Great Marketers Market Great

So what are the common denominators for successful marketers in today’s rapidly changing environment? How can leaders best respond to the challenges of putting consumers in charge … and for making marketing investments more accountable?

I see six distinct platforms that are the foundation for consistent, top notch marketing performance in any industry:

1. Continuous product innovation or reinvention. If you’re not new … or you’re not perceived to be fresh and relevant … then you’re old news … yesterday’s business. Marketers must maintain their relevance in consumers’ minds or get blown away by fast-moving competition. Simply look at what Jet Blue and Southwest Airlines have done to reinvent the airline industry. By simply adding a few television screens and by offering consistent, understandable low fares, they’ve surged past the legacy carriers with sustainable, high quality business performance.

2. Product and service quality is the next critical marketing platform. Consistently being the best-in-class -- year-in and year-out -- is undoubtedly a fundamental component for long-term profitable success. Starbucks is a classic example of winning in the marketplace by consistently exceeding customer expectations … and accomplishing that without the benefit of a sustained communications program.

3. Offering flexible and fair value is an unbeatable way to win consumers’ hearts and minds. I think that one of the best and most recent examples of this marketing platform was Wendy’s extra value meal campaign. Not only was their offering reasonably priced, it was highly flexible. It provided consumers with the appealing choice of substituting a salad, chili or baked potato for the standard French fries offering. This was a stroke of brilliance and ingenuity – and was very useful to blunt the flood of food advertising criticism coming from Washington and special interest groups.

4. Marketing cost efficiency and streamlined marketing processes are paramount. Marketers are consistently looking at their own cost profiles to ensure they are getting the best return for their marketing investment. They need to know whether their marketing supply chain is as efficient as it can be. That’s why procurement departments are becoming increasingly involved in so many decisions, including agency management and media negotiation. It’s also why marketers are becoming more directly involved in functions like talent payments. In fact, the ANA Production Management Committee has just released guidelines for effectively managing television talent payments. And the Committee is encouraging advertisers to meet with their agencies and production consultants to discuss how these guidelines might help maximize efficiencies.

In addition, marketers are working to understand the effectiveness and efficiency of their media buys. Looking to maximize weight against working media, advertisers are striving to reconfigure their marketing mix to improve overall cost balance and to optimize revenue generation. American Express is one of the most visible examples of a marketer shrewdly redeploying its marketing mix.

5. Measurements and Metrics. Perhaps the most profound change in marketers’ behavior is the intensified focus on measurements and metrics.  Driven by the old adage, “you can’t manage what you can’t measure,” marketers are seeking greater precision in assessing the outcomes of their actions, as well as deeper knowledge of alternative communications disciplines. Indeed, the desire to transform marketing into a “science” is one of today’s hottest trends.

6. The final platform – and perhaps the most important transformation for marketers -- is making direct Consumer (or customer) Connections. Today, one-to-one connections are more feasible than ever thanks to targeted or addressable media – whether over the Internet … through the emerging arena of wireless … with the growing opportunities forged by cable TV … via enhanced forms of e-mail marketing … or in the new realm of blogging and other such alternative communication forms. In many respects, marketers are finding that “mass marketing is not dead,” it’s just undergoing an exciting transformation to “Mass Marketing – one customer at a time.” The proliferation of communication channels that we have demonized as “Media Fragmentation” has actually become the foundation for abundant new opportunities created by “Media Diversity.”
The pathway to each of these six platforms is through technology, innovation and experimentation. And importantly, they all recognize that marketing has dramatically shifted -- from a focus on the masses, to a focus on the individual. Marketing will continue to evolve -- ultimately, I believe, becoming a true “One-to-One” discipline. Consumers have enormous leverage and power to determine what they want to see and hear. We marketers must determine how we’re going to get invited to the table because in essence, marketing is becoming “By invitation only.”

Comments

[David Miranda]

I am the founder of CLX, a company that has developed a wireless application that turns cell phone into instant mobile polling devices using text messaging. The application, Pollcast (pollcast.net), has the following benefits/features/results:
- it is completely opt-in, anti-spam
- in return for signing up and providing demographic and lifestyle info, subscribers are paid (cash, miles, etc) for answering simple text message queries from marketers
- subscriber profiles reside in a proprietary MemberMatrix, which allows marketers to target their audience at any level of granularity
- campaigns are launched to the selected audience and results are received within minutes
- each response is recorded and marketers can immediately analyze responses on a one-to-one consumer basis
- campaigns are achieving an average response rate of over 70%
Bottom Line: Pollcast is "an invited guest" to the cell phone, response rates are high, the consumer receives instant gratification in the form of rewards and most importantly marketers can immediately calculate their ROI.