Your Marketing Sucks

(Mark Stevens / Crown Business/ April 2005 / 240 Pages / $14.00 )

국내 미출간 세계 베스트셀러(NBS) 서비스는 (주)네오넷코리아가 해외에서 저작권자와의 저작권 계약을

통해, 영미권, 일본, 중국의 경제·경영 및 정치 서적의 베스트셀러, 스테디셀러의 핵심 내용을 간략하게
정리한 요약(Summary) 정보입니다. 저작권법에 의하여 (주)네오넷코리아의 정식인가 없이 무단전재,
무단복제 및 전송을 할 수 없으며, 모든 출판권과 전송권은 저작권자에게 있음을 알려드립니다.
 Your Marketing Sucks

The Big Idea

If every dollar that you spend on marketing isn't generating more than that amount, then
your marketing sucks. You might as well throw away thousand-dollar bills in spending
on marketing. So says author Mark Stevens, creator of the Extreme Marketing process.

Extreme Marketing is based on the premise that you know why and what you are
spending for in marketing. In other words, your spending is in context with specific goals.
There should be a plan that makes every marketing tactic reinforce the other. What gets
back must be more than what you spend.

Why your marketing sucks

Consider the following scenarios:

 Car and truck manufacturers spend fortunes to produce beautiful commercials.
Everyone remembers the scenery and the stunning visuals. But who
remembers the car or the truck?
 An ad wins in the Oscar of the advertising agency, the Clio. All is well and good
for the ad agency. But sales don't pick up. Where does that leave the company
that commissioned the ad campaign in the first place?
 A company spends $100,000 for a perfect dot.com name, but less than a tenth
of that amount for website design. In the process, it turns away potential
customers who find it difficult to navigate the website or find that "hot
merchandise" that is being promoted. These are examples of marketing that
sucks. Most marketing "sucks" for the following reasons:

 Many companies don't understand what marketing is. One company spent
more than a million dollars for 10,000 copies of a beautiful brochure, only to
keep them warehoused in the end. The reason? The brochures were too
expensive to give away to just about anyone.
 Companies operate by generalities. An expert says that a 1% hit rate for
direct mail marketing is good enough. And companies limit themselves by this
adage, if it is true at all.
 Many companies undertake only one form of marketing, such as print
advertising, instead of a swarming offense that targets everyone wherever that
person turns, from print ads to outdoor advertising to infomercials.
 Many expensive programs are devoid of innovative thinking. They're hung
up on doing what their competitors do, but better. In the end, no one remembers.

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 The key lies in innovation, in being remembered.
 Many companies don't make use of available research. There are
databases that can be accessed to enhance the marketing effort.
 Many marketing professionals remain unaccountable for results or the
lack of them. Consider this case of a major IT company. The person
responsible for producing a magazine-cum-catalog that didn't even generate
enough revenue to cover its cost because the idea was poorly executed, was
rewarded with a promotion. The "mag-a-log" itself was great. But because the
company had no way of selling to customers directly, except only through an
"authorized representative", it cost them more than what it had brought in. A
person who should have been fired was instead promoted.

It's all about moving what you sell. Forget Clio's. They won't sell your product or service.
Advertisements should do one thing-- to sell.

If they aren't doing that, then your marketing sucks.

Common "Lazy Marketing" Mistakes

Marketing that sucks has four common factors:

 Budgets come before goals. Determining how much money to spend before
answering vital questions such as marketing targets and how to monitor results
is one sure way of wasting money.
 Becoming a one-day wonder. Make the great splash, then retreat. Leave
everyone else to hire an agency and make blunders.
 Delegation. A chief executive succeeds in raising sales, then decides to run a
bureaucracy instead. His focus shifts from sales and marketing to reporting
systems and internal controls.
 Gullibility. Marketing is not about image-making, as some marketing agencies
may suggest. Performance is measurable. It is about dollars and cents.

Say "Hello" to Extreme Marketing

So what is Extreme Marketing?

 It sees marketing as an integrated process, where all tactics work together to

make sales.
 It employs innovative initiatives to get the attention of the market.
 It produces a positive return on investment. In other words, it generates

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 more income than costs and expenses.
 It picks the "low-hanging fruit". That means it takes advantage of
opportunities that are already there.
 It is non-linear. You don't just do one thing or another such as print ads one
month and TV ads the next. Rather, you employ a swarming approach. Attack
the market from all directions.
 It goes beyond the rules. Just because the experts say it can't be done,
doesn't mean it can't. Otherwise, there would not be any Wal-Mart. The concept
of which went beyond the belief that huge stores could not survive in small,
backwater towns.

It's the sale, stupid.

Salesmanship should be the first, not the last, step in the marketing process. Marketing
should lead to sales. Otherwise, it's just a waste of time and money.

Sales should not be removed from the marketing process, as it is in many companies.
Certain steps should be taken so that a company or a person becomes a customer or a
client. These include:

 Developing a strategy for winning new business based on value

proposition. You have to know that one reason why people should do
business with you, and not with your competition.

 Let your market know. So you have determined your value proposition. Now
let them know every way you can.

 Let them love you. Court your market. Let them fall in love with you. Overcome
barriers to sales by lowering prices, offering additional services, extending
warranties, or giving trial period.

Moreover, don't put the burden of a sale on a prospective client. That's your job.

Ignore the competition and start from scratch

Never start the marketing process by what the competition does. That limits creativity.
Rather, like Albert Einstein, "think outside the box." Use your imagination to achieve
results. Step beyond existing models and be creative.

And how is that done? Consider the following:

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  A compelling name for your product can work wonders, especially if it
builds aspiration (e.g., fat people wanting to be slim)
 Go visual. A picture says a lot, as with the before-and-after shots of
infomercials. The model in the ad could actually be you.
 Create the impression of exceptional value. Again, the infomercials. They
bombard you with offers that are just too good to pass up.
 Use testimonials. The power of this marketing tool is employed very well in
infomercials. Tacky? Maybe. But infomercials, where the message is constantly
repeated by "real folk," send the clear message to consumers: BUY.

Stop playing it safe and go for the homerun

Don't settle for modest gains. Throw out all the "standard garbage" on what should and
should not be done, and replace it with a culture focused on sales.

Stress the one thing your company does better than anyone else. Your marketing
should be reduced to a single sentence. Otherwise, your message will simply be lost.

In business, it's about:

 Being imaginative
 Accepting risk
 Assuming challenges; and
 Finding a way to win.

In Extreme Marketing, claims are backed up with a strong value proposition. It assumes
an entrepreneurial perspective where a measurable return on investment is required.

Two points are crucial:

 There should be no self-imposed limits.
 Whatever increases profits pays extreme dividends.

Forget what your competition is doing, and stop trying to do what they are doing in a
better way. Be skeptical about conventional wisdom. Begin, in a sense, with a blank
page. That way, there are no limitations on what you can do.

Dispose off preconceived notions of what should or should not be done. Just because
everyone does it doesn't mean you should. Question the manual, so to speak, and
common or conventional wisdom.

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Ask yourself if there's a better way of doing things.

Call it serial skepticism. It puts you ahead of the competition.

From there, go beyond. Even go to extremes. The homerun.

Stop playing it safe and instead fill the void in the marketplace.

Test, execute, monitor

Base your decisions on empirical evidence. Only when an ad produces results, for
instance, should you undertake a full campaign.

But don't stop with testing. Execution, however dull it may seem or feel, is crucial. Great
ideas become great ideas only if they are executed properly.

Then monitor. How is the idea working?

So how can results be monitored?

 Learn from telemarketers. Are prospects, for instance, more open to

proposals during certain parts of the day? This could lead to information on
peak-response hours.
 Look beyond website hits. The most active visitation sites could actually be
the least productive in terms of building business,
 Measure sales volume before and after advertisements.
 Get feedback from your sales channels. Get to know if you marketing efforts
have prompted customers to buy your products, make incremental purchases,
or prompted them to switch to a competitor.
 See if competitors are aping your approach. That usually means your
marketing is working.

Fruits for the picking

Far closer to you than new markets are the "low-hanging fruits." These are the people or
companies with whom you already have relationships. They comprise a healthy market
for your other products. They are there and possibly willing to buy your company's
products and services, other than those they already do.

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It's called cross-selling. Yet it's often ignored. Why?

 Companies simply don't think of doing it.

 It's often considered "hard sell."
 It's considered "unprofessional."

Cross-selling, however, brings rewards. It targets individuals who are already customers
for additional business.

Finally, stop everything you're doing

First, do no harm. Then get your marketing on track.

 First, stop all your marketing activities unless you can prove quantitatively that
they generate more money than they cost. Put a moratorium, for instance, on
spending for advertisements. If sales continue, then you may have to
re-evaluate your advertising effort.
 Second, justify every dollar that you spend. You have to prove that you are
making more than you are spending on marketing.
 Third, take note of omissions. Why aren't you doing billboards or direct mail?
Explain to yourself why.

After all these are considered, the big question is: Could you be making more money
than you currently are? The answer could lead to a revision of your creative strategy or
experimentation in your marketing strategy.

Just don't go back to the office until you have decided to undertake marketing aimed at
growing your business. Ultimately, it's about generating more than how much it costs.

Otherwise, your marketing sucks.

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[세계 베스트셀러(NBS) 서비스는 영문의 경제·경영 및 정치 서적의 베스트셀러, 스테디셀러의 핵심 내용을 간략하게 정리한
요약(Summary) 서비스입니다. 영문 서비스는 단순히 서적을 소개하거나 광고를 위한 Book Review가 아니라 세계의
베스트셀러 도서의 핵심을 체계적으로 정리한 도서 정보로써, 이 서비스를 통해 세계의 정치·경제·문화의 흐름을 빠르게
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