | 0.1 | ||||||
| Segment Totals | 100% | 41.5 | 7.925 | 35 | 6.15 | 31 | 5.8 | ||||||
| Attractiveness: these are the attributes that interest you as you develop your business | |||||||||||||
| You can change the attributes as you learn more about what is attractive to your business | |||||||||||||
| For example: I add "Inside Knowledge" as an important attribute because | |||||||||||||
| your knowledge of on Segment over another makes a | |||||||||||||
| Critical Success Factor in penetrating / dominating that Segment. | |||||||||||||
| And for this reason, I give this attribute a high Weight. | |||||||||||||
| Weight: how much importance do you place on any one of the attributes of attractiveness. | |||||||||||||
| For your business this year. | |||||||||||||
| Score: on a scale of 0 to 10, how do you grade the Segment for its attractiveness attributes. | |||||||||||||
| Total: the Weight X the Score = a total for each attribute in each Segment. | |||||||||||||
| Segment Totals: helps you to prioritize the importance of each Segment or Market. | |||||||||||||
| Each Segment has its peculiarities. | |||||||||||||
| You can add more Segments into this chart and use the chart | |||||||||||||
| to lay out a handful of Segments to see which ones | |||||||||||||
| are more attractive relative to the others. | |||||||||||||
Some companies have concerns about launching a product or service in a way that all segments are penetrated by storm or blitzkrieg or even “shotgun” approach, and thus surprise any of the competitors. However, this concern about the competition will always be there. The competition will always look for ways to crush the other businesses. That’s just part of doing business.
Developing marketing strategy enables your business to encroach certain segments in ways to ward off the competition. There is no other way around it. You have to develop a product and service that responds to and even exceeds the requirements of the segments.
Nevertheless we have to launch a product or service in a business and start turning a profit. That is commonly the main goal. As the competition tries to move into the selected segment, we will have to wage war and fight those battles as they come. Preferably we need to develop a strategy that foresees and prepares for the competitive fight. Meanwhile we have to move on.
You need to show the world that once you enter into to a segment, your business model and strategy allows you to penetrate and dominate it.
You have to show that your business model, your product and service, works and is successful one segment at a time. Once you show success in one or two markets, you gain “street cred” or the reputation of a solid, credible company with attractive products and services. This is what fortifies the brand. By succeeding in penetrating and dominating one segment and the next, it becomes easier to move into a long list of markets. Success breeds success like little bunny rabbits.
Show Success to Create Credibility
By taking baby steps, you create success. That success translates into credibility in the sales teams, the engineering teams, and other teams gain enthusiasm as a company community. The positive attitudes strengthen the momentum.
Once you show the world that you are growing in terms of paying customers, other potential clients or customers will begin to notice you and your brand waxes. As your credibility increases, the more people, sales partners, agents, affiliates as well as clients will want to jump on this new and innovative business. They will want to sell this revolutionary product and service you have to offer.
Setting a goal would be useful, say for example, using milestones in terms of larger and larger numbers of converted clients per month, and this growth reflects a percentage of the market share.
But setting up a goal like this raises the question: what elements do you need to develop a robust Marketing Campaign for the new product or services to take hold on the targeted segment?
You will have to create a complete Project / Schedule for a Marketing Campaign per segment. Make a list of all the items you need to make the Marketing Campaign a great success specifically for the targeted segment.
From this Detailed Project/Marketing Campaign, you can develop a list of all the Cost Items. How much is it going to cost to set up a full blown campaign?
You list everything possible. Once you have a complete list for the campaign, you can discover that your budget might be sufficient for everything on your list. Or it might be too expensive, more than you can afford.
So, you prioritize. What types of Promotion, Advertising and Sales costs make the most impact given the cost constraints? You work with the resources you have. You implement the campaign and move the business forward. No fears.
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
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.
Sunday, October 14, 2012
How to Develop the Right Marketing Plan
The question is: How do we develop a useful, practical marketing plan? There are commercial Web sites that provide template marketing plans. All you have to do is change the name of the company and revise some of the numbers and other facts to customize the plan for your own business. That is an example of how not to create a functional marketing plan.
Following best practices, business managers need to designate a marketing manager in charge of the marketing plan. However the marketing manager should have a rank high enough to gain the authority and the credibility to succeed. The job of creating a plan requires digging deep into your market, your close competitors, your customers, and all other dimensions of your business.
Your business deserves this kind of authentic and original research and analysis. There are many methods for accomplishing this goal. Most all methods include the need to get all the stake-owners, the managers of other departments from accounting to operations and sales and so on. Buy-in from all these managers and many of the employees is important for the plan’s implementation to become a success—one that yields results.
Beyond this, you develop a structure for the way to think and view your business’s position in the market. This structure ought to broaden and deepen your view of your business. Below are just a starting point of basic, essential deliverables for your plan. This set of questions offers a baby step toward a completed marketing plan.
Market structure and categorizing:
- Do you know clearly the market you serve?
- Have you mapped your market for your products and services and their total values, volume, and key factors for your business?
- Have you identified the distinct groups of your clients or customers and prioritized them?
- Have you clearly categorized the groups among your clients or customers in terms of their distinct needs?
Differentiation:
- Did you analyze how well you satisfy client or customer requirements beyond what your close competitors do?
- Have you identified opportunities and threats for each group of clients or customers?
Scope:
- Have you categorized each client or customer group by its potential for profit growth over the next three years?
- Have you charted your company’s competitive position by each group of clients or customers?
- Have you drafted objectives based on value, profit, market share?
- Based on the information compiled above, are the strategies in line with the objectives?
- Are key success factors pegged as milestones for each department?
Capturing Value:
- Do your goals and strategies align with the profit goals?
- Does your yearly budget support and aim at the same goals and milestones drawn out from the marketing angles above?
Friday, October 12, 2012
A Couple of the Benefits of a Marketing Plan
Without a marketing plan, a business manager could walk
right on competitive land mines.
While working currently to set companies on a solid marketing track, I am surprised how few organizations take the time to consider their practical goals and how to achieve them. Many managers at the top of companies, small and large, often skip over the task of rationally laying out a plan or analyzing their position relative to other similar businesses. Many managers say that it is merely academic exercise. I hear that phrase often.
Managing a company can seem to be an easy task when your business is prospering in a growing industry. Some industries can thrive for years in an economic slump.
Consider a case or two or three.
1) During an economic down turn, many consumers tighten their budgets and look for ways to fortify their trade or professional skills by taking
college or trade school classes or seminars. When unemployment is high, people
have more time to learn how to hone their careers.
So, managing a trade school might seem like a breeze in such circumstances.
2) Likewise manufacturers of low-priced, utilitarian cars can enjoy a relative upturn in sales compared to manufacturers and sellers of luxury cars.
3) Or consider a defense contractor just before or during a war. Selling the services and products in such times can seem like a piece of cake. When business is up as an industry trend, a manager may not care much about sustaining a strong position compared to competitors. If business is good why bother?
In such a situation, trade-school managers can sit back and let students line up to enroll in classes, desperate to pay to learn.
Likewise small cars, motorcycles or even motor-scooters will attract people. But without looking at the industry trends, a manager might slip into a dangerous sense of complacency. What if a business manager of a motor-scooter shop runs his business thinking this trend will continue? What if a manager is doing great, but she doesn't realize that her sales rate is less that the industry’s rate of growth?
That could mean that a motor-scooter shop manager is
actually conducting less business than most other shops in the same market. This
means that her competitors are stronger in ways she has not cared to consider. The
customer services, the quality of a repair and maintenance crew, or any other
such attractive advantages can make her competitors stronger.
Some day the upward trend for motor-scooters will turn down. The weaker motor-scooter shops will lose customers and lose their footing in the market.
Meanwhile other, more competitive motor-scooter shops will be in a stronger position during a market change so that they can adapt by developing more competitive advantages.
This reveals some of the practical benefits of a marketing plan. It is not academic. It is like putting together a battle plan before rushing out to war. It can save any business from ruin. A marketing plan, when done right, can set your business on a track to prosperity despite the wild changes in your market.
While working currently to set companies on a solid marketing track, I am surprised how few organizations take the time to consider their practical goals and how to achieve them. Many managers at the top of companies, small and large, often skip over the task of rationally laying out a plan or analyzing their position relative to other similar businesses. Many managers say that it is merely academic exercise. I hear that phrase often.
Managing a company can seem to be an easy task when your business is prospering in a growing industry. Some industries can thrive for years in an economic slump.
Consider a case or two or three.
1) During an economic down turn, many consumers tighten their budgets and look for ways to fortify their trade or professional skills by taking
So, managing a trade school might seem like a breeze in such circumstances.
2) Likewise manufacturers of low-priced, utilitarian cars can enjoy a relative upturn in sales compared to manufacturers and sellers of luxury cars.
3) Or consider a defense contractor just before or during a war. Selling the services and products in such times can seem like a piece of cake. When business is up as an industry trend, a manager may not care much about sustaining a strong position compared to competitors. If business is good why bother?
In such a situation, trade-school managers can sit back and let students line up to enroll in classes, desperate to pay to learn.
Likewise small cars, motorcycles or even motor-scooters will attract people. But without looking at the industry trends, a manager might slip into a dangerous sense of complacency. What if a business manager of a motor-scooter shop runs his business thinking this trend will continue? What if a manager is doing great, but she doesn't realize that her sales rate is less that the industry’s rate of growth?
That could mean that a motor-scooter shop manager is
Some day the upward trend for motor-scooters will turn down. The weaker motor-scooter shops will lose customers and lose their footing in the market.
Meanwhile other, more competitive motor-scooter shops will be in a stronger position during a market change so that they can adapt by developing more competitive advantages.
This reveals some of the practical benefits of a marketing plan. It is not academic. It is like putting together a battle plan before rushing out to war. It can save any business from ruin. A marketing plan, when done right, can set your business on a track to prosperity despite the wild changes in your market.
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