Magnus Marketing Blog

In these challenging economic times when dollars are scarce, it is critical to be efficient about spending money in the right direction. Today, there are two areas that direction is focused on: 1) customer acquisition or 2) customer retention. It probably is not prudent to spend money on any type of initiative that will not directly add to the bottom line, such as awareness (i.e., sponsorships, speaking for speaking sake, or branding) which should fall out of other more overt activity. It is critical for marketing activity to link to sales and help push forward activity, however, at times - this doesn't always happen and can sometimes even detract from sales efforts. Here are some ways that marketing will harm the sales effort:

1. Talking without Understanding the Market: Yes, this actually does happen. Ignorance of the target market, the positioning, the challenges or pains, or even who the real buyer is - creates messaging and activity that yields nothing but missed opportunity. Lacking market research or assumptive thinking based on few real interactions will generally result in this spend with no result scenario.

2. Failing to Understand the Target Buyer: If your buyers are technical people, then they will want White Papers, "pilot proof cases", competitive analysis, and technically driven data sheets. If your buyers are strategic, then they need ROI business cases, comparative analysis, "fit cases", and other persuasive material. PR is not likely to capture the heart of a network manager and technical data sheets will be meaningless to the CFO. Marketing tactics that are not aligned with the buyers research propensities will result in wasted dollars.

3. Going off on their own: Marketers who follow their own ideas without listening to those of the field will create missed opportunities and strategic defaults. It's better to ask, "how big do you think the opportunity is" rather than dismiss it or go down another path. Take for example the hypothetical company insisting that the government market is ideal and should be key, when in fact the private sector network management people are really in need. To market to the government will take a full-time dedicated resource, obtaining GSA schedule, pricing adjustments, and competitive analysis etc on every bid - it usually is a bid process. To market to the network management people will take a phone call, email, some white papers and follow up. Where should I be focusing? Short term, the private sector.

4. Not providing support to sales: Marketers who spend money on branding and awareness without developing sales tools, lead generation efforts, and direct customer acquisition activity are wasting time and effort and missing opportunity. Brand is a result of what clients and prospects think of your firm in using your product, service, or interacting with you - it is not a "look and feel". Remember Pets.com - tons of money spent in building image - without any real substance. Worse yet, not listening to sales - that is a travesty.

When marketing operates in an ivory tower without real understanding of the market (running on assumptions for example), a very dangerous strategic path can be forged. As I stated in previous commentary, marketing does not create demand - it finds it, pulls it to the surface, and then spreads it across other areas to evoke demand. This is why real market research and discussions with "those who are not clients" are critical to uncovering real needs, appropriate messaging, and market acceptance criteria.