Related E-books:

Ideal Client

Mirror Marketing

Technorati : Duct-Tape-Marketing, Lean, Marketing-Hourglass, Marketing-System

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Here is my normal follow-up after my first comment:

Our experience is that a system will always outperform any other approach. Building a plan on where you are is one of the most important processes that you can do. Then we can define your objectives; develop strategies to achieve them, and then institute tactics to carry out your strategies. If your objectives are not being met, your strategies and tactics may need to be changed. But without a baseline and a plan to work from, the process and achievements are only arbitrary.

Systems do not complicate your life, they make it easier. The secret to any good system is how well it can be tailored to what you need NOW. The system is developed and implemented around your needs, not the other way around. An effective marketing process spans from lead generation through sales closure. Pick one area at a time and make a commitment to improve that. You might have a long list, but you have to start somewhere and before too long you’ll have dramatically improved."

As an example, most businesses have no marketing, nor sales process whatsoever. Too often you think of marketing as manipulative tricks to get prospects to notice and respond. The truth is marketing is a process of presenting real value in an attractive, competent and compelling manner. In the marketing process you need to have questions prepared, value points outlined, and an understanding of exactly when to listen and when to ask for action. When a prospect says, "I’ll think about it," they really mean, "You blew it."

So tell me, do you need a SYSTEM, Or do you need to think about it?

Technorati : Duct Tape Marketing , Marketing Funnel. Marketing Plan , Marketing System

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After a recent presentation to a group of start-up businesses, I asked for feedback. The only negative feedback I received was that someone was really looking for that Aha moment. Or that one great thing to do in marketing that could help them jettison their product or service.

Why is that? I think inexperience marketers always wonder why little of their marketing works. They run ads, get PR and time and time again are baffled that just little works in the way of marketing. I disagree that there is not anything that works. I believe just about everything works, but only just a little. The world has become so fragmented on the way it receives information that you have to reach even a very target audience in numerous ways. I think that is why building a community with your existing customers is being emphasized. If they are targeted enough and have a strong enough dependency on your product or service, you will have the ability to communicate with them.

In implementing a Duct Tape Marketing System that Aha moment comes when the customer finally discovers their Target Market/Ideal Client. Immediately after that time it seems that their core message materializes and their marketing messages start following a defined path.

Even with have a defined message, you still have to use numerous methods to reach your audience. Again, there is not one way that is going to work. But what does work is great content and linkage. You must link every single event together and build on that. Think like a spider web. Every connection you make, you must find a way to link it to another event or another instance and to another and to another. Soon you will have started to spin your web and when you start collaboration you can start tying their net into yours.

It gets a little more elaborate than this but if you are looking for that big bang from a marketing firm, I don’t think it is there. I just don’t think it can be made cool enough for you!

Technorati : Effective-Marketing, Ideal-Client, Marketing-System, Target-Market

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Time and time again, I struggle with people identifying their ideal client. This is my attempt to take some of the mystery out of the selection. I think once you have this identified, 50% of your marketing is done.

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7.  Creating a content marketing strategy based on your customers buying process and need.

I believe content marketing is what really works these days and without it it is very hard to differentiate yourself. A quick outline of a great book on the subject that I keep promoting:

1. Defining the organizational goals.
2. Determine the informational needs of the buyer.
3. Determine what you want the customer to do and why this helps the business.
4. Determine the product and content mix.

A few examples of the product and content mix were:

1. Print newsletter
2. E-book
3. White papers series
4. Website and blog
5. Social Media component
6. Article marketing
7. News releases

Excited to show you the new cover for the revised and updated paperback version of Get Content Get Customers (Turn Prospects Into Buyers with Content Marketing), which will be available in bookstores on May 22nd. And, by the way, the paperback does include new case studies and has a few expanded pages on social media content marketing.

Also review my E-book on Mirror Marketing

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4.  Create a list we can interview that makes up your buyer, present, past and NEVER. Oh, yes, interview them.

This is normally a huge stumbling block.  People time and time again want to build their marketing strategies and tactics within their own four walls.  Marketing is about customer communication. So if you’re going to build a plan to do that, you must start at the very beginning, communicating with them. And it is important to get a complete mix, including the ones that don’t buy.

It’s simply not about you, your customer does not care about you and many of the points you’re trying to get across in your present marketing material.  He simply cares about who demonstrates best how they can make him more money or make his life easier.

Interviewing people outside the company is scary to many. Typically, companies will agree to a survey of some type.  But to leave an outside organization call and communicate with their customers is seldom acceptable.  But I would encourage someone other in the organization to talk to these people rather than someone they communicated with them during the sales process.  People will continue thinking that it is sales tactic or a type of sales trying to solicit information from them and will answer accordingly. It either takes an independent firm or someone that can assure them that it’s got nothing to do with sales or the judgment of an individual.  It has everything to do with the system.

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1. Get all of the material you have and a list of all your listings and advertising you are running.
2. Review your measurements on what is working and what is not, if you have them. If you don’t know, stop doing it!
3. Review how your product helps your customer and all the material you have to support that.
4. Create a list we can interview that makes up your buyer, present, past and NEVER. Oh, yes, interview them.
5. Separate products/services into existing sales channels and map customer buying process.
6. Use existing if applicable; create new media around step 5 to include print, media, internet and sales processes.
7. Creating a content marketing strategy based on your customers buying process and needs.
8. Create conversation officer position to support material and manage communications.
9. Make a significant web presence through social media and communication channels with stakeholders. Create local presence, online and off-line.
10. DO IT!

Inspiration provided by a post from David Meerman Scott.

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5.  Internal focus instead of external. Your engineers and developer are not all knowing, but your customers are.

4.  Committed Resources : The resources that are built around a new project can get lost in the everyday shuffle.

3.  Not funded properly: Yes, Guy Kawasaki can start things for pennies, but I can’t.

2.  Having a system in place: How many times does a good idea fail because of a poor plan.

1.  Time : People just try to do things to quickly without having a good foundation in place. Creating linkage takes time.

Can you think of a few more?

Check out my Product Marketing Process .

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Case in point, Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz! She was running away from home for a better life. They did not understand her. I have 2 teenage boys, can I run? No, I understand that this is a part in their life that they need to find themselves. They need to find their own identity.

I have always thought many companies struggle with that. I talk to businesses everyday that define their target market as small business. I want for someone to take note here, SMALL BUSINESS IS NOT A TARGET MARKET.

So how do you define your niche? For starters, it is what you do well. Now, think about this – what do you do better, really better, than anyone else. What individualizes you more than any one single point. What would your customers say? What would your strategic partner say? What would a referral partner say?

I was taught the "Five Why" method. Keep asking why to each answer 5 times. At the end, you probably have the answer that you are looking for.

1. Who(Why) is your target Market?  Small Business
2. Why? I work with companies that do not have an in-house marketing department.
3. Why? Our system is set up to handle that function.
4. Why? Because it is a systems.
5. Why? Because systems work.

So now, who is my target market from just that short exercise, I can tell you right now. If you don’t believe a system works, you are not my target market.

How about Dorothy?   Remember the words of the lion to the wizard. Yeah, and the wizard took off without her. Linda, the good looking witch came back and told Dorothy what? "You have had the power all along, you just had to find it." I encourage you as a business to find your niche and identify with it. If you want your marketing to work, don’t try to be everything to everyone. Find the power within your organization and tap those shoes together. It’s about the shoes!

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I think it is a job as a marketer to assigning accountability to our marketing functions and leave people test the waters. They have to know quickly in a down economy “WHEN TO HOLD THEM AND WHEN TO FOLD THEM.” Example: The day and age that we tell someone they have to run an ad 3 or 4 times before they start seeing results is nonsense. That just says we are running a branding ad vs. a 2-step ad or something with a call to action.

Strategies that I have seen in a turnaround is different then most marketing people may agree with. What I have learned is that you zero in on what you do well in every area of the company and put your money in those areas. If you have a pet project or something that is going to set the world on fire, well it seldom does. There are not that many Ipods out there. So target, target and target some more and build the best buyer persona that you can, to get results.

You can not ignore a recession. We are in one. Systematizing your Marketing during these time is quite frankly, the smartest thing you can do. Now the question you must ask yourself:

Is what system to use? Uhm!

So what do you do? My answer is pretty simple, go find where your ideal client is hanging out these days.

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We spent the day on:

1. Web Content
2. Sales Tools
3. Sales Channel Alignment
4. Revenue Grow
5. Awareness & Positioning
6. Customer Retention
7. Impact on Business Metrics
8. Return on Marketing Assets
9. Product Profitability

As I went through the 2nd day I kept realizing the impact a small business can have in a niche market. The advice given was all excellent and fit the target audience well. However, this is where I really started seeing the difference between the Duct Tape Marketing program and Pragmatic Marketing. As an example, they went about the task of trying to convince people the need for blogs and effective web communication, we at DTM simply state that it really is practically a requirement to do it and dive into showing you how to do it. There are other examples as well but the tagline of simple, practical and affordable really strikes me here.

However, the people in the seminar were not DTM’s audience they were Pragmatic’s. For these people, the message was appropriate. Small business is typically not discussing market segmentation and sales channel alignment or should they? As you look through the outline above I believe that these are all important issues to every small business but it must be  shown to them on a much different level. Small business requires a much more tactical approach and large business wants to see the “big picture” first. I did enjoy being re-introduced to that side of the equation but must admit that the tactical side is what drives me.

It’s nice to be back to my world? A quick post from SCHLO where he re-blogged about “The Advantage of Being Small.” How timely!

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In a previous post on Lean Six Sigma marketing-Explore , I had stated Explore, the data to identify a cause and effect relationship between variables, was the 3rd step in building a Lean Six Sigma marketing process. I also stated that in the Duct Tape Marketing planning system that the Remarkable Story and Product or Service Innovation coincided with the definition of Explore.

I think this is one of the most powerful tools but is the least understood. Establishing a baseline or as it is so well put in Michael Kennedy’s book Product Development for the Lean Enterprise :  “The root issues must be understood from two perspectives: what is causing them and what stands between how things should be and what they are. Failure to understand will result in widespread wishful thinking and superficial solutions.”

There is a true art to mapping and takes quite a bit of work to become proficient. However, utilizing Marketing Plan Pro will allow you to build that current state of your organization and your product or service. It is important to precisely know where you are at and be able to define that to your customer.

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A quick video explaining the New Duct tape Marketing System. There is a twist to it. If purchased through me, I will get you a copy of Marketing Plan Pro. All that is required is a scheduling a Free 30-minute marketing consultation with me and I will give you the link.

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