Seven things I’ve learned about marketing
1. You’re not in control of the output, only the input
You can, and should, take control of your complete marketing effort. You should control your channels, your messages and all the aspects of input. That’s where you should put your energy and funds. and remember that the ultimate input is your authentic brand behaviour. You cannot control the output though: ultimately the people are in charge of your brand, not you.
2. It’s more effective to create brand gravity than brand noise
Noise might get attention (but then so do sub-bass speakers in passing souped-up Vauxhall Corsas): but it doesn’t make people like you, or even do business with you. Brand gravity is about attracting people to you, rather than you having to chase them. And you do that by focusing on telling authentic and compelling stories.
3. There’s never enough information, and there’s always too much
Whatever marketing initiative you undertake could arguably have been improved with a little more information about your audience, about the market tendencies or whatever. Arguably. But in my experience the challenge is usually that there is so much information that you don’t know what to believe. Not enough information (or the fear of it) can stop you in your tracks. So can too much.
4. A great story beats a great product, but great stories about bad products are just lies
Your product or service doesn’t have to be the best or the newest, or the cheapest: because great marketing is about great stories. But don’t take this as permission to spin. If your product or service is poor then a great story might get you noticed for a while, but it’s ultimately unsustainable. On the one hand the world won’t beat a path to your door just because you’ve made a better mousetrap (you need to tell the world a great story first), but if you lure them to your door and your mousetrap doesn’t catch the pesky creatures very well, then all your efforts will be worse than useless.
5. Your brand isn’t your logo, or your advertising: and that’s why it matters
Your brand is everything that people think, feel, believe, know, suspect, hope, hear, read, see, imagine, understand or misunderstand about your company, organisation, product or service. In a sense your brand is just a collusion, and if you don’t have a ‘critical mass’ believing roughly similar things about you then you don’t have a brand at all. In one sense brands don’t exist at all, and in another sense they’re all you’ve got. Treat your brand with the respect appropriate to this dual truth.
6. The internet has changed everything, and nothing
If you’re not embracing the power of the internet then you aren’t really marketing. And I don’t mean the internet as it was five years ago, or two years ago, or even a year ago. I mean as it is now and as it will be in three months. It changes all the time. Fast. Marketers need to to do the same. There’s only one way to understand it, and that’s to dive in. And yet, though all the rules of communication have changed because of the web: the fundamental need to create positive and compelling stories which your customers can identify with and believe in, remains the same. Net or no net, marketing is about meaning.
7. Marketing will not solve all your problems, and yet…
Classical marketing concerns itself with product, price, place and promotion (the 4 P’s). That’s all about about the process of doing business with your customers (including development of something they want to buy). The other ‘big’ issues in companies (strategy, human resources, finance, operations etc..) have never been part of the marketing remit. Yet marketers can lay claim to a powerfully influential territory, what might be called the fifth P, that of ‘purpose’. Marketers, through their understanding of customers, communication and brand are perhaps uniquely well placed to examine and help influence any company’s ‘purpose’ (i.e. what is the company in business for, what’s its reason for being). It’s this sense of ‘positive purpose’ that customers are increasingly looking for. Marketers have a new and powerful challenge, to influence ‘purpose’.
Tell me what you think: disagreement just as valuable as agreement! And of course, as soon as I’ve published this post, I’ll think of seven more lessons. I’m sure you will too. As I said, nothing is definitive.
Date posted: Saturday 14th March 2009Back to news home page >
