Steve Yastrow

How not to talk about marketing

Let’s say you need to talk about marketing with a non-marketing executive.  How should you do it?

Don’t talk about marketing.

My life-long empirical study shows this: Most executives are suspicious of the marketing advice they receive.  Why?

To quote one exec, “They keep talking about all this friggin’ marketing.”

Through my workshops and consulting, I spend a lot of time with C-level executives who don’t have a marketing background.  They are skeptical when marketers sell marketing ideas as marketing ideas, and not as business ideas.  They are skeptical when marketers look at a marketing budget as an entitlement, and not as an investment. And they are skeptical when marketers talk about marketing as a secret, magic formula, that only marketing professionals can understand.

My advice, if you need to sell a non-marketing executive on a marketing idea:  Don’t talk about marketing.

Talk about business issues that matter. Talk about the business results your marketing program is designed to generate. Talk not about what your marketing program does, but what it does for the business.

If you want to sell a C-level executive on a customer loyalty program, don’t talk first about frequency of communications, and (please!) don’t talk about database technology.  Focus on the untapped latent profit in your existing customer base.

If you want a new budget to focus on social media, don’t talk about social media as a mega-trend, and how it is important to show your customers you “get it.” Focus on how peer-to-peer marketing capitalizes on your company’s strength in gaining business through customer referrals.

Many marketers are reticent when it comes to talking about results because many of their most important programs can’t be tied directly to results; it’s hard to show how many customers came to you because of a story in the New York Times, or because you got more sign-ups on your Facebook fan page. But that’s all the more reason to talk about results.  Because direct results are hard to demonstrate, it’s important to show that you have created marketing strategies that aim for the right results. A strategic foundation can build confidence when direct, measurable results don’t exist.

Change the frame of reference. If you have a business conversation, and not a marketing conversation, the person with whom you are speaking will be much more receptive to your marketing ideas.

Posted in Marketing | 4 Comments »

Is your company doing good marketing? (continued)

In today’s newsletter, I focus on Question 3 of the 6 questions I use when I begin to evaluate a company’s marketing efforts.

Question 3 asks, “Are you clear about the rich story you want your customers to understand?“  Many companies look at their brands in a very cursory way, while their customers are willing to create rich brand stories in their minds.  One step to great marketing: Create a rich brand story that encourages customers to think, “I get it, I want it and I can’t get it anywhere else.”

Posted in Brand Harmony, Marketing | No Comments »

Is your company doing good marketing?

How can you tell if your company is doing good marketing? That question is the subject of Steve’s newsletter today. Over the next couple weeks, he’s going to explore the following six questions to help you evaluate and improve your company’s marketing strategy:

• Are your marketing efforts focused on the right results?
• Are you clear about what you want customers to do?
• Are you clear about the rich story you want customers to understand?
• Are your marketing efforts integrated over the entire lifecycle of a customer’s relationship with your company?
• Are you focused on internal marketing within the company?
• Does management allow its marketing professionals to succeed?

Today, he focuses on the first two questions. Here’s the link again: How can you tell if your company is doing good marketing?

Posted in Brand Harmony, Marketing, We relationships | 3 Comments »

The Four Scarce Resources

“So, what are your scarce maketing resources?” I have asked many people.

“Time, money and people,” are the most likely answers.

True.

But there is a fourth scarce resource: Customer attention.

You need to view customer attention as a finite resource. It is a rationed good, and you must use it frugally and wisely.

In the old days of brute force branding, it made sense to focus on exposing your customer to your marketing messages as many times as possible. After all, the working paradigms were “cut through the clutter” and “capture eyeballs.”

Now, things are different.  If you waste your scarce ration of customer attention on merely invading your customer’s field of vision or sound,  you will quickly wear out your welcome, and the customer will elect to ignore you. (“Capturing eyeballs” is so old-school)  On the other hand, if you focus not on just invading your customer’s senses as often as possible but on fewer, richer interactions, your customer will appreciate you, notice you and, more likely, be moved by your message.

Your customer’s attention is as valuable to him as your time, money and people are to you. Use this fourth scarce resource wisely.

Posted in Brute Force Branding | 2 Comments »

Recalibration Interview

Apparently, a Microsoft executive read my tompeters.com post on Recalibration.  That led to an interview with Microsoft’s Retailspeak magazine.  Here’s a link to the interview.

Posted in Recalibration | 1 Comment »

The Great Fallacy of Marketing

The great fallacy of marketing is that it can be delegated to a few people in your company and to inanimate objects, such as ads, brochures and web sites.

The most effective marketing is human to human; everything else is a compromise.

Advertising should be the last thing you consider in your marketing plan.

Think Brand Harmony, not brute force.

(This isn’t my opinion.  It’s your customers’ opinion.  It’s how they evaluate you.)

Recalibrate your approach to marketing.

Posted in Brand Harmony | 4 Comments »

Turning Customer Segmentation On Its Head

For years, marketers have used customer segmentation as a tool to make their jobs easier.   By “lumping” large groups of customers together, based on what those customers have in common, marketers can send mass messages to those groups of customers, and make use of broad media outlets.

The problem:  This is convenient for marketers, but it doesn’t do much for customers.  While marketers are focusing on what makes one customer like many other customers, each customer is focused on what makes her different from everyone else.

This out-moded view of customer segmentation was valuable in an advertising-based world, because advertisers could look for media habits that customers in these segments shared.  Problem #2: We don’t live in an advertising-based marketplace anymore, and media habits are not a very good proxy for purchase intent.

If you want to connect with your customers, and create strong, sustainable relationships with them, it’s time to turn the traditional model of customer segmentation on its head.  It’s time to focus on what makes customers unique, not what makes them interchangeable.

Is this easy? No. Is it necessary?  Yes. Why?  Because this is the way your customers see themselves.

Posted in Brute Force Branding, Marketing | 3 Comments »

Letters to the “C-Suite”

Exact Target is a company who markets itself as “On-demand email marketing and one-to-one digital communication platform. ” I’ll add to that by saying that I think of Exact Target as a group of really smart, cutting-edge marketing experts.

They asked a number of people, including me, to contribute to a whitepaper called, “Letters to the C-Suite: Sage Marketing Advice for Uncertain Times.“   Please have a look.

Posted in Announcements, Speeches & events, Thrive in a tough economy | No Comments »

You are never so unique as …

No matter how great your product is, there’s probably someone who makes a product just as good.  Even if your product is truly better, your customers may not be able to see the difference.  And … if your product is truly better, at this very moment a competitor is trying to copy it.

The same can be said for services.  They are easily copied.  And, of course, the same can be said about marketing messages and promotional offers.  These are the least differentiating (even though they are thought of as key tools of differentiation) and the most easily copied.

If you’ve spent any time reading this blog, my newsletters, or my books you know that I believe a strong relationship is the most powerful way to differentiate yourself in your customers’ minds.  A competitor can copy your products or services, but can’t copy the private relationships you have with customers.

Think what this means about your whole approach to marketing:

Stop trying to differentiate yourself by talking about how unique you, your products or your promotional offers are.

Start trying to differentiate yourself by helping your customers see how unique their personal connection is to you.

Posted in We relationships | 1 Comment »

The Apple Farmer

Here’s a link to the newsletter I sent out today, focusing on the disproportionate focus companies have on acquiring new customers, at the expense of developing relationships with existing customers.

Please have a look, and share your comments!

Posted in We relationships | 3 Comments »