The Ultimate Marketing Truths

  Marketing is a strategy, not a tactic.  It’s not a toll-free number; it’s not telemarketing; it’s not an ad with a coupon; it’s not a web site or your mailing list ~ It is your commitment to identify, qualify, nurture and retain clients for life.

Powerful marketing creates a one-to-one relation- ship. People don’t care about or want to be a part of the masses.  They want more than features and benefits.  They want solutions.  They want to feel special.

Marketing and sales are transactions in which the customer, not the service or product is the winner.  Your message must spell out how the prospect will feel or be better off after acquiring your product or service.

Marketing has to answer the customer’s question, “What’s in it for me?”  This must be answered on both an emotional and intellectual level. If your marketing doesn’t answer this critical question, your results will be marginal.

You must clearly identify and separate the suspects, prospects and clients to be profitable.  Each group must receive a different level of commitment, time and effort.  Prospects are interested, able and ready to buy.  Suspects are simply eligible to buy.  You must educate your prospects so they become clients.

Make sure your advertising/marketing informs, teaches and sells.  By doing these things you will  be turning suspects into prospects and prospects into clients.  This way you can create a never ending stream of customers/clients.

Never rely on other people’s/company’s results or response rate.  If you try, you will be wrong.  You don’t have their brand name, client list, offer or even their same conditions--- i.e. their numbers were generated in the past. They may not even be able to reproduce a given result.

Be careful about using coupons, discounts and sales.  While they can increase sales, do they really increase profitability?  Also, when used too often your company is positioned in the public’s eye as a discounter like K-Mart or Walmart.  Do you remember Gemco or Zody’s?  They both went out of business.  There is always someone else willing to sell at a lower price.  Plus, when you compete on price alone you may learn that as soon as someone else comes along who is cheaper you lose your client base.

If you can’t sell it in person, you won’t be able to sell it with direct mail.

There are no sure things.  A California restaurant chain had tested a 2-for-1 dinner offer.  The test was quite successful.  It was decided to roll out the campaign state wide.  This meant spending well over $200,000.  While this offer was being delivered by the postal service, the Gulf War broke out.  Suddenly people weren’t eating out.  They were staying at home watching the war on CNN.  While home delivery of pizzas went through the roof, the sit-down dinner business fell right through the floor. 

Whether you have made a good buy or not depends on how well your advertising/marketing performs, not how cheaply you bought it.

Marketing is of questionable value if you cannot quantify, measure and determine how effective it is.

The free bonuses you offer with a product or service are often more important than the product or service itself.  Theodore Levitt, a marketing professor at Harvard, is credited with first articulating this truth.  In marketing circles it is referred to as Levitt’s Rings.  This is why many direct response writers create the offer and response card before any other part of a direct response package.  You’ll see this used a lot in direct mail and infomercials.  The one which I immediately think of is the Ginzu Knife.  After the man sawed a can in half, he sliced a big, red, ripe tomato into wafer thin slices effortlessly. That’s it.  You’re impressed.  But then the announcer informs you that if you order in the next 30 minutes, you get - not one, not two, but an entire set of Ginzu Knives all for the price of one.  It’s incredible!  But this is only available if you order in the next 30 minutes.  The bonuses were the hook.

Your offer must have a specific time limit.  If you don’t include a time limit people will delay ordering thinking they can do so later.  When you’re in sales/marketing - later means never.

You don’t have to fall in love with the product or service.  You do have to be truly interested in your prospects and clients and relate to their wants and needs.  You do have to be able to articulate how their lives will be better with this purchase.