Lean Marketing :: Business901

Lean Marketing

Why Lean Marketing?

Is your marketing team disciplined enough? Is there a more efficient way to advertise, promote, and refer your products or services? Is there a way getting your customer only the information they want and when they want it?

Lean marketing is a whole-systems approach that creates a culture of continuously improving processes. It is a system focused on and driven by customers, both internal and external. Lean manufacturing isn’t just an industry buzzword or quick-fix alternative. Increasing competition demands a continuous focus on minimal costs, maximum customer options, fast delivery, and high-quality products and services.

Today’s companies must be innovative while focusing on waste reduction, improved lead-time, maximized flexibility, and upgraded quality. Remember the old adage about marketing – only 50 percent of your marketing works, you just did not know which 50 percent. Lean marketing principles will allow you to implement proven strategies. The components of Lean Marketing include Value Stream, Lean Metrics, Current State, Future State, and Kaizen.

Marketers need to critically evaluate their processes to determine their effectiveness in bringing maximum value to customers. Today’s techniques are creating more efficient methods to deliver targeted messages in the particular manner that customers wish to receive it. It must be remembered that it is our job as marketers to deliver the message in a manner a customer wishes to receive. As stated earlier, lean marketing is a system focused on and driven by customers. Optimizing the value stream from their eyes and in an efficient process takes marketing to a level not experienced before.

Six Step Lean Marketing Process: Lean Marketing is a strategic methodology to streamline and automate the marketing processes in order to improve efficiencies through waste elimination. True lean companies strive to eliminate, not minimize all waste in the process. Most think of this as only a manufacturing or administrative function. This rule can apply when implementing lean marketing as well. In lean marketing a company should only have two components: An introduction to a new lead and the acceptance of an order. All other components would be considered wasteful and are candidates for elimination. That may be a little to pie in the sky but I do not believe that marketing should be off the hook from eliminating waste.

Here is a simple process to get started: The Six Step Process to Lean Marketing: How do you handle the critical elements of your Marketing or Value Stream and reduce waste in a lean flow?

Create a Value Stream Map based on your Marketing Flow.
Analyze each process and start asking these questions until you have eliminated all waste from the process:
1. Why are we doing this process?
2. What value/purpose does it serve the customer?
3. How can we eliminate all waste from this process?
4. Map new simplified process
Now determine the constraint in your Marketing Flow
1. Identify the system’s constraint.
2. Exploit the system’s constraint.
3. Subordinate everything else to the above decision.
4. Elevate the system’s constraint.
5. If a constraint is broken (that is, relieved or improved), go back to Step 1. However, don’t allow inertia to become a constraint.
Implement and Test new process using the Plan, Do, Check, Act cycle.
Simplify your Marketing Flow
1. Eliminate all wasted activities that the customer sees little value in.
2. Create dashboard with input/output measurements showing daily, weekly, monthly and yearly progress
Find the Value Stream ROI and Resource Allocation
1. Create the Future Value Stream Map
2. Feedback develop visual metrics showing progress of the company’s lean continuous improvement program.

There has been very good books written on Lean Six Sigma Marketing but they deal primarily with channel management. I feel that a true lean approach is what is needed in Small Business Marketing. This basic structure will add clarity finding not only waste but deficiencies in creating new leads and orders in your marketing cycle.

The Makings Of A Perfect Lean Market

Beyond Lean: The Perfect Lean Market: While 80% of manufacturers have lean initiatives, less than 1% have lean practices in place. This article was written by Pamela Lopker, president and chairman of QAD Inc. She went on to say, “The Makings Of A Perfect Lean Market – There are three primary attributes to a perfect lean market. Clarity is one: The second attribute of a perfect lean market is agility , responsiveness to changes in the marketplace. But lean practices won’t get information to the right place at the right time. That’s where technology can introduce agility, through systems that can receive and process information quickly, even instantly, through automation. Unity is the third attribute of a perfect lean market. Getting information to the right place at the right time can fuel that kind of unity.”

She was talking about the waste in supply change management practices. But when I read it, the correlation to Lean Marketing is very apparent.

1. Clarity: How many times have you looked at a marketing piece and questioned the meaning, the reason for it or maybe you just tossed it. We encourage marketing pieces to be educational or a call to action that ultimately has a benefit for the customer as a result of a response.

2. Agility: I do not mean responding to the marketing idea of the week but having a process in place that allows you to have active content. This can be easily done with a company blog and with joint participation the excuse of a time factor is completely removed. The only factor that matters now is the accountability factor.

3. Unity: This is the most neglected attribute. Your marketing to be effective is not a one-way street anymore. It is about communication. Building platforms that your organization can increase the communication with your customer is the actions we take by monitoring news about our customers, building social sites that allow our customers to post, blog and add videos on their own. Being transparent and mixing it up in front of your customers is maybe the largest selling feature you can have.

Poka-Yoke your Marketing –

Value Stream Marketing

This webinar will discuss utilizing the Value Stream Marketing Concept and how to apply Lean Sigma Principles to your marketing process. I found using Lean techniques not only improves the process but offer a substantial cost savings.

You will receive the E-Book “The Lean Marketing House!”

EVENT REGISTRATION : http://valuestreammarketing.eventbrite.com/

Business901 introduces the Value Stream Marketing Concept as it is the first actionable step with the Lean Marketing House; we want our participants to learn how to utilize a Sales and Marketing Value Stream which is an entire different procedure than your typical Marketing Funnel. A few of the ideas are so radical from your present day thinking that we will ask you to try them only on your worst performing marketing segment. Joe Dager, a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt Marketer will present these topics.

Dager says, “Marketing Segmentation is an integral part of the Lean Marketing House concept. Applying Lean and Theory of Constraints to this practice opens up a completely different understanding of the Marketing Funnel, so different that we had to call it something different. It opens up and simplifies it for many individuals and companies that have difficulty looking at marketing as a system. And as many of us know most marketing systems don’t work. We will take the Value Stream created and walk you through the theory and into practice. I have not found a quicker and easier method from converting a stagnate and non-systematic marketing effort into a flood of increased sales. Not only will this method increase sales but typically it will decrease your marketing cost in a relatively short period. The end result also includes a continuous improvement process to keep your marketing ahead of the competition.”

Implementing Value stream Marketing is a 60-minute webinar based specifically on addressing these issues: