THE key to marketing success is simple. Find the right message, use the right media and deliver it to the right market. These are the initial lessons that everybody learns in the field of marketing in order to get things done right and move them ahead.
Professionals learn from their experiences and apply marketing strategies as result of years of wisdom building, hard knocking, trial-and-error, fall-flat-on-your-face and dust-yourself-off experience. Believe me, they are far from being mere puffery!
Over the years, marketing has changed dramatically and new strategies and techniques have provided vital tools for marketers to outgun, outsmart and outplay the competition. The strategy that has become very important in the present era is positioning. But how do you position your product brand in the mind of the consumers to gain market share?
Remember how we use to recall our business school professors because of their helpfulness and practical experience that they used to share with us? These techniques are tried and proven. They do, however, require some work on your part. Many of these systems are generic in nature and will require some time and creative effort for their specific application. It is not so much that these systems are too vague or that they require a lot of investment.
These concepts are simply tools to help you build your own unique style and thus create endless streams of new, repeat and referral business for yourself. They do so because they all come back to one basic fundamental marketing principle, and that the power of positioning.
Long gone are the days of knocking on — and sometimes down — doors to get business, let alone just to get people’s attention. Long gone are the days of using the phone to such an extent that your ear starts to shape itself into a phone’s headset or bruised knees that came as a result of constantly begging your customers to give you mere table scraps of their business. In short, prospecting is out. Positioning is in.
Positioning has taken deep roots in the field of marketing. Everybody wants to gain quick market share, provided they get the mind share from the consumers. Creating positive image and positioning your brand in such a way that consumers like to associate them is what is required in the modern epoch of marketing.
For example, in the early ’80s the cola wars resulted in a younger brand taking on the older brand and establishing itself, only because of positioning strategy. Consequently it got the highest mind and market share in the Asian region.
Aggressive positioning was again applied after the fall of BCCI, when a particular foreign bank used the same strategy of positioning. In doing so, it outdid the competition in a professional and aggressive way and made a positive public image for itself.
The (Late) Hakim Said was a great marketeer. He knew how to apply these techniques and strategies to get the complete hold of market share in the field of medicine and beverages.
However, at times, these images tend to go overboard and they don’t represent the brand properly. There are businessmen and entrepreneurs who are more concerned about projecting a certain image about themselves or about their businesses in the marketplace.
More concerned with ‘looking’ good than making money, the ego of these people often ends up in the way of making the money you truly deserve. As an old mentor of mine used to say, “Do you want to be right or do you want to be rich?”
Others are probably used to traditional, MBA-style, statistical-analytical types of knock-until-you-drop marketing approaches. For these individuals, the above techniques may outright rub in the wrong way. Not wanting to imply that they are illegal, aggressive or denigrating, these are, however, practical and terribly effective techniques that are essential to not only survive but also thrive in today’s increasingly hyper-competitive marketplace. You want more business, that is the bottom line in every business venture.
In today’s society, two major shifts have been experienced that have revolutionized the entire business landscape. The first and most important one is competition. The mere fact that business is becoming increasingly hyper-competitive is an understatement. Home-based businesses and self-employed professionals are growing at an explosive rate.
This is not a mere trend, since it was the way things used to be up until the 20th century. Whether you were a farmer, a blacksmith or a storekeeper, everybody was an entrepreneur in the old days. But when the industrial age took over the agrarian age, more and more people started to rely on full-time, permanent, secure, pension-oriented jobs.
Today, these things have become mere antiques. For instance, in the ’40s people held, on average, two jobs during their entire lifetimes. But today, that number has risen manifold and is still growing. The home-based business boom is far from being just a boom. And the reason for this stems from the second shift that has taken place, which is information. Along with the eruption in multi-channel broadcasting, digital technology and cellular telecommunications, the Internet expanding with the passing hour.
The ability to retrieve information in seconds has caused entire layers of middle managers of huge corporations to fall the way of the dinosaurs. Snail mail and high-traffic shopping malls are also on the brink of becoming extinct. The information age notwithstanding, with more and more employers facing disgruntled employees in today’s highly litigious atmosphere, jobs are soon becoming things of the past. So what does all this mean?
It means that for a person or business to be able to be and remain in business, marketing strategies must be such that it places that person or business at the top of prospects’ minds at all times. It is not so much to look for more business but to be the business of choice.
For every category of business that exists out there, there are thousands of competitors fighting for the same market. And since the information revolution has helped to educate people on what’s available, there’s really no longer a need to prospect for and persuade people in order to have them “buy into” an idea.
The goal, nowadays, is to be the one that they choose to buy from or do business with amongst all other possibilities. Marketing, therefore, must be such that if and when a prospect needs a particular product or service, yours is the firm that comes to their minds instantly.
In other words, positioning is a process by which a psychological ‘anchor’ has been placed into the minds of prospectors so that they come to choose one specific person or company over another.
Top-of-mind awareness is a term originally coined by Ellis Verdi. He said that what most people wrongfully seek to accomplish in their promotional efforts is to get cash flow and not results. And they usually accomplish this by offering sales, promotions, discounts and price reductions.
He once said, “Discounting is like a drug. It brings in some business, and for some it may even bring in a lot of business. But the effect usually wears off and the company will soon find itself with the need to discount further in order to create more business, let alone to stay in it.”
Top-of-mind awareness, however, is such that with it there is no need to use price-based promotional methods. It does is two things, one, it psychologically impacts people so that the mere mention and knowledge of one’s company or service inherently creates a need for them. Second, it places one at the top of the market’s consciousness so that one is instantly chosen when people want, what that person or firm has to offer.
This is therefore a result of creating that top-of-mind awareness. A concept that has become so staunch but simple, and yet remarkably more effective, more affordable and, of course, more effortless than any other marketing strategy devised by the practitioners.
