Procrastination is Marketing

Apr 27
2009
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Procrastination is good for marketing.  It may not seem so at first glance, but if you delve deeper, you’ll see it’s so. Marketing people are usually manic, running around getting things done and meeting deadlines, so they are not generally considered procrastinators.  But, here’s the truth: Great marketers do procrastinate.

If you’re a fan of CBS Sunday Morning you may have seen the Fast Draw team.  They do illustrations of difficult concepts to help enlighten us visual learners about whatever they feel is important. On Sunday, April 12, they illustrated the concept of procrastination.  Here’s what I learned:  the word is derived from Latin where pro means “forward” and crastinus means “belonging to tomorrow.”

Marketing is about looking towards tomorrow.  If you wait to think about marketing until a product is done, it’s too late. Great marketing occurs early in the process long before the next product, service or great idea is a reality. Marketing believes that tomorrow will come as will the great next thing, and to be ready for it —  we must dream more about and prepare for tomorrow, or procrastinate.

If you ask most marketing people why they never get to the important stuff, it’s because they’re busy meeting a tight deadline today.  They are getting things done rather than determining what needs to be done to better position a company.  Now, this post may seem directly opposed to my previous post “Active Tense,”  but it’s not. In that post, I noted that Marketing is about getting something done. The real key, however, is to think and plan and do the best thing.

Notice I didn’t say the “right thing.”  If you wait too long to determine the right thing, you may not do anything at all.  That’s not procrastination, which implies you’ll just do it  later. That’s downright quitting and doing nothing. Unfortunately, that’s the state of most small business marketing. Instead, consider procrastinating and having a marketing team, plan and program in place and working within the next three months. You’ll be happy you did and you’ll be amazed at what the future may look like.

*reprinted with permission from original post on InsideMarketing.org, 4/27/09, Rhona Bronson, NAPL

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Written by Rhona Bronson in: Marketing, Planning | Tags: , , ,

Marketing Service Providers

Apr 20
2009
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I’m wary of businesses that call themselves marketing service providers.  Just calling yourself something doesn’t make it so.  But at one of the earliest breakout sessions at this year’s NAPL Top Management Conference, I stood corrected. Two companies,  BOPI in Illinois and COT Media Group in the Bahamas have made the transition and serve as models for others to follow.

Keys to the transition include but are not limited to:

  • Time.  It’s not something that happens overnight. It takes a plan, strategy and commitment. But it doesn’t take forever. It can be done in a year with foresight and dedication.
  • Teamwork. Both organizations use a team approach that involves all many talents including IT, marketing and frequently the top guy in the organization as part of the sales team.
  • Identity. They’ve renamed their organizations and printing is not in the name.
  • Structure. The organization has to be fundamentally different.  Same old same old sales tactics won’t work, and same old same old compensation structures have to change as well.
  • Help.  Both companies availed themselves of outside consulting services to help them pave the way and create change within their respective organizations.  They knew change would not just come from within.

    • A complex issue is how to change customer’s perceptions of the organization.  Change doesn’t happen by accident. Just saying you’re a marketing service department doesn’t make it so. Both BOPI and COT are great examples of making it so.

    * adapted with permission from original post on InsideMarketing.org, 4/20/09, Rhona Bronson, NAPL

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    Written by Rhona Bronson in: Integrated Marketing, Marketing, Marketing Service Provider | Tags: ,

    Spring Growth

    Apr 13
    2009
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    In today’s environment many businesses just want to keep their heads above water much less be concerned with growth.  But here’s a  business fact:

    There is no standing still. Growth of some sort is a given in order to stay ahead.

    There are many ways to grow.  Traditionally, we’ve learned to consider growth in terms of revenue or sales. But, there are many other measurements of growth from Market Share to Share of Customer, or simply Audience Reach. Growth can also just mean to stretch yourself and consider new ways of doing things, new things to learn, or new services to offer.

    It was Albert Einstein who is attributed with saying that the definition of insanity is repeating the same thing and expecting a different result.  Times are difficult now for all businesses.  One thing we know for sure. Doing nothing is akin to giving up and can only result in retraction rather than growth.  If you want to be there to tell your grandchildren the story of the Big Recession of  Twenty-O-Nine, take a deep breath and try something new.

    Here’s one suggestion:  Look into social media.  It’s largely free and help position you for the next era of communication. One news service I subscribe to anticipates that by 2010 — 50 percent of the Fortune 1000 companies that set out to enter the social media world will fail in their efforts. Why?  Because they failed to plan a rationale for being in the social media arena. But, don’t let that stop you. This is a great time to learn if the new media is for you or try it out to determine how it might serve your customers.

    In Summary

    Growth comes in many forms.  Spring is generally the time for spring cleaning, including giving up old habits and ways of thinking. But don’t lose sight of the fact that the cleaning has a purpose — to make way for new growth. Being on social media is one way to grow and stay active in new ways of communicating. There are many others. Dedicate this month to one growth action — be it personal, professional or business oriented.  And, if I can help, please let me know.

    * adapted with permission from post on NAPLLinkLetter.org on 4/13/09, Rhona Bronson, NAPL

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    Written by Rhona Bronson in: Marketing, Planning, Social Media, Strategic Planning | Tags: , , ,

    Active Tense

    Apr 13
    2009
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    Marketing is a verb.  Seth Godin points it out in his book Tribes, but the fact is any dictionary will tell you the same thing.  The point is that, as a verb, marketing is about doing something. 

    As with anything in life, action creates reaction.  It's a basic law of physics that also applies to51drpze7irL._SL160_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-dp,TopRight,12,-18_SH30_OU01_AA115_ marketing. Not all marketing gets the reaction you want.  Some seems to fall on totally deaf ears, but in reality, may be softening a final sale. It's what makes marketing maddening.  Sometimes you can't prove beyond a shadow of a doubt what works, but you do know what doesn't.  Doing nothing doesn't work.  

    The goal of marketing is to get your company into the customer's conversation zone.  If you're not talked about, considered, or part of the discussion, you're invisible.  That's not a good marketing strategy, and yet it's the summary of most marketing plans in the industry.  

    In the days of yore (probably only 10 years ago), marketing was thought to be reserved for big companies with big budgets.  The world has changed, and some of the most effective marketing is not expensive, close to free, does take time and thought, and has flattened access to all companies big and small.  In fact, smaller companies may be able to do modern marketing better. 

    "Big budgets may be more of a hindrance than a help for many package-goods brands coming up with ideas that resonate with consumers, " stated Unilever's Chief Marketing Officer Simon Clift at the Advertising Age Digital Conference.  As one of the largest companies in the world, Unilever still has a decent marketing budget, but Clift implied the healthy budget may make it too easy for Unilever's team to fall back on old ways rather than come up with innovative marketing ideas.  Necessity continues to be the mother of invention, and even if your budget is small to nonexistent it doesn't mean your marketing should be as well.  Rather, it means you need to be smarter about how you market, but market you must. 

    Full disclosure: I used to work for a Unilever company.  It was a great experience, and probably gave me my first taste of the power and importance of marketing. If there's one thing consumer goods companies don't take for granted, it's marketing.  You shouldn't either.  B:B can learn much from B:C companies, not the least of which is the importance of being front of mind with a consumer, client or prospect long before the sale is made.  

    Don't have time or the desire to do a marketing plan?  Just start by asking yourself one simple question: "What do you need to do be more top of mind with your ideal customer?"   Whatever the answer, that is your first marketing action step. Get started today. Remember action creates reaction, so just get moving, or as marketing genius company Nike would advise: "Just do it."

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    Written by Rhona Bronson in: Books, Budgets, Marketing | Tags: , , , , , ,

    The PR Evolution

    Apr 06
    2009
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    Where do PR and advertising fall in the Marketing Toolkit?  As with everything else these days, they are both evolving, and through Darwinian logic are becoming more assimilated in the Internet Age. Years ago, in the mass market era, marketing was advertising.  Then, PR became more popular and split as its own area of specialization replete with PR agencies separate from ad agencies.  If there was any early distinction it may have been that PR was for celebrities and advertising for products, but the Tylenol scare of 1986 clearly changed all that. Brand managers learned that PR had a big place to play in their marketing plans and not always just for crisis management.

    51D2T0o6LhL PR continued to grow in stature as brand managers also learned that an item mentioned in a news article had more credibility than a straight ad.  Advertising agencies suddenly needed PR partners on the team. Then, team dynamics changed. Twelve years later, in 2002, advertising guru Al Reis and his daughter Laura Reis went so far as to espouse the death of advertising in their book The Fall of Advertising & The Rise of PR.

    Today, I'd venture to say PR is advertising — almost direct mail advertising.   PR now targets specific customers rather than groups of customers. This is best discussed in David Meerman Scott's book The New Rules of Marketing & PR. 51JQci1dseL

    Unfortunately, most printing companies never latched on to the potential of PR even in the days when it was a relatively simple science.  They never hired staff or affiliated with freelancers with strong writing skills and never felt they had enough news to share with the world.  In today's world, where everything is about the latest news (newspaper woes aside), well done press releases now position forward-thinking businesses as experts in their field with news about topics rather than events or staff promotions. It's a way to get a message out to a public increasingly through Twitter, LinkedIn, e-mail messages directly to prospects and current customers, and a tiny little bit of pitching to the media (increasingly trade over mainstream). 

    I don't know if I'd go so far as to say PR has grown up.  More accurately, it's probably experiencing its second childhood — taking the big boys to the teen playground of modern social media.

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    Written by Rhona Bronson in: Advertising, Public Relations | Tags: , , , , ,