by Rolf Gutknecht, Agent of Change (c) 2012
I got another customer satisfaction survey from my bank the other day. Another request for me to take my time to tell them how they’re doing. Once again a perfectly framed poll asking closed ended questions so that someone, somewhere can report the ‘score’.
Is customer satisfaction all that they’re striving for? Really? So, if I say I’m satisfied, then the company is OK with that and all is “good to go”? Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t satisfaction come from performance as expected? On a good day, you might exceed my expectations. If you deliver as expected, I’m neutral. Fall short and I’m dissatisfied. Be it a survey like this or leaving a waiter or waitress the customary 15%, satisfaction doesn’t equate with feeling like all went well.
Therefore, asking me if I’m satisfied is the wrong question. If you really want to know how you’re doing ask me if I am happy. Watch my behavior to see if I am happy. Listen to what I say to learn if I share my happiness with others. Because if you make me happy, I’ll be back…and I’ll bring my friends.
So, how do you make your customers happy? Look at all of the touch points that they experience with your organization related to your products and services. Look beyond the functional benefits to the emotional and social benefits that you can deliver. You see, you and all of your competitors must deliver functionality…it’s required. But premium products and services (you make or sell those, right?) that truly endure into the future deliver emotional and social benefit — let’s call that happiness.
For example, it’s the reason we still have candles. We haven’t needed them to light up a room for a while and in fact, one could almost say that they’re functionally obsolete. But, they can deliver a romantic glow or a scent that can make you feel better and create a certain mood. They make us happy. So we still buy candles and will even pay a premium for fancy ones. A product benefit comparison chart between a candle and a light bulb would turn out badly for the candle. A customer satisfaction survey would likely go the same way — “On a scale of 1-10 is a candle better than, equal to, or worse than a light bulb.” But we still buy them for their emotional and social benefit.
To drive value for customers it’s necessary to look beyond product and service functionality to the emotional and social benefits that your company and its products can provide. There are companies in a variety of industries that make sure their customer experiences go beyond just being functional – in short, intentionally focusing on how customers feel about the experience of dealing with their company and its products, and themselves to elicit personal happiness.
So, what does one do to get beyond the commoditizing nature of functionality? Well, maybe you can:
• Identify the type of happiness that you provide based on what the prospect or customer is looking for. Maybe it’s being flexible when the customer really needs you to be in order to get your product where and when it needs to be there…even when the ‘rules’ say differently.
• Design your brand experience to achieve the emotional benefit that your customers want in a way that makes them happy. Look for key times when you’re dealing with customers and capitalize on them to deliver a strong emotional and social experience. A way that makes customers say “I’m really happy with how that all went.” From customer phone inquiries to tradeshows and community events to in-store experiences.
• Measure your efforts by asking your customers very consistently throughout the interaction process to see if they are happy rather than use surveys that lean towards reporting satisfaction. Look for things that make people happy as well as asking them if they’re happy.
At the end of the day, lasting products and services provide happiness…and we know them for delivering such because they’ve been around for a long time. On the other hand, commodities provide satisfaction. To avoid being seen as a dreaded commodity, focus on designing and delivering customer experiences that provide happiness, enabling your customers to feel better about themselves and their prosperity. Because while we like to think it’s about us and our products, it’s really about the customer and their needs. So as we all know customers only care about you when they see you care about them.
In my day-to-day work, I speak and meet with a number of companies that are really good at what they do. In fact, some are just outstanding at their specialty or niche. The problem is that too few people know about them. You practically need to trip over them to know that they exist.
Almost invariably, the VPs of Sales & Marketing for these companies voice their frustrations over the fact that while the company is good at doing what they do, they’ve not grown sales, nor increased their customer bases or product volumes, nor enhanced their brand visibility as their executive management team would have liked. In many ways, their companies end up becoming their respective industries’ dreaded “best kept secrets.” If this sounds painfully familiar, let me offer up a reason why this has happened and how to avoid this trap.
First, one needs to remember that there are two different sides to your business. One is what I call “inside reality” and the other is “outside perception.” The “inside reality” are all the things your business does that makes it valuable to customers and gives you a competitive advantage in the marketplace. It’s all your skills, people, expertise, service, commitment to excellence, passion, and the way you conduct your business.
I’m sure that if you asked your customers why they bought from you, they could tell you something quantifiable, specific, and instantly obvious. They might point to specific benefits for doing business with you and say, “That’s why I do business with you, that’s why I refer my friends to come here, that’s why I’m a loyal customer, that’s why I don’t mind paying a bit more for your products, that’s why I keep coming back.”
The problem then isn’t your “inside reality” but the “outside perception,” which is how prospects PERCEIVE your company, if they perceive it at all. Very commonly, there’s a fundamental disconnect between your inside reality and outside perception.
See, regardless of how good you are, or how good your “inside reality” is, your prospect isn’t going to be able to figure it out based on marketing that doesn’t address their outside perception. Take, for example, a bank that offers personal service. Their inside reality is they greet every customer by name, open the doors as each customer enters and leaves, and offer individual financial advice based on the customers’ specific banking needs. We’ll also assume their current customers are genuinely impressed. But the outside perception of non-customer prospects is that all banks are pretty much the same and all talk about personal service while most don’t deliver on the promise – and it’s not really that important to them anyway. Once a bank starts from that outside perception as the basis of their marketing, the solutions become entirely different. And so do the results. But the bank that continues to market based on such inside realities, especially in a non-creative or expected manner, will remain invisible to prospects because they’ve seen it all before.
You have to start by seeing your marketing through the eyes of a jaded, disinterested prospect who thinks they know all there is to know about you, or at least about the business you’re in.
So while “best kept secrets” might be seen as good for restaurants, traffic shortcuts and travel destinations, they’re NOT great for business. Don’t get lost in the noise. Whether it’s online, offline or thru social media channels, wave your ‘marketing arms’ and let people know you’re there. Because being in business and not promoting your value as you should is like winking at a cute girl (or guy) in the dark. You may know what you’re doing but she or he sure doesn’t.
The former vice president achieved some level of Hollywood stardom a few years back for his documentary “An Inconvenient Truth.” As narrator, Mr. Gore spoke about the harm we are doing to the environment – the inconvenient truths we would just as soon ignore, but at our peril.
There are some inconvenient truths as well about marketing, facts and realities we would prefer were not the case, but we continue to go on marketing as if they weren’t so. Let’s be honest, every marketer would love to think that their adoring public is anxiously awaiting each next word from the company, ready to gulp it down like a house pet awaiting its supper.
Like the song says, “It ain’t necessarily so!”
So here’s Inconvenient Truth #1: “Good” numbers aren’t always good numbers. While media plans are always based on the number of eyeballs delivered, not everything can be measured on a spreadsheet. For example, given a dollar amount, you can reach ten thousand people between midnight and 6 am on local cable. Or with four times that amount, you can reach a thousand people between 6 am and 10 am. Numbers alone would dictate the former choice. But if you consider that your overnight spots are running alongside ads for weight-loss pills, video retrospectives of Liberace, sex-enhancement products, and the two-for-one mattress special at Benny’s Bedding, all targeting people who can’t sleep at night, the context isn’t that appealing. Also, too much exposure (thanks to cheap media) can kill an ad, just like having your favorite uncle overstay his welcome. Media buying is both a science and an art. It’s just not as simple as 1+1=2. Having the right media selection leveraged with strategic messaging and surprising creative, the math can be 1+1=5.
Inconvenient Truth #2: More companies save themselves into bankruptcy than spend themselves there. The way to assure your remaining invisible to your public is to market at a level that is below the general noise level. If you want to compete for attention and win at marketing, you have to commit to being in the game. Yes, appearing on page two in the paper with a half page ad costs money, and so does a cable schedule on premium channels at prime time. But as Woody Allen wisely observed, 80% of success is just “showing up.” You don’t show up with a fractional space ad hiding in the corner of the page. And you don’t show up with free creative from the cable company or an inexpensive catalog ad that people expect and thus ignore. Marketing is a self-fulfilling prophesy: if you believe in it , and spend to win, it will work. And the opposite is true as well.
Inconvenient Truth #3: Results are not an overnight occurrence. In marketing, it’s a process of erosion. One has to continually chip away at the indifference, the avoidance, the skepticism and the cynicism. It may take a year or longer before results take hold. Familiar brands like Apple, Wells Fargo Bank, New Balance athletic shoes, HoneyBaked Ham and Western Bagel did not start out as overnight sensations; why should your business be any different? These hugely successful companies got that way because they consistently invested in their marketing. No “start-stop-start-stop” approach but one of showing up unceasingly. It starts with the understanding that marketing is indeed an investment and not an expense. Plus it requires this additional essential ingredient: patience.
So let’s be real, let’s be honest, and let’s accept these inconvenient truths as a wake-up call to create significant change for your business. There’s nothing more convenient than new customers buying your products and company revenues rising.
(c) 2012 LA ads – A Marketing Agency
by Rolf Gutknecht, Agent of Change (c) 2012
The GPS is a wonderful invention for anyone who’s had to get somewhere they’ve not been before. Whether you get directions from your SmartPhone, Mapquest, Google Maps, dedicated GPS device or even the old paper map, there are only two pieces of data to plot your route: where you are now and where you want to go. Sounds pretty simple, right? Yet how many companies, maybe even yours, have launched into a marketing campaign without really considering these things! Unfortunately, not having a clear picture of where you are now and where you want to go leads to not getting anywhere because one critical factor is missing: a overall marketing strategy.
Time and time again in speaking with CMO/VP/Directors of Marketing for companies large and small, they tell me that they need to execute marketing programs, but then tell me they “don’t have time to develop a full strategy.” I’m not kidding. It’s actually easy to understand, given all the exciting marketing tools available today, including social media, email marketing, location-based apps, etc. It’s easy to confuse these tactics with strategies. Too often I see people focused on the newest and sexiest marketing tactic du jour without any appreciation for how it fits in an overall marketing strategy. I’ve also seen entire marketing plans that consist of nothing but a series of tactics strung together one after the next without an over-arching marketing strategy.
So, what’s the difference between strategy and tactic? A strategy is the broad roadmap that defines where you are now, where you want to go and how you’ll get there – taking into account your product or service, what the competition is doing, which direction the market is heading, and what you’ll need to do and say that gives your company the competitive edge. It’s the big picture. Tactics, by contrast, are the specific tools you use to do this: Write a blog. Send out a newsletter. Develop an app. Run an ad. Be more visible at tradeshows. Etc.
It’s easy to start with the “how” but if you haven’t identified the “what”, you may find yourself spending a lot of time executing tactics that don’t take you where you want to go and in so doing, you’ll be wasting time, resources and losing out on sales-producing opportunities.
The confusion compounds when I hear some marketing folks talk about their organization’s “online marketing strategies” given all the attention to social media, online and mobile tools. You shouldn’t have an “online” or internet marketing strategy any more than an you should have an “offline” strategy. What you do need is one, single integrated strategy that looks across all delivery platforms whether online or offline, print, broadcast, or mobile. Your customers don’t have an online self and offline self and neither should you. Think holistically about all your marketing initiatives. Otherwise you’ll drive your customers and your own team crazy.
So at the end of the day, executing marketing tactics without having a well-developed integrated strategy is like leaving your roadmap tools at home and taking off on the drive without concerning if you’ve chosen the right road, highway or turnoff. You wouldn’t haphazardly set off on an important trip in your personal life so why let it happen with regard to your company’s marketing activities. You’ll never make it to the right place taking the wrong roads.
by Rolf Gutknecht, Agent of Change (c) 2012
Tell me a fact and I’ll learn. Tell me a truth and I’ll believe. But tell me a story and it will live in my heart forever. — Indian Proverb
Ever wonder the best way to represent your product or service to prospective clients or customers? Here’s something to think about. Stop talking about the features of what you offer. Don’t even focus on the benefits. Don’t tell me how good you are or why you’re better than the competition. Instead, tell me about a situation your customers typically find themselves in. Paint me a picture of how that situation is improved by the use of your product or service. Show me what success looks like. Capture my interest with people or places that resonate with me. Don’t focus on you, your company or your products. Instead, tell me a good story!
Since the beginning of language, stories have continued to teach, inspire, entertain, motivate and engage us like no other form of communication. From bedtime stories when we were young to story time in elementary school to the sharing of family stories around the dinner table, they connect us on a much deeper level than any list of advertising bullet points could ever do. For those not convinced, try telling any favorite story using only bullet points and then decide which format people find more memorable and meaningful.
Recently, my business partner, Dan, and I met with a mid-sized “challenger brand” company to talk about their business goals and how we could help them grow their business in the face of a number of competitors. Tom, the company president, talked about his products and their features. It was the same stuff we’ve heard time and time again from other companies in his industry. It was only when he got away from the rattling off of bullet points and suddenly spoke emotionally and passionately about how one of his customers was saved from the brink of bankruptcy because of his company’s tailored services did we immediately feel more connected with his business.
So what’s the secret to good storytelling?
Well, there is a right way and wrong way to tell stories. The secret lies in making an emotional connection with buyers because emotions play the dominant role in most decision-making processes. We need to tell our stories with authenticity and real passion in order to cut through the information overload that buyers experience and the BS shields they put up. On that note, talk like a human. Enough with the business babble. Don’t worry about sounding smart. It’s alienating and condescending, and your story will be quickly lost on your audience. Talk like a human being that cares about making meaningful relationships with people.
So how do you relate your story to the reader so that it resonates and motivates them to take action in the form of purchase or even just their wanting to retell your story and spread the word? Here are few things to think about:
So that’s my story for today and I’m sticking to it. What’s yours? Go out and create your own stories and “live happily ever after.”
One of the hottest new marketing technologies trending right now is QR codes – you know, those little square bar codes you’re seeing more frequently on packages, on signs, in the corner of ads, even on the back of people’s business cards. QR stands for Quick Response and the idea is that you can scan these little suckers with your smart phone and almost instantly get to a specific website or application. They are fun…sometimes. But as often as not, they just take you to the same homepage you could just as easily type in, delivering little added value.
Advertising Age has reported that, for a number of reasons, consumers are far less excited about QR codes compared to marketers. In fact, they cite, only 5% of mobile phone owners have ever used QR codes. (Ad Age, January 2, 2012)
Rather than focus on all the reasons why this is so, the real take-away has to do with marketers paying more attention to techniques, technologies and tactics compared with the smart development of strategies and key messaging. Thinking about what one can do with a QR code, or Facebook page, or other medium de jure is letting the tail wag the dog. Being “cool” for its own sake has low residual value compared to having a message or perspective that consumers find fresh, meaningful, relevant, surprising and memorable.
That being said, QR codes do indeed have their place in a marketing arsenal, and they can open up new levels of consumer involvement if handled thoughtfully.
Let’s start with the environment: QR codes are designed to interact with smart phones (largely iPhone and Android platforms). So if you’re asking someone to take the time to open up their QR reader app and scan your bar code, they should expect some media that is designed exclusively for their phone, or what’s the point? Trying to read a standard website on a cell phone is awkward and shows an incomplete execution. Sadly, that’s the standard for most businesses currently using QR codes in their marketing.
While we’re on the subject, keep in mind those who make up the bulk of consumers with full-function smart phones. Numerically, most are under 50. So if you’re primarily speaking to an older population, QR codes and mobile-optimized sites are of lesser value. But if you’re targeting a young or middle-aged audience, then you’re well-aimed.
As for what one can do with a QR code that adds value to the user, and doesn’t simply bring them to your landing page, here are some ideas:
No matter how you use QR codes, there are two things to keep in mind. The first is that you must have a basic reason for someone to desire to have this information on their mobile phones compared to a PC. Two, these ideas are still only tactics. It’s the strategy that must remain foremost in your thinking.
Only when you are clear in your strategy, and you can articulate in 30-seconds or less what unique competitive value you bring to your customer, should you start thinking about where and how to deploy your messaging. QR codes should always be an expression of your strategy, not the strategy itself.
In other words, make sure that you let your dog was his tail. It doesn’t work well the other way around.
by Rolf Gutknecht, Agent of Change (c) 2012
I had a phone conversation with a prospective new client (I’ll name her Amelia) last week and during our talk, I mentioned having seen a cable TV ad that her company had run recently and was wondering if it had produced growth in sales inquiries or better yet, generated more sales. Her response is something that I’ve heard more times than “Doan’s has pills.”
Amelia reported less-than-stellar performance, which didn’t really surprise me. But she fingered the blame on the media type…and not the marketing process or the message. The spot was flat-out boring and crammed with too many feature points. The message itself had no spark; the ad employed uninspiring, overused stock images that everyone has seen on other companies’ commercials; and while it had a lot of words attached to it, it said nothing. I know you know the kind of ad. You see them every day in trade publications, direct mail, online and yes, even on TV.
When I politely asked her if maybe it wasn’t the media but the message, my suggestion was immediately dismissed as “no, no. that’s not it. Cable just doesn’t work.” In this case it was TV but I’ve heard it for most every B2B and B2C media type there is. So I quoted to her legendary adman Bill Bernbach’s “golden rule”: “The truth isn’t the truth until people believe you, and they can’t believe you if they don’t know what you’re saying, and they can’t know what you’re saying if they don’t listen to you, and they won’t listen to you if you’re not interesting, and you won’t be interesting unless you say things imaginatively, originally, freshly.”
Now before I move on, please take another 15 seconds and read the above quote again and let it wash over you…it’s that important.
You see, what this timeless observation says applies to everything a marketing executive does in communicating a brand’s promise or a product’s sales message, and then needs to shine through like a huge Klieg light within your ads, your sales support material, your promotional initiatives, your tradeshow booth, your collateral and your website.
Taking the uninspired or predictable way out leads to self-inflicted mediocrity which we all know is like a communicable disease. It starts with a so-so idea and coupled with a lack of interestingness and imagination, it infects every aspect of your marketing to the point that regardless of how and where you present the message, your current and prospective customers will not give it two seconds of thought as it passes by, only to become part of the background noise and clutter.
I’m not sure about you but one of the main reasons I decided that advertising and marketing was what I wanted to pursue as a profession was because I loved coming up with marketing ideas that would make people sit up and take notice in a sea of indifference.
If you want your marketing to actually change the trajectory of sales, if you want yourself to be seen as an idea person rather than a “fulfiller” of marketing stuff, then the status quo is not an option. You need to create new truths for your company that people believe in because you say things “imaginatively, originally, freshly.” To do otherwise, especially in today’s economy, is unacceptable.
Back in the early 1940s, Rosser Reeves of Ted Bates & Company coined the phrase “USP – Unique Selling Proposition.” The term referred to a having, finding or creating a distinctive point of view or reason to buy that is wholly different from the competitions’.
But as a catchphrase, USP is so 70-years-ago!
In the 80’s, marketing agencies, HR consultants and motivational speakers started using the term “elevator pitch,” which kinda says the same thing: What is so special about you (or your company, or your product) that you can express it in just 30 seconds on the ride up the elevator and expect the listener to get it? We hear that term a lot in angel and investor meetings.
More recently, we find ourselves using the phrase “value proposition.” And we’ve shorted the time to about 5 seconds, but we’ll settle for 30, just as long as it clearly tells the story.
Your value proposition is the answer to the question “what customer objective does my company help to achieve better than anyone or anything else?”
Whichever term you favor, USP, elevator pitch, or value proposition, without it, without a good one, you’re dead! If you can’t very quickly describe what makes you, your product, your service or your company truly special in the eyes of the customer, don’t expect your customer to do it for you. By default, they’ll just put you on the shelf called “commodity,” and there you’ll stay.
Every business, no matter what the business, starts out with the same baseline of customer fulfillment as its competition. If you have a fast food restaurant, for example, you might say your value proposition is fresh entrees at reasonable prices. But then, doesn’t the competing restaurant down the road also say that? So that alone doesn’t really make you special, does it? Poof, you’re a commodity! You’re just the same as everybody else.
On the other hand, your value proposition has to be one that is not merely unique but deserves an exclamation point in the eyes of your customer. It has to create a real sense of Wow! or there really is no value, just proposition. What can you say that captures the imagination and puts you in a class all your own? That’s at the very heart of making a sale or losing out on one.
I’ll be honest, defining your value proposition takes some real corporate soul-searching at the most fundamental level. It requires seeing yourself from your competitors’ customers’ point of view. It may even require re-inventing your organization so that there’s an entirely new but better value proposition than the one you’re claiming now.
Commit to asking yourself, just as soon as you finish reading this post, “what’s our value proposition?” Ask your associates and see if their answers agree with your own, and if they can articulate it in less than 90 seconds. Aim for 30. (For my company, we can do it in two seconds: “Agent of Change.” We even own the registered trademark on it!)
Your value proposition is the very cornerstone of your business. All sales and marketing must emanate from it. The stronger your value proposition is…
…and the more clearly it expresses your unique ability to improve your customer’s lives…
…and the most concisely you can articulate it between elevator floors…
…the more confident you can be in betting on your company’s success!
You’d be hard-pressed to find someone who’s going to describe today’s economic marketplace as anything but temperamental. The natural inclination is to take a defensive hunker-down mentality, downsize, and play it safe. The truth is, however, you should be looking at things (especially your customers) quite differently.
Most businesses look at their customers from the inside-out based on what they want to deliver. (In other words, you’ve created your own Kool-Aid and you’re drinking it, so your customers should too, right?) But customers see any business from the opposite perspective, from the outside-in.
Let’s take these two views apart for a moment.
Inside-Out thinking begins by asking, “What are we good at? What are our capabilities and products? How can we use our resources more efficiently?” This thinking limits the company’s business opportunities because it means the company is less sensitive to how the customer is interfacing with the market. They’ve slipped into thinking it’s “all about us and what we sell.” Inside-Out companies are surprised by poor sales results. They don’t feel threatened when a new competitor enters the market. They’re out of touch with what value they really bring – or don’t bring – to their customers, or what their customers think of them compared to competitors. In short, their mindset is “Here are our products and services and this is how we help you.” The problem with this approach is that it relies on your customers having to work to find a place for your solutions in their lives.
Alternatively, companies that think Outside-In focus on the customers’ point-of-view. They stand in the customer’s shoes and view everything the company does through the customer’s eyes. They depend on marketing to increase the conversation they have with their customers which in turn allows them to seize on business-building opportunities. They ask their customers what their upcoming needs are and then figure out how to give it to them. By shifting the focus so significantly, they open up a much broader set of opportunities. These companies don’t wait around for change to happen but rather they create change by seeing their world through their customers’ eyes, allowing them to more quickly meet the customers’ needs.
The first tablet PC's were designed based on the manufacturer's point-of-view; Apple's iPad was designed from the consumers'.
A perfect demonstration of the difference is tablet computing. Tablets have been around for years, fundamentally as flat computers…in search of markets who need them. Apple, on the other hand, looked at how consumers use the Internet, music, photos and video content, and came up with a convenient form factor that is, in essence, an Internet devise, not a computer. The rest, as they say, is history. That’s Outside-In thinking at its best.
So what’s this all mean? Well, fundamentally, if you’re not stepping out of your comfort zone and taking a hard, honest look at your business and its products through your customers’ (and non-customers’) eyes, you’re putting a lid on your growth. If you’re not communicating to your customers on their terms, they simply won’t care. Having an Outside-In attitude ensures that your company delivers the value buyers actually understand and appreciate. Conversely, the old phrase “if you keep doing what you’ve been doing, you’ll keep getting the results you’ve been getting” has never been more true.
Alright, business hasn’t turned around as quickly as you’d like – or as quickly as anyone would like. So your customers aren’t throwing their spending money at you any more than you’re shelling out dollars to hire additional staff, add new locations or expand your advertising reach.
Instead, if you’re like most companies, you’re continuing to be as parsimonious with your spending and investing as good business judgment dictates, right? That means you’re more focused on sales than on marketing, since marketing means spending money whereas sales means making money, right again?
Many businesses have grown their sales force while decimating their marketing departments. They’ve turned from brand-building to such “instant gratification” sales-based marketing strategies as direct response and SEO. At the same time, they’re making price the deciding factor.
What could possibly be wrong with that?
So let me propose two basic flaws in that kind of approach.
First, the further away from image and brand marketing you move, the less the customer is predisposed to buy from you regardless of price, since your brand is no longer the top-of-mind preferred choice. That means A) you have to wait until the customer is ready to buy and not a second before, and B) you are now set up for trading exclusively on price since your value proposition has taken a distant back seat…and there’s always a competitor who will come along with a cheaper product or service.
The second strategic flaw is that you’re now doing exactly what your competition is doing, hunkering down and playing the DR/sales/price game at precisely the time advertising rates are the most affordable they’ve ever been. Today, you can negotiate the most advantageous ad programs and one-up your competition with strong visibility while they’re still virtually invisible.
The opposing argument might be that in this sucky economy consumers are more price-focused than brand focused. And yet…
Why is it that sales of Apple’s iPad, an absolutely non-necessary (but really great) product, are booming? With each new iteration of the iPad, a $600 – $800 purchase, there are lines of anxious shoppers waiting outside the Apple Store. Simply, Apple presents a fantastic value proposition in its advertising that has nothing to do with price. The Apple brand and the iPad experience are king. Their strategy is so successful that in 2011, Apple sold more iPads in its last quarter than HP sold desktop computers all year!
The true job of advertising and marketing is to establish a consumer’s desire in advance of asking for the order. Without this first stage, building desire and brand equity, the selling process is exponentially more difficult. Any wonder why the sales cycle for most businesses has doubled or even tripled over the past few years as marketing budgets have been cut?
This is nothing new. In fact, the business publisher McGraw Hill addressed this very issue in a brilliant ad that ran in the early 1960s. In essence, the ad demonstrated that without marketing laying the foundation of understanding and desire prior to the sale, the barrier is significant.
So you’ve been given a gift, as it were, in the form of a recession. From a marketing perspective, your competitors are asleep at the wheel, and you can afford marketing visibility as you never have before. Here’s your chance to let them suffer the recession while you profit from it. How will you handle the opportunity?