Do You Know What Marketing Strategy Actually Is?

When I ask business owners about their marketing, they usually respond with a description of their TACTICS and seem to think that their tactics is their strategy. “Oh, we have a website and a blog, advertise on the local radio station, post YouTube videos and send direct mail.” These are all tactics. On the other hand, when I question a business owner about their marketing, virtually never do they respond with their STRATEGY. Why? Few business owners know what marketing strategy actually is. Tactics is certainly an important part of any marketing plan. However, in terms of importance, it is only about 40 percent of the pie. Strategy is about 60 percent.

Strategy, is all about defining target markets, observing and placing yourself in the shoes of your prospects, and determining what you need to say. Although tactics are important, businesses spend too little time on developing their strategy. This is a costly mistake. If you doubt what I say, take a look at the content of most advertising and find me an ad that accomplishes the two most vital strategic objectives of marketing campaigns:

1) Cause more people to buy the type of produce or service you offer, and

2) Convince your prospective customers they would be making a huge mistake to buy the type of product or service you sell from anyone but you.

Should You Use the Same Marketing Principles as the Fortune 500s?

How many commercials, advertisements and websites do you see achieve these goals? Take GEICO commercials. Do their cavemen make you believe you would be making a huge mistake to purchase car insurance from anyone else? Of course not! Do their ads work? Sure. Why? Because they employ two effective tactics that operate well together… attract attention and outspend the competition.

Anything unusual displayed in an ad or commercial attracts attention. This is what the cavemen in GEICO ads do. However, if you saw a single caveman commercial just a few times, it wouldn’t hold your attention because cavemen aren’t important or relevant to you and don’t provide a convincing solution to a perceived problem. It’s only GEICO’s $700 million dollar annual ad budget that makes these ads achieve results. But, how many small businesses can afford to spend huge sums of money to ingrain ads in consumers’ brains if their marketing and ads don’t achieve the two goals I mentioned?

What Smaller Businesses Don’t Know about Marketing

Most business owners have no idea how to develop headlines that will grab attention and hold it. Few know how to write copy that teaches prospects what they need to know to make a good purchasing decision. Finding an ad that builds a case for the respective company’s products or services, and backs their arguments with convincing evidence is a rarity. And how about attracting those who are not yet ready to buy? What a mistake it is to ignore future buyers! You need to know how to entice those who are not yet ready to buy into providing their contact information so you can contact and nurture them enough to eventually buy from you.

Where Your Marketing Treasure Lies

Not spending enough time on developing an effective strategy is a huge problem. Failure to learn the strategic principles necessary to create communications that will drive in an abundance of business without spending a fortune, however, is the biggest secret. You can unlock this secret by visiting our website. There you will find your treasure. It’s called The Marketing Formula.

Article written by Marc Aronson. Copyright © 2011, Business Builders. All rights reserved. No portion of thisarticle may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means (including e-mail or fax), without written permission from Business Builders.

Can You Market Effectively in a Bad Economy?

Your business volume and profitability have fallen. You know the weak economy is the cause. The advertising and promotion you used just a few years ago worked fine. Now, they are driving in so little business you are considering stopping your advertising altogether. After all, how can you justify spending on something that is not working? You hope and pray the economy will soon recover. Because, if it does not, you have no solution.

What you probably fail to recognize is that there is something wrong with your marketing. Your ads and promotion simply are no longer good enough. When the economy was thriving, there was ample spending occurring for even lackluster advertising to work. You did well and so did your competitors. However, in today’s economy, you need more than your fair share to thrive. Your communications must enable you to capture enough market share to reverse your dwindling income trend, if you are again to flourish.

The initial fact you must address is that your advertising and promotion are mediocre. This is true of nearly all marketing communications that are out there− not just yours. However, this only becomes obvious when consumer spending slows. The question then becomes whether you can fix your promotion so it will drive in enough business for you to prosper. The answer is yes, if there are enough people who need what you provide and have the money to spend. However, to recapture enough volume, you must first understand what is wrong with your marketing, your competitors’ marketing and, in fact, virtually every other company’s marketing on the planet. It is essential for you to grasp that the field of advertising is lost in a sea of confusion.

Where the Problems Began

To comprehend how and when the world of advertising and promotion went astray; you need to travel back to the early 1950s. Before TV and with radio, as well as with early television, most advertisers ran longer commercials— one minute, two minutes and sometimes even lengthier. These commercials, as did their radio commercials and print ads, tended to educate consumers concerning the virtues and benefits of their products and why purchasing them would enrich the lives of consumers.

During the 50s, thanks to a prosperous economy and new technology, nearly everyone began buying TVs. Major companies started to grasp the tremendous opportunity television advertising presented. The two major networks (CBS and NBC) realized the gold mine they offered and began to significantly raise their rates. Many companies could no longer afford TV as a medium and those that could had to cut back the length of their commercials to keep within their budgets. Thus, long educational commercials became an impossibility.

Next, Madison Avenue came to the rescue. Ad agencies invented a way for what they believed would allow shorter commercials to capture people’s attention and increase desire for advertisers’ products. They advocated that commercials could engrain their content into the minds of consumers through messages that relied on something familiar or unusual to interrupt, and then drive slogans down  consumers’ throats through repetition. The game transformed into “building your brand” through messages that said little of anything significant. As a result, advertisers began to deem it was no longer necessary to educate and sell. In some cases, high-ranking executives even considered that the quality of their products was irrelevant. Instead, they opted for brand building via image ads and slogans.

Did this work? Yes. However, conducting research might enlighten you to grasp that these commercials only succeeded because few companies could afford the repetition that was required via television to pound messages home. Thus, most of the competitors of the largest companies could not compete. These major corporations began to grow considerably more profitable as many of their competitors vanished into oblivion.

Advertising based on creativity and repetition became the sole methodology taught in universities, as the ad industry believed this to be the only effective way to advertise. Then, through the 1980s, we were engulfed by the eruption of the positioning decade. Today, we have become immersed in a high-tech advertising era. Each of these is a progression from the earlier build your brand period that resulted from the growth of TV.

How Madison Avenue Has Hurt Businesses that Deserve Greater Market Share

Whether marketers are conscious of it or not, we all came to believe that what we visualize and hear on television must be the right way to strategize advertising because everyone uses this approach. Thus, this popular model metastasized itself into all other media. Truthfully, it is like we are all students in a class that forgot to study for the exam. Because we are not prepared, we cheat off one other. As a result, we all fail. The problem in the entrepreneurial world is that we are never told we flunked the test. Thus, we continue to copy off each other. You say you don’t? You mean you never took ideas from the website or ad of a competitor and used their concepts to formulate your own material?

Loading your ads and website with platitudes, generalities and fluff that may mean a great deal to you but nothing to your target markets will not bring your prosperity. Certainly not in this economy. There is no wonder why marketing gurus like Al Reis, Jack Trout, Seth Godin and Sergio Zyman have touted that advertising no longer works. Advertising, promotion, websites, and social media CAN produce results. Nevertheless, to make them deliver, you must toss out all of the advertising rubbish that has been poisoning our ears and eyes for over 55 years.

The Madison Avenue dilemma has lead professional service firms down the path of creating advertising and promotion that fail to separate one practice from another. Today, website and ad text are nearly always a combination of platitudes and what some call menu style ads. Just mix a few trite and meaningless statements with a list of services you provide and your phone will ring off the hook. Right? Well, during prosperous times, maybe. You see, if everyone else says just about the same thing at least you will get your fair portion of prospects. In prosperous times, this may be adequate. How about in today’s economy? If responses to your ads and websites have been waning since the recession began, it is because there are less buyers and the size of your reasonable share has diminished. Therefore, the money you spend on promotion must enable you to grow your market share. Otherwise, why spend a penny?

I know that the value of the yellow pages has severely declined and you may be correct in deciding not to place your money there. However, professional service providers are still throwing money at this medium. As I peruse our local yellow pages, here are some banal statements local attorneys and accountants include in their ads. Since they consume space with these statements, I take it they believe these assertions have meaning and value and will cause people to take action. The sad truth is they won’t… but  here they are:

We represent injured consumers in a personal and professional manner

We want to be your personal attorneys and take care of all your legal needs

A family lawyer you can trust

Your community’s most experienced trial lawyer

The law firm dedicated to helping clients through times of personal legal crisis

Masters of science in taxation

Choose the experienced team of accounting professionals

Are these statements believable? Do they present new, unique ideas? Can their competitors make the same statements? Do they make you believe that the practices behind them must be special? Or, are they all profoundly commonplace and make no lasting impression? You be the judge.

How Can You Develop Promotion that Will Enable Your Business to Thrive Despite the Economy?

The goal of ads and promotion is to cause your prospective clients (or referral sources) to believe they would be making a huge mistake to choose any firm but yours for the type of services you provide. Would any of the phrases mentioned just before the above heading cause prospects to believe some of these firms would be the right choice?

There is a means to create tasteful ads, promotion, and website content that will cause most of your prospects and referral sources to select your firm. Read our article How to Separate Your Business from Your Competitors So You Make Lots of Money. E-mail us at info@marketingstrategy.com to receive your complimentary copy.