Insight #6: Marketing Troubleshooting

Remember those books when you were a kid with the animal parts...the ones where you could flip different parts of the page over and mix and match different heads, midsections, and legs? The object was to make the goofiest looking animal imaginable. Maybe it was a walrus head on a pig’s body with pelican legs. Then you would call it something like a "wal-pig-ican".

Now that you’re older, you probably don’t spend much time with those kinds of books anymore (hopefully!). But, if you’re the person in your company responsible for sales and marketing, then you still play a mix and match game all the time...even if you don’t realize it. You see, each marketing activity has several specific components. And, each must work perfectly with the others if you expect optimal results. If any component is wrong, you could end up with wal-pig-ican marketing.

Wal-pig-ican is fine for a kid’s game. It’s disastrous for your business. Just having all the pieces (head, body, legs) in place doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve got the picture the right way. Let’s look at an example, and then discuss some of the different components.

A builder of closet organizers once said he had tried direct mail to find new business. But, it didn’t work. He figured since he had sent a piece of mail (the head) with a coupon (the body) to a certain mailing list (the legs), he had executed direct mail to its fullest potential. And, despite his expert and calculated efforts, there was just no way that mail could work for his particular product. This is MAJOR WAL-PIG-ICAN.

Upon examination of his efforts, it was apparent that his entire mail campaign was poorly executed. The mailer turned out to be a Val-Pak type mass mailing, and his ad was printed on the back of a book store’s ad, buried somewhere near the back of the pack. The ad was mailed to tens of thousands of homes that weren’t even prospects for his closet organizers because the average incomes were far too low. The ad made no compelling case for the product; it basically said, “Here we are. Buy from us for no justifiable, rational reason.” The coupon might as well have been for $50,000 off since nobody could mentally quantify exactly how much “10% off” was.

He had the right generic pieces (head, body, legs), but he had the wrong specific pieces (walrus, pig, and pelican mixed together). In other words, it was a wal-pig-ican...that laid a huge egg! Here are brief descriptions of the SIX components any marketing or sales effort should follow to be successful:

1. Target: You have to be talking to the right crowd of people. This is obvious, but you’d be surprised how often it gets messed up. Realize that you may want to sell the same thing to different targets...and that you will have to use different messages. For instance, use two different approaches to sell the same marketing program to start-up companies versus established business owners. Just make sure you’re mindful of who you’re trying to reach.

2. Medium/Media: There are at least 25 different mediums from which to choose to send out your targeted message. Of these, there are usually 4 or 5 that will work best for a given project. If you’re trying to sell computer consulting in a classified ad in Doll Collector’s magazine, you may have trouble.

3. Techniques: Each medium has its own techniques that make it work optimally. For instance, in direct mail, there are 17 components that every letter must contain. Leave any one out, and you’ll soon be flirting with the wal-pig-ican.

Be Aware! Most business books and consultants will only talk about targeting, media, and techniques. Monopolize Your Marketplace On Demand talks about them a lot too. But, for your marketing to really take off, you have to master the last three components as well.

4. Articulation: What you say is only fractionally important as to how you say it. Let’s assume you get the technique right and put a headline in your newspaper ad. The way you articulate your headline could mean a variance in response rate of as much as 21 times or 2100%. Articulation is difficult to learn. But, it’s the essence of expert marketing. Test different articulations often.

5. Execution: The greatest plan in the world will fail if incompetent people are executing it. Most marketing plans are under-executed.

6. Systemization: Your marketing must be tied together. Each marketing effort must be consistent with all the others.

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