Step One. Seven Easy Questions.
The Marketing Communication Process begins with
the truth. Answer these questions thoughtfully and objectively. Try to think like a normal human
being who neither knows
nor cares much about your brand, your company, or you.
1: Who Do You Want?
2: What Do They Want?
3: Why Are You Different?
4: So What?
5: Yeah, but... Why Not?
6: What are the Other Guys Doing?
7: Who's Counting What?
1. Who Do You Want?
Obviously you want people who drink milk or whatever it is you
sell. You know the standard demographics - age, income, gender, etc. Now dig a little deeper.
Think about the last few dozen people you did business with. What do they have in
common? Were they upbeat, intelligent, stylish, decision-makers, good credit risks, health-conscious fitness
buffs? Or were they lazy,
low-brow, dowdy, timid, penny- pinching, overweight slobs? The
first rule of marketing is to clone your best customers. You
want your ads to appeal to people like them .
Now think about the last dozen or so people who either turned you down,
or who you turned down. Same routine. Be specific. You do NOT want your ads to attract people
you do NOT want. Don't let this happen to
you!
Look at the stock photos of the lady drinking milk. How would you describe her
personality? Active, on-the-go, health-conscious? Anything else? Look again. The Marketing Communication Process is not all words.
2. What Do They Want?
If you remember anything in this exercise, remember this:
New Customers expend more
emotional energy the first time they buy your brand than do your current customers, your sales force,
or you.
To you
and the rest of the crew, it's business as usual. More widgets. To them it's a Whole New Thing.
Now try to imagine what it's like to buy and taste Our Milk or use Your Thing for the
very first time. What's going through that lady's mind at this very second?
First clue: She is NOT thinking about your company, your sales goals,
your quarterly EBITA, your ingredients, engineering specifications, or independent test results.
Second clue: Just a moment ago she was thinking about her job, her children, that leaky
gutter, where to go on vacation, those extra five pounds, ("Boy, am I thirsty!"), did she pick up the dry
cleaning...
Somewhere in the Daily Blizzard there may be a brief
moment when your prospects need something like Your Thing. Is there a specific problem your
prospects are trying to solve? Do most people buy The Same Old Brand every time? How many people bounce from brand to brand?
The Steam Principle is a one-page read on When people buy
your brands and how you can improve your timing. Scan it and return.
3. Why Are You Different?
Most people don't care why you're the same as the brand they use now. The brain processes differences faster than similarities.
Do you notice any differences between the first two photos above and the picture on the right?
People expect Our Milk to be "white, cold, fresh, and from cows." Perhaps your cows do feed on hydroponic hay, though. Maybe you come in plasti-glass containers as well as cardboard cartons. Maybe you cost a dime less. What else?
Write down any and all rational objective differences between you and the
Other Guys. Could be price, terms, location, product design &
performance, customer service & satisfaction, quality of staff, or proven
results. Differences! Not similarities.
Our Milk cannot be uniquely white, cold, fresh,
or from cows. Your brand cannot be uniquely generic either. It can be uniquely.... what?
4. So What?
Does hydroponic hay make Our Milk healthier, testier, or sweeter? Maybe. If not, it's a difference without a distinction. How about that plasti-glass container? Could a packaging difference possibly benefit anyone?
Who?
Write down how each of your real differences benefit your
customers. Do any of those differences solve any common customer
problems better than your competitors?
Is there one difference that solves one very important
problem?
Very large brands make a lot of noise
about small points of difference that confer unique benefits to their
prospects. Beginners usually make a lot of noise about anything
they can think of. Take a lesson from Proctor & Gamble: hone
in on the one thing you offer that does something uniquely useful.
If your ONLY difference is price, that
could be a disadvantage if
people think that cheaper = lower quality. If your product is the
same as everyone else's, what about the packaging?
Look at the four photos
again. Look for a problem Our Milk could solve.
5. "Yeah, but..." Why Not?
You can give
prospects ten good reasons to try your brand.
They only need one lousy excuse not to. 
Most people are intellectually intrigued by anything new, but
they emotionally resist change. They fear the unknown, confuse you with your
competitors, or reach down into deep memory for some excuse why your brand
won't work for them.
Very often your sales force or telemarketers
will hear the same old "Yeah, buts..." over and over again. Ask
them! Run a no-cost Brand Resistance Survey or do
some Problem Detection Research.
Some objections seem insurmountable. The gentleman above probably won't be in
the market for "Our Milk" for several months, no matter what we do or say. Some objections are easier to
fix. For example, a milk bottle is easier to swig from than a carton, but
some people might object to sharing their milk with anyone else.
If you can identify the most common "Yeah,
buts..." up front and defuse them in the ads, you'll be amazed at the results.
6. What Are The Other Guys Doing?
A blueprint for rigorous competitive analysis is beyond the scope of this
article. However, here's an exercise conducted by Very Very Large Agencies that you can perform in the
privacy of your own boardroom. It will pay a handsome return on your investment of time & effort.
Pin your competitors' ads up on the wall. Put the biggest companies at one end and the smallest at the other. Now
stand back and look at the array. What do see? Do the leaders look better than or about the same as the
little guys?
Who looks safe? Who looks hot? Does anyone stand out? Who do you look like?
Write down the graphic or stylistic
elements they all share. You'll want to include just enough common
elements in your ads to look like you belong in the category.
Next, write down the bare-bones message for each player in the
category. Who are they talking to? What are they trying to say? Why are they different, etc.?
Point to the spot on the wall where you
are today in terms of sales. Point to where you want to be in a year to 18 months.
What do you have to do to get there? Whose customers do you have
to steal? Whose Brand Personality should you emulate or improve on?
7. Who's Counting What?
How will you measure and
track the effectiveness of the communications? The final score is net Earnings Before Income Taxes. But
how, exactly, will you get from production & media to profit?
In the Corporate world, it's
often hard to correlate advertising expense with sales revenues. So large agencies rely on
focus groups, overnight recall scores, standard reach & frequency media
plans... They hope that sustaining Brand Image will generate Brand
Preference and sales.
Retailers count ups and receipts. All the money they
spend on Thursday has to be back in the store by Sunday night.
Next week can take care of itself.
In Direct Response advertising you try to
achieve a Target Media Cost
Per Sale over time. It's roughly the equivalent of the
retail mark-up on a similar product sold in stores. In D.R., the
media is your store.
MCPS is always a function of three dynamic
variables: Response rate, Media cost per thousand, and Conversion rate. We
use GM/C=X to track and
project all three simultaneously.
Of the three variables, Conversion is King.
Advertising can generate calls and clicks, but it's up to your in-bound
telemarketers and web designers to convert
Inquiry to Sale, and initial sales to repeat orders. TMs are
usually better at that than code gurus.
There a dozen or so articles on
The Advanced Concepts of Radio page
that might help you clarify your strategic thinking. Open. Print.
Read.
Congratulations! You just got through the hard part.
The rest is easy. You only have to write one sentence.
Truthful Answers to
those seven easy questions lead to a short succinct Brand Promise.
Ideally, one sentence. Something on the order of:
