Nicholas Bate

From My iPhone: Jack Wills Understands Marketing

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Stuff Scenario Planning

Marketing Primer 14

1. Study the greats. Then be different.
2. Start with Kotler's 4Ps: price, product, place, promotion.
3. Read Michael Porter on the value chain concept.
4. Don't get bogged down with the current 'thing' e.g. social media. By the time everyone is discussing it, there is little differential advantage to be extracted from it.
5. Marketing is not 'cool'.
6. Marketing is not an alternative word for 'sales'.
7. Marketing is not trade shows.
8. Marketing is radical, insightful paradigm-piercing thinking.
9. Marketing is questions.
10. How can we create step-change advantage?
11. How about if..?
12. What might?
13. Marketing is asking the question everybody else has ignored.Noting the answer.
14. And being fast to implement.

Without A Doubt 7

1. There is always a fresh angle on any business. Find yours to maintain competitiveness, profitability and fun.
2. Any system in any business can be improved by giving it attention.  How about if e-mails were never printed? 
3. There are in most businesses very good people-often extraordinarily good people-who are regularly over-looked for promotion. Why? Because they keep their head down and do a great job. Look for those people before they leave or start their own enterprise.
4. Your ability to focus and concentrate on the critical vital few issues is priceless. Treat it as such: look after it.
5. A whole corporation can be turned around 1% at a time. It just needs great leadership to drive that 1%.
6. When things go wrong, customers/clients want to talk to people. Make sure they can in your business.
7. Regular strategic off-sites to think beyond the day-to-day issues will stop your business becoming a commodity/price-fixated business. Book one now with the team.

Strategic Marketing 101

 

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Price 7

1. Price isn't just cost+margin=price. Price is psychology: of positioning, of perception and of market penetration.
2. Selling and negotiation are two separate stages. Sell first. Then start negotiating.
3. Quantify every benefit you can. The reason prospects keep coming back to price is they can measure and compare it so easily. 
4. Do the calculations when you give discount. 5% discount may well be 10% of your profit.
5. Look at your mix. Maybe one or two products can be premium-priced in the overall mix.
6. Can you look the prospect in the eye, smile and defend your price with ease?
7. Go look at your price list now. Adjust it to make yourself some money in just 10 minutes.

Marketing Sophistication Alone Is Not Enough

The world of marketing is increasingly sophisticated. There are an abundance of models on which to base your strategies from traditional Kotler 4Ps and Porter's Value Chain to digital and social media methodologies which allow you to talk to THE individual you seek.

However it's still important to ensure that selling is built into the mix. For some small and/or less sophisticated and/or high trust firms the whole process can be completed without the need for a person. But for a significant number of us from consultants to book-shop owners marketing will only get the prospect to our door and then selling needs to happen, and the need to switch from what might have been an orderly hi-tech approach to now a subtle hi-touch approach. 

Attention must be given to that messy, less orderly, people-rich selling process otherwise the marketing investment is wasted. Maybe even damaged.