Posts tagged marketing strategy


More marketing for less: Profile customers

May 14th

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Here’s a simple but important tip for getting more for your marketing money: profile your best customers.
The term “profiling” has negative connotations from a social perspective but for your business, it’s one of the most effective tools for determining where and how to conduct your business. If you have a grasp on what type of people are most likely to purchase your products or services, you can seek out the location and the marketing plans that give you the best opportunity to reach those people.
The number of ways to sort your customers is endless and really depends on the needs of your business. Here are just a few of the ways you can segment your most profitable customers:
1) What do your best customers have in common?
  • Are they in a common industry?
  • Do they seem to have the same role at their company?
  • Do they face a similar problems or challenges?
  • Similar buying patterns?
  • How do they use your product?
  • Do they belong to similar clubs or charities?
  • Do they have the same interests, attitudes and habits?
2) How did you attract your top customers?
  • Website?
  • Advertising?
  • Conference?
  • Networking?
  • Cold calls?
You may be surprised at the results! Once you’ve divided customers into sub-segments, consider the implications for your marketing strategy:
  • Are your initiatives aligned with the profile of your best customers?
  • If your customers strongly share certain characterstics, how can you adjust your message and channel to better appeal to these folks?
  • If one marketing channel seems to be working better than others, do more of it and cut the rest.
If your business is down due to the recession, this might be the perfect time to step back and do some introspection on your sales and marketing strategy. While there are many sophisticated techniques, databases and CRM software applications aimed at helping you organize this information, even a small business on a budget can do effective customer profiling with little expense.
Here’s one simple analytical method available to almost everyone. Most small businesses use Microsoft Outlook to organize emails, contacts and calendars. In the “business” edition, it’s possible to set up searchable, custom fields to collect detailed information. If your profiling needs are simple, you can even search words you’ve added to the “notes” section of the basic Outlook edition. Start logging the source of new customers in their profile (like “cold call” or “website”). You can then enter these terms in the search function and, with the push of a button, generate a list of customers who share these characteristics.
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For a moment, Barbie was a hooker

May 13th

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Fred Held, who has been a marketing executive with Mattel, McDonald’s and Burger King, responded to an article I featured on my website and had some great stories of his own. I was so fortunate to meet up with Fred and he agreed to let me share his insights:

Why negative advertising does not work:
“I worked with Ogilvy & Mather when I was at Mattel and their CEO explained the problem with negative advertising. First, most people do not pay attention to advertising and may end up thinking it is your competitor who is doing the negative advertising. Secondly, people want to hear the benefits of your product or service, not the shortcomings of your competitor. Lastly, having an advertising war sends the wrong message. You do not seem to be a friendly, consumer-centric company.”

Don’t skimp on something critical to your brand image!
“Many years ago Mattel was entering the European market with Barbie. Being the frugal marketing executive, I had a friend do French translations for the commercial and packaging. We were introducing bendable leg Barbie at the time. Unfortunately, the literal translation for “bendable leg Barbie” is French slang for a woman of the night. For a time, Barbie actually became a French hooker. We had to yank everything from the shelves and repackage!

“Always have an in-country translation. I was launching Mon Chi Chi (a cute stuffed monkey). In French that translated to “taking a piss” and in Spanish it was slang for breasts. It became Mon Ki Ki — perfectly acceptable in both countries.”

Consumer behavior is generational
“When launching (a toy called) Intellivision in Germany, we had a great deal of resistance. German consumers thought wood veneer was junky. They would rather have all plastic, real wood, or metal — but no veneer. Needless to say we had a very difficult time penetrating the German retailer. Luck is on the side of those with great product — kids could give a sh*t about wood veneer — they wanted to play the video games. Once the commercials started, the retailers re-ordered big time. The lesson here is design a world wide product if you are going global. The three easiest countries to do this are Germany, Japan and Switzerland. The US is one of the worst.”

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KFC played chicken with its brand reputation

May 11th

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By now you’ve probably heard about the KFC chicken giveaway that led to rioting at some stores. This will go down as one of the biggest marketing fiascoes of all-time. Really damaged the brand and there are lessons in this for all of us. The coverage of the incident in Ad Age magazine is insightful and balanced. Also, lots of great reader comments. A remarkable case study in real-time. Link:
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Most painful marketing mistakes — Part 5 "complacency"

May 8th

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Success does not breed success. Success breeds lethargy.
The people and companies I admire most are the ones who have had the guts to re-invent themselves IN THE MIDST OF SUCCESS.
About 10 years ago, there was a small Wal-Mart store a couple miles from my home. The parking lot was packed at almost any time of day. I was shocked when they announced they were building a new store five miles away and closing the original store. Of course the new store was a five times larger, with more parking, more services and yes, it was packed any time of day.
Think of this boldness — would you close a store that was wildly successful if you didn’t have to? Wal-Mart has the vision to constantly re-invent itself. It built a new store to put itself out of business! They didn’t have a competitor brash enough to take themselves on so they attacked themselves.
My favorite example of re-invention is Apple and the breathtaking innovation occurring with its iPod and iTunes format. The product was successful, but the real story is how it sustained that success by innovating so furiously that no competitor could keep up.
We can learn some valuable lessons from these examples and apply them to the everyday reality of the small business owner. How are you fighting complacency and the lethargy induced by success? This is the time to take a fine-tooth comb to your business processes and look for re-invention opportunities.
Ten questions toward re-invention
Here are some questions to help you kick-start your re-invention process. If you spend some time on the answers you will certainly develop insights to improve your competitive advantage.
1. How have your customer’s needs changed during this economic downturn and what do you need to do to respond aggressively?
2. What are your industry’s best practices in lean manufacturing, accounting and marketing? How fast can you adopt these practices and create new customer value?
3. If your competitor knew your company’s biggest vulnerabilities, what would it do? What can you do to protect my flanks before this happens?
4. What new technology might disrupt your business model? How do you put it to use before somebody else does?
5. What is the rate of innovation in your marketplace? What would be the implication if you invested and doubled that rate?
6. Have you made any changes to the way you market and advertise to capitalize on cost-effective media channels?
7. Has technology and supply-chain efficiencies opened up new doors in global markets? Is there a new way to work with suppliers that can provide competitive advantage?
8. Do I have the right human skill sets in my company to compete today?
9. How do you measure success? Is it still the right measure?
10. Do you have a handle on which operations are making you the most profits? How has your product mix and profitability changed and how is it likely to change? How can it be re-invigorated?
Though difficult, a leader has no choice but to unseat complacency. You must find a way to move to that better idea or technology, even if it threatens your base business.
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