Avoid these miscues like Bermuda Triangle

Brian Butler

04/24/2010

The Bermuda Triangle conjures up images of mystery, danger and disaster. All too often, marketing gives the same feelings to those who don’t understand it or have failed at it.
Most frequently defined as the area between Miami, San Juan, Puerto Rico and Bermuda, the “unexplained disappearances” of both ships and aircraft in and over those waters have stirred the imagination for more than 60 years. And even though much debate still rages over the circumstances and validity regarding the mystery of The Bermuda Triangle, no such mystery exists over the unexplained disappearances of sales and customers due to falling into marketing’s Bermuda Triangle. Just as three points always make up a triangle, these three marketing mistakes create an area where profits and progress can be swallowed in a perfect storm of sales prevention.
&#8226 We know who our customers are. Living in deeply parochial New England, we all too often hear something along the lines of, “But we’ve always done it that way.” This promotion of the ostrich method of marketing (i.e. management by sticking your head in the sand), when it comes to progress and the acknowledgement of changes in technology, styles or buying behavior is extremely dangerous.
A variation on that theme is, “Everyone is our customer.” Though I’ve seen some Mercedes and BMWs on my trips to the local Wal-Mart, I’m pretty sure that even the world’s largest retailer does not expect to have everyone as their customer. In an era of ever-increasing specialization, the need to define your target audience is no longer a nice option. It’s a requirement.
We worked recently with a very popular local tourism client that was dismayed and perplexed over the ineffectiveness of a recent series of campaigns to increase membership. They had targeted the kind of families the client had seen every day. In fact, the client could not understand why the carefully created graphics with the equally carefully crafted messages used across a wide spectrum of media did not have the hoped-for impact. After all, the client knew who its customers were because they showed up every day. Only after some careful digging in the database was it discovered that while young families did attend in big numbers, they were not the customers who bought the memberships. In fact, it was actually the grandparents of these families who purchased memberships as gifts for their grandchildren. Yet, the initial campaigns completely ignored this group, since the client did not understand that it did not really know who its customers were.
&#8226 We don’t need (or can’t afford) marketing. No less an authority than the late business guru Peter Drucker said that all businesses had only two priorities, innovation and marketing. He also commented that “the goal of marketing was to know and understand the customer so well as to make selling superfluous.” Sounds not only important but mission critical to me. Yet marketing is often the first thing to be cut – if it exists at all – in a downturn or when companies feel the need to reduce costs.
Not attracting your prospects is no recipe for success. I’ve seen statistics that estimate that we see on average more than 3,000 advertisements and more than 600 marketing messages every day. With that much competition for your customers’ and prospective customers’ attention, doesn’t it make some sense that you have to be part of what they are seeing, and even more importantly, finding ways to break through the clutter and get noticed.
For almost every organization that does not invest in marketing strategies and work to woo new customers, the end is inevitable. Today’s hyper-competitive marketplace simply will not allow for below-average performance. Competitors will eventually copy most products and services, and your advantages will slip away. Innovation and a solid, regular marketing program, one that helps differentiate your offering in the market, is usually the only sustainable competitive advantage.
&#8226 Engaging in “pixie dust” marketing. The other reaction in a downturn is to say something like, “quick, let’s do some marketing to get sales up.”
But rarely, if ever, does a one-hit marketing effort drive results. And even if it does in the short term, it’s highly unlikely to do so over the long run. Marketing is not an event. One trade show, one postcard mailer or one person dressed up as a gorilla standing outside your store is not likely to make much of a long-term impact. Successful business development is usually built on the back of a well-constructed marketing effort based on research and tied to organizational goals and strategies.
Most of us like the escape of a good movie. We like to travel through time, fly off to strange lands or engage in an epic battle of good versus evil. Our day dreaming often leads to great breakthroughs. However, leaving the growth and revenue success of your organization to marketing “fantasies” and wishful thinking goes beyond being not advisable, it’s actually downright negligent. Hope is no substitute for sound strategy.
Three points can make a triangle. Three points can also make a line that becomes a trend. No matter which configuration you put these three points into, “knowing” the customers you really don’t know, not “needing” the marketing you desperately need and engaging in silver bullet thinking will only lead to one place. But unlike many of the “unexplained” disappearances of the Bermuda Triangle, if you employ this kind of business development strategy, the disappearance of your business will not be difficult to figure out. &#8226

Brian Butler is vice president of sales and marketing for The Allied Group.

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