Back before most of you were old enough to shave (neither was I … ha, ha!), there was a Gillette Razors commercial that went:

Push–pull, click–click – change blades that quick!

Push–pull is also a good approach for a marketing communications campaign.
Push-pull is about diving your marketing communication efforts between the proactive and reactive. Two examples of this would be – Push= a direct mailer and Pull= a really effective web site.

 A Marketer’s View

Marketing and its primary sub–categories, advertising and public relations, have earned well–deserved recognition as a primary factor in business and brand building – and more. The late Peter Drucker, widely regarded as the most important business management figure of the 20th Century, expressed it this way:

“Business has two basic functions: Innovation and Marketing. These produce results. All the rest are costs.”

This quote may have been less remarkable had Drucker been a marketing person rather than the giant among management authorities that he was.

Perhaps equally unrecognized is the key role marketing plays as a business designer. Indeed, a well–conceived marketing plan causes a growth–driven business to take a good look at its resources and goals in an effort to order its priorities. It requires that it come to grips with such crucial issues as:
High volume versus relative exclusivity
Timing of product and service releases
The realities of the competitive marketplace
What benefits to emphasize
Which consumers to target
How to reach them.
Good marketing liberates a company from dependence on emotion, chance, lead–time and inertia, allowing it to focus on vital issues such as:
What do we do best?
Where are our high–profit opportunities?
What are our key production and service capacities?
What are the impacts of the economy and competition?
What course is most likely to help us reach our goals?
Actually, marketing is not about sales; it is about profits. Among its pivotal qualities is its emphasis on timing and action. In the “natural” course of events (barring, of course, a weakened economy), a company with good people and products will, likely, grow –– even though at some random pace.

But, like an uncultivated garden, the weeds may eventually outgrow the crop.

1.   “My competitors are stupid!”

You can learn from your competitors, their successes and failures:

Customer benefits you’ve overlooked

A new technology and service being introduced

A new market being explored or a new office opened

Revised terms of sale

Strategic alliances

New ways of handling service or orders

Changes in their client list

Personnel comings and goings

Literature and promotional activities

2    “My customers won’t know the difference.”

Your customers are specialized in (at least) one thing — BEING CUSTOMERS!

They are far more tuned in to your market and the offerings of your competitors than you may give them credit for (your competition never sleeps!)

3.    “My product is vastly superior.”

Most entrepreneurs — particularly manufacturers — consider his or her product to be truly astounding.

If your product IS vastly superior, (can you) come up with a head-to-head demo?

KEY POINT! Don’t become so enthralled with the “excellence” of your product that you lose the customer’s perspective in the process.

4.    “My people are special.”

Most companies feel this way. Unless you can qualify and quantify it, this claim will hold no water with most clients.

Don’t overestimate the impact of your people. How are they special?

MORE: awards, degrees, training, experience? (This is the service company’s equivalent of, “My product is vastly superior.”

KEY POINT! If you claim your staff as a key selling benefit, you’d better be able to back it up.

If the answer is yes, consider this Business Scene 2014 scenario:

The sign going one direction reads, Coast.  The other is marked, Accelerate.

Fact one: Those who choose the “coast” route in a difficult economy will learn that the only movement possible when coasting comes from going downhill.

Fact two: There are two kinds of businesses that make gains in a downturn –

• Bankruptcy attorneys, collection agencies and the like
• Companies (some of your competitors?) determined to grab market share from the coasters.

Fact three: Closing sales is harder than ever and there are, neither, enough hours nor energy to reach as many prospects as it will take to make a significant difference, unless and until you change your approach.

 What to do:

Plug in some “sales support.”

What is that?

Hard-hitting, direct-response communication to your best prospects, that will pave the way for your sales efforts by effectively relating your value proposition –

In other words, what’s in it for them.

No offense intended, but

.  .  . especially in a recession, this is no work for amateurs! Sure, you’re a pro in your own field, but where has that been getting you lately?

No laughing matter

Yogi Berra said, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it!”

 
“Business has two basic functions: Innovation and Marketing.
These produce results. All the rest are costs.”
                                                                                – Peter Drucker 
About Peter Drucker

Peter F. Drucker — writer, management consultant and university professor — was born in Vienna, Austria in November 1909 and died in November of 2005.

He published his first book, The End of Economic Man, in 1939. He then joined the faculty of New York University’s Graduate Business School as Professor of Management in 1950. Since 1971, he has been Clarke Professor of Social Science and Management at the Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California. The university named its management school after him in 1987.

Drucker has written 35 books in all: 15 books deal with management, including the landmark books The Practice of Management and The Effective Executive; 16 cover society, economics, and politics; 2 are novels; and 1 is a collection of autobiographical essays. His most recent book, Managing in the Next Society, was published in fall 2002.

He was a regular columnist for The Wall Street Journal from 1975 to 1995 and has contributed essays and articles to numerous publications, including the Harvard Business Review, The Atlantic Monthly, and The Economist. Throughout his career, he has consulted with dozens of organizations – from the world’s largest corporations to entrepreneurial startups and various government and nonprofit agencies.

Experts in the worlds of business and academia regard Peter Drucker as the founding father of the study of management.

For his accomplishments, Peter Drucker was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George W. Bush on July 9, 2002.

10 Fatal Flaws in Marketing  

1.   Thinking that being best ensures success

• How this can work against you.
• How this can work for you.

2.   Disregarding the power of the “Three-Foot Rule”

• Spread the word at every opportunity.

 3.   Failing to stake-out your unique position

• Focus your marketing on what your competitors can’t say.
• 4.   Portraying features as benefits

• Convey “what’s in it” for the customer.

5.    Thinking that a lot of brilliance compensates for a lack of reliability

• People aren’t easily dazzled, but need to know they can count on you in a pinch.

6.   Being too “wordy”

• “If you can’t put your idea on the back of a business card, it’s not a clear idea.”     — David Belasco
• The confused mind says “No!”
• Read: Why Business People Speak Like Idiots — Fugere

7.   Choosing style over substance

• Who have you served?
• What have people said about you?
• How long have you done it?
• Success stories
• What can you do for someone like me?

     8.   Ignoring Drucker’s Law   

• “Business has two basic functions: Marketing and innovation.

These produce results. All the rest are costs.”  — Peter Drucker

     9.   Letting prospects and customers/clients forget you

• Maintain visibility.
• Keep selling the “sold.”

10.   Buck Fever

• You’ve got to pull the trigger, to hit the target.

Had he not decided to “go straight,” Will Rogers would have made a good advertising copy writer. He had a way with a phrase, and was a pretty good country philosopher, too. Here are a few examples:

Some of his sage advice:

1.     Never slap a man who’s chewing tobacco.
2.     Never kick a cow chip on a hot day.
3.     There are two theories to arguing with a woman. Neither works.
4.     Never miss a good chance to shut up.
5.     Always drink upstream from the herd.
6.     If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.
7.     The quickest way to double your money is to fold it and put it back into your pocket.
8.     There are three kinds of men:
• The ones that learn by reading.
• The few who learn by observation.
• The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence and find out for themselves.
9.     Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.
10.     If you’re riding’ ahead of the herd, take a look back every now and then to make sure it’s still there.
11.     Lettin’ the cat outta the bag is a whole lot easier’n puttin’ it back.
12.     After eatingan entire bull, a mountain lion felt so good he started roaring.
• He kept it up until a hunter came along and shot him.
• The moral: When you’re full of bull, keep your mouth shut.

ABOUT GROWING OLDER…

First ~ Eventually you will reach a point when you stop lying about your age and start bragging about it.
Second ~ The older we get, the fewer things seem worth waiting in line for.
Third ~ Some people try to turn back their odometers. Not me; I want people to know ‘why’ I look this way. I’ve traveled a long way, and some of the roads weren’t paved.
Fourth ~ When you are dissatisfied and would like to go back to youth, think of Algebra.
Fifth ~ You know you are getting old when everything either dries up or leaks.
Sixth ~ I don’t know how I got over the hill without getting to the top.
Seventh ~ One of the many things no one tells you about aging is that it’s such a nice change from being young.
Eighth ~ One must wait until evening to see how splendid the day has been.
Ninth ~ Being young is beautiful, but being old is comfortable.
Tenth ~ Long ago, when men cursed and beat the ground with sticks, it was called witchcraft.
Today it’s called golf.
And, finally ~ If you don’t learn to laugh at trouble, you won’t have anything to laugh at when you’re old.

Here are the two key reasons for staying in touch on a regular basis through marketing communication:

If people don’t know you exist, they can’t do business with you.
If they don’t remember you at decision time, they won’t do business
with you.

Is it time to update that contact list and let people know you are still here – and still care?

Life is a timed event. We have only a certain amount of time each day, week, month and year in which to accomplish our objectives. As my favorite college professor used to say, coming up with the right answer solves only half of the problem. The other half is to do so in a timely manner.

That familiar say, “Timing is everything,” while not totally correct is at least partially correct, and good timing is a very important item, at that. Timing can be pressure induced, but its more comfortable, and perhaps more effective, counterpart is good timing that results from good planning.

There simply is no substitute for a little self-analysis that results in timing things for maximum impact. So, while it is also the result of good instincts (thank God for those), it might be better to rely on good planning to produce the good timing from which your marketing will most profit.

Have you ever noticed how the NBA teams seem to kick it up a notch when the voice on the PA system announces, “Two minutes”? As business owners and managers, we don’t have that luxury. We have to come out of the staring blocks each day and run hard right from the starting gun in order to make our way through our weekly to-do list.

I advise our clients to set up a self-imposed marketing deadline system in order to produce and disseminate their marketing materials and make those vital selling contacts in a timely manner. This just makes good sense and, like the airport control tower, keeps the ”work-to-be-done” traffic moving. Otherwise, as I have found in my own case, it is easy to become so involved in your clients/customers’ needs that you forget the needs of your own business – needs like those key marketing projects and other self-promotion activities.

Here is the fundamental premise on which all marketing is based:

If the consumer isn’t aware that you exist, you can’t sell your product.

When encountering a prospect on the showroom floor or at a trade show, in every case, he or she was “delivered” to that critical point by an awareness of you; whether through an advertisement, a referral or, in the trade show circumstance, merely because you were there.

What takes place at that point is two-way communication (you standing face to face with the prospect, closing the sale). Though your degree of success will be determined by your persuasiveness, product, knowledge, price, etc., something that happened before that gave you the opportunity: a prospect had to be delivered.

In today’s highly competitive marketplace, real success is largely a numbers game. To survive, let alone be a leader in your category, you have to close many sales. In order to do so, you have to have ample numbers of prospects with which to work.

Here’s the key point: developing adequate numbers of prospects cannot be accomplished through two-way communication, either face to face, by phone, the mail or, even, the Internet. Neither you nor your sales staff has anywhere near the time necessary for this crucial function. Prominent publisher McGraw Hill & Co. has estimated that the average sales call requires approximately 45 minutes, and that an average of three calls is required to close a sale. Surely, it’s no way to prospect.

Prospecting is what marketing ¾ the one-way communication element of sales ¾ is ideally suited for. Expensive, time-consuming two-way communication simply isn’t necessary, nor is it efficient in developing prospects in the numbers sufficient for business success. Marketing communication, in one form or another, is the answer.

Most anti-marketing hard-liners got that way because they, at some point, were turned off by poor marketing efforts that failed to produce results. This is understandable, because much marketing is misguided or misplaced ¾ but it is not justifiable, and, more than likely, will be hazardous to bottom-line business health.

Is marketing foolproof? Will it always produce infallible, guaranteed results? No it won’t, nor is it fair to expect it to (after all, what does?). But it is more science than art, and, as such, has something very important on its side: LOGIC.  Marketing is measurable, quite often yielding predictable results, and as practiced by good professionals, should ¾ and most often does ¾ more than pay for itself.