The Science of Marketing

I recently decided that marketing needs a few more Ps.  Don’t worry, the classics; Product, Place, Promotion and Price; still apply.  But over the past year, the more I worked with clients on company, technology and product launches, the more I encountered four new Ps: Problem, Promise, Progress and Proof.  Here’s why I’ve added them to my marketing lexicon.

Problem

Just as all good stories have a villain, all good products have a problem (in high tech marketing, that’s why "solution" is such a popular word).  But many times in marketing, we acknowledge that there is a problem, but we don’t spend enough effort getting to know it, and we certainly don’t spend enough time talking about it.  The problem your product solves is the villain in your story – so build it up, show the reader how evil the villain can be and what effects it has on its victims.  The better we are at articulating the problem, the more our attractive our solution becomes.  Here’s a problem from last year that many companies are still playing to: gas is wicked expensive.

Promise

When we launch a product – ahem – solution, we make a promise.  Example: to develop a car that goes 40 miles without burning a drop of gas.  As you think about your company’s promise (or promises), try to balance the bold and the relevant – making a strong statement, but making sure it appeals to the people that can make or break your company.  And by all means, remember to link it to the problem you’ve identified and promoted.  If you find that your company’s promise has nothing to do with your market’s problem, go back and rethink one or the other.

Progress

I’ve identified a problem, and promised the market that my product is going to save the day.  Now what?  Pretty quickly, we have to show progress, demonstrating that we’re on the right path to delivery.  The need to show progress is most acute when there is a long gap between the promise and the delivery of a solution.  Think about GM’s announcement of the Volt in 2007.  Here we are two years later, and still nothing.  But that’s cool, right?  Because every six months or so, the company has provided updates on its progress – announcing the availability date of the first production model, leaking photos of the new design, and indicating that testing has begun.  Many of my clients develop complex solutions to difficult problems, and that can take awhile, so I spend a lot of time working with them to keep the progress flowing.

Proof

Here’s the big finish, the moment we’ve all been waiting for: the end result of lots of progress made delivering on a promise to solve a problem.  Proof can come in many flavors – quantitative, qualitative, case-by-case, market wide, from an analyst, from a test lab, from a customer, or even from a simple photo.  When GM finally rolls the first Chevy Volt off the line, pictures will be taken.  But is a photo adequate proof that they’ve delivered on the promise?  How about when the first Volt owner drives her car 40 miles without a drop of gas – is that enough?  Maybe a stellar M.P.G. rating from the E.P.A.?  GM’s first profitable quarter?  We’ve all got our own burden of proof when it comes to the promises companies make, so it’s only fair that our constituents will have their own benchmarks too.  For that reason, when it comes to proof, too much is never enough.

I’ve been using these four Ps for some time to help keep my clients (and myself) on a path to good marketing.  I like to create a simple table with a column for each of the new four Ps, and start by listing each of the promises made in marketing.  Then I fill in the problem, progress and proof columns for each promise to see where the voids are.  Give it a try- it’s a simple excercise that can tell you a lot.  I promise.

Awhile back, Seth Godin proclaimed that marketing is both an art and a science, "and that’s the problem".  With all due respect, Seth, I have to disagree.  More specifically, yes- marketing is both an art and a science, but no- that’s not a problem. 

The notion that we must choose between the art and science of marketing neglects that people have a left brain and a right brain, and we use them both simultaneously.  This applies to the marketers doing the work, and the consumers and business professionals we’re trying to reach.

When I contemplate buying a car, my logical side needs to hear that it’s safe, reliable and affordable.  But those aren’t the only characteristics that interest me, because my emotional side wants to know that it has a killer sound system, wicked acceleration, and comes in a hot color.  Marketers must hit me with science and art to win me over.

Similarly, when I plan a campaign to introduce a new high tech product to the market, I must appeal to both the logical and the emotional. To do so, I might highlight how the product can save a business tons of money, while making the professional look like a genius in front of the boss.  I, too, must hit the target with science and art to win them over.

Is marketing an art or a science?  It’s both.  Must we choose one at the expense of the other?  No.  Do I ask and answer my own questions?  Sometimes.

A few short years ago, effective marketing was measured in column inches, impressions and the cost per thousand of generating impressions.  How well could we spin it, how many people could we get to read it, and how could we get the biggest bang for our marketing buck?  Most of the marketer’s worth was measured by the ability to generate awareness- to talk to the market.  But then something changed…

Slowly, then not-so-slowly, the pool of media we marketers were targeting began to dry out- readership, page counts, ad revenue and staff began to dwindle.  And the marketing practice of leveraging these conduits to generate awareness began losing its effectiveness.  And so began the shift…

The major movement underway begins with our audience, who have reduced their reliance on the media to tell them what’s up, and instead have turned to one another for information.  Through user reviews, product ratings, online forums, blogs, tweets, homemade videos, and social networks, the mass collective of customers for just about any product has found a voice of its own.  Your customers are no longer only consumers of information, they are also producers of content.  They are both informing and being informed – about the prospect of a new storage array before it’s even launched, or the problems with a software update for a router before its first "official" review.  And this shift is forcing an evolution in the role of the marketer.

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Did anyone else see Barack Obama’s address to Congress this week?  Whether or not you agree with this president’s politics and policies, you have to admit that there was a lot of substance behind his words.  In discussing enerygy, education and the economy, Obama talked at a level of specificity that we haven’t seen in Washington for some time- leaving me with the impression that, good or bad, he has a plan for leading this country through some tough times. 

Obama’s speech got me thinking about my recent experiences marketing high-tech B2B products, and how the more substance I included in a campaign, the better results I achieved.  Some marketers believe that in building awareness it’s better to keep things general than it is to dwell on the details.  After all, you have to cast a wide net if you’re going to catch a lot of fish.  But here are a few reasons I think it makes sense to err on the side of substance:

• There are a lot of choices out there- so prospective buyers need substance to hone in on the right product for their needs. 
• Information is everywhere- so consumers will do their own research to find the details fast. If they can’t get the information they’re looking for directly from your company, they’ll find it elsewhere- and chances are they’ll stumble upon information that is outdated, innaccurate or less than flattering in the process.
• Details drive perception- so proving that your company is more than an empty message will send the impression that you have a plan (much like Obama accomplished in his speech).

Once a year it seems, something in advertising baffles me.  Last year it was Rachael Ray and Dunkin’ Donuts during football games.  This year it is those four times an hour CSX radio commercials.   While they are cleverly messaged – one gallon of gas propels a stock car once around the track while the same gallon moves ten tons of turpentine ten miles – I keep asking myself  "why are they telling me?"  and "what action do they want me to take?"  We can’t go to the store and chose between turpentine that was hauled by rail versus road, can we?

I’m not alone here.  I found a forum on Trains.Com, where people from all over the country are wondering the same thing: why the commercials?  There’s a lot of speculation on the target audiences: regulators, shippers, investors, potential employees and general brand awareness (i.e., everyone).  But, no one seems to get it.

I may be off track, but in this new age of conversation where communications are personal, I think CSX could make better use of their marketing dollars by targeting their audiences with a little more precision (or spend the money hauling the turpentine another ten miles on a gallon).

How do you feel about this?

I just read a post from Drew McLellan that is both simple and true.  In "Are Your Eyes Bigger than Your Budget," Drew reminds us that we have to draw a line when spending money on marketing.  The moral to his story, I believe, is not that we should cut back our spending to the point where we’re no longer marketing, but that we should let our budgets be our guides to prudent, effective programs.

There are plenty of ways to burn through a marketing budget without getting much return.  Sometimes I feel like a broken record when I say this, but the most important thing we can do is focus.  We should focus on the audiences that are critical for success.  We should focus on the conduits to those audiences that offer the most credibility and the broadest reach.  We should focus our messages on the one or two things that meet the audience’s urgent needs, while differentiating us from our competitors.  And most importantly, we should focus on our marketing goals as an acid test for green lighting any program.

Budgeting is a pain.  Always has been, always will be.  But an even greater pain than the act of budgeting is the realization that we’ve wasted precious dollars on programs that didn’t provide a return.  In order to avoid this kind of pain, focus on your audience, conduits, messages and goals before you start plugging numbers into a spreadsheet. 

Here it is, only two days after the historical election of 2008, and the campaign signs have already started to disappear.  I’ll miss them, because the multitude of ads that always seemed to congregate together at intersections and on hilltops always made me chuckle.  How could anyone’s message get through when there are 30 – 40 signs all vying for attention?

These masses of competing signs remind me of crowded markets, and how difficult it can be for a company to get its message across when so many others are plastering the neighborhood with their own signs.  When you find yourself up against several other companies that all claim to do exactly what you do, it’s time to stop printing signs, and start looking at your messaging and marketing mix.  Here are a few tips that might help your company slice through the noise.

Get to know your market and audience

If you expect to reach your audience better than your competitors, you need to know your audience better than your competitors.  By segmenting your market into a few manageable groups, you can talk to each group of companies based on their unique attributes rather than as a single unrelated mass.  But go beyond segmenting your market – profile your audience too.  Whenever there are multiple stakeholders involved in a purchase (as is often the case in high tech business to business selling), it’s important to separate those who can recommend, influence, overturn or approve a deal.  Once you know who you’re talking to, work to understand the unique concerns of each group as the foundation of good positioning.

Be Different

If your competitors are all saying the same thing, don’t join the party.  Look at what the other companies in your space are claiming, then find the holes in their stories that present an opportunity for you.  The more you can align a differentiated message with the unique concerns of your audience, the better chance your message has of getting through.

Change The Channel

Just because your competitors are printing signs, it doesn’t mean you have to.  Look at all the options available for generating awareness and find a venue that nobody else has thought of.  If all of your competitors are advertising in a trade publication, sponsor their monthly newsletter instead.  If everyone else has a booth at a trade show, secure a keynote speaking slot and sponsor their cocktail reception.  If everyone else uses lawn signs, get a blimp.  You get the picture.

Just because everyone else is saying or doing it, it doesn’t mean you have to join them.  The key to standing out in a crowded market is doing a better job of talking to people on their terms, presenting a better story than your competitors and selecting opportunities for awareness that nobody else does.  

In January, we wrote a post, "Getting The Brand Together: Consistency", which discussed brand promises – that what you say better be what you do.   Well, to do this you need to sit down and think hard about what it is you do and how to reflect that in your brand.  Consumer product companies have institutionalized this process.  High tech B2B companies to a less extent and high tech B2B start-ups not so much.

In the beginning, the usual process with a high tech start-up is: start a company, get a creative designer to design a logo, pick some colors and fonts.  Sometime later, messaging is developed.  So, the look and feel (visual brand) and the language (verbal brand) of the company are disjoint and possibly out of sync.  With so many companies vying for your audience’s attention these days, consistency is critical – so it is critical that the visual and verbal brand act as one.

There are three main concepts to think about when architecting an integrated brand.

1. The Word - Think about what your company does.  What word does it bring to mind?  Now, how can you get your brand to look like this word?
2. The Core Values – Think about how your company does what it does.  What values does it bring to the market.  Now, how can you add flavor to your brand that reflects these core values?
3. The Market – Think about your competitors, partners and customers.  What do their brands look and sound like?  Now, how can your brand stand out while fitting in?

By approaching your brand development in this structured way, you are more likely to have a tighter bond between what you say and what you look like.

Almost every comedian starts off by asking something like, "I’m from Chicago. How many here are from Chicago?"

The comedian is making a connection with members of the audience before launching into his act. By making this connection, the audience will be more receptive to what follows (and more likely to laugh).

This technique also works in the world of B2B communications. I first heard of this idea in a seminar by Kare Anderson. She said to start a conversation with "something about you, something about me, something about us". Like the comedian, you can instantly form a bond with a common interest and increase the chances that the person on the other end of the conversation will engage. I have used what Kare told me quite successfully over the years with media, analysts, customer and partners.

Do some homework, make some guesses or just probe areas to connect with people, such as…

• Geography
• Sports
• Hobbies
• Educational background
• (Stay away from politics and religion)

And start conversations with common interests.

It is a fact of life that people are more receptive to those who they have something in common with. So, don’t worry about getting right down to business, connect on some other, non-business, level and your conversations will be much more meaningful.

Now, how ’bout those Tampa Bay Rays?

On Monday, my wife and I found ourselves in New York at the XM Radio studios – sitting in on a live broadcast of The Opie and Anthony Show.  As I peered into the studio and listened to the hosts assuming their contrarian stances on the events of the day, it got me thinking about controversy and its role in B2B marketing.  Now, I know that morning radio personalities are a lot different than software companies, but I still wonder if there’s anything to be learned from the art of using shock value to attract and build a loyal following.

A few years ago, I was at a high tech startup that launched "The Carcass Campaign," a series of advertisements that used images of predators and their fallen prey to emphasize the importance of speed in the animal kingdom (and in telecommunications).  Despite the occasional letter from PETA, the reaction was overwhelmingly positive, with most onlookers saying "I get it."  But The Carcass Campaign is the only example I can think of that taps controversy to break through the humdrum clutter and reach the corporate world, and I wonder if today’s overloaded business audiences demand a little more edge from the companies trying to strike up a conversation with them.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting that the CEOs of B2B companies begin pulling a Mark Cuban, or that four-letter words start showing up in press releases, but as I flip through the pages of Network World and check out the ads, I’m bored stiff.  Big headline…picture of a person’s face…picture of some hardware…company logo….repeat.  Can’t we do a little better than this, or is the high road good enough?

Please someone…anyone…point me to a good example of a business to business company that isn’t afraid to be edgy.  Or is there just no room for controversy in B2B marketing?