Marketing Bones

Ideas & Answers on all things Marketing

Archive for the ‘Marketing’ category

Revisiting Jack Trout’s Positioning

March 6th, 2010

This seminal piece of work is worth a revisit again and again for the curious marketer. The basic tenant of this book is clear: To be noticed in today’s over-marketed society, a brand must firmly hold a place (position) in a consumer’s mind. Sure, that is relatively easy if you’re the market leader. But, if you’re not there first, look for a `hole’ or a ‘gap’, which is a niche not exploited by the market leader.

In marketing strategy, it is easier to attack a market leader indirectly rather than head on. Dell in its early days focused on a unique delivery mechanism and used the same to dominate the B2B market. Rather than fight HP and Compaq for shelf space in big box electronic retailers, it concentrated on direct sales. That part worked then. » Read more: Revisiting Jack Trout’s Positioning

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Posted in Marketing Concepts

Tags: Positioning

Why Tactics and Execution goals matter

February 27th, 2010

Scenario : You have a good business growth plan – heck, you have a GREAT business growth idea. You’ve just delivered your elevator speech to the CEO and he tells you to pitch your idea to the executive team. You walk into the room and begin. First, the idea, the strategy, the market, the competitive landscape and the financial/operational goals.

Then, the CEO asks you. “How are you going to implement this?” Either you have a series of next-level tactics on hand or you fumble about how different members of your team will keep working hard to make this happen.

The meeting ends with no financing approved. What went wrong? » Read more: Why Tactics and Execution goals matter

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Posted in Marketing, Marketing Strategy

What! Google actually uses Direct Mail to advertise?

January 8th, 2010

I answered a question on Linkedin some time back about what Google might be spending on its direct mail efforts to small businesses. This was a challenging one and I had to rack my brains to estimate the numbers. Thanks to Jevon Cole on Linkedin for steering me towards the right pricing for this.

According to the IAB, the US advertising spend was $300 billion in 2008 with 25% of that expenditure going into direct mail. Let me try to figure out Google’s spend:

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Posted in Marketing

Tags: marketing tactics

Retromarketing – Tormenting Customers and how they’ll love it

December 11th, 2009

It was a few years ago when I first read this HBR article on Retromarketing by Stephen Brown which was quite eye-opening.

The premise of this article was based on the fact that marketing folks always keep telling us to mollycoddle our customers and do things like customer care, customer delight, customer is king etc. etc. I agree with Mr. Brown to an extent; Some customers are uninformed and only focus on one attribute on a product, which is mostly price. » Read more: Retromarketing – Tormenting Customers and how they’ll love it

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Posted in Marketing, Marketing Concepts

Tags: Marketing Strategy marketing tactics

10 Tips on B2B selling in China

November 9th, 2009

I came across this article recently and was impressed by the common-sense tips on how to approach and engage other businesses in China as part of your Asian B2B selling strategy.

Tips that stand out include :

- Ensuring that you have a strategy in mind. Are you in China for the long-haul or is this a tread-softly approach where you want to understand the viability of setting up business in China or are you just in this for the short-term? Each objective requires a different approach. » Read more: 10 Tips on B2B selling in China

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Posted in B2B Marketing

Tags: B2B Marketing

Positioning – Thoughts on Al Ries & Jack Trout’s book

October 6th, 2009

I discussed positioning in my previous post when I had written about the individual brilliance of David Mamet and how he had, perhaps inadvertently, positioned himself as a macho and direct-to-the-point writer in our minds.

This led me to ponder about one of the definitive books on positioning called Positioning – The Battle for Your Mind by Al Ries and Jack Trout.

Here are my thoughts on this brash but still relevant book.

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Posted in Marketing Concepts

Tags: Positioning

B2B Lead Qualification – 6 Critical Criteria

September 30th, 2009

The B2B selling process is long-drawn and ranges from a few months to a few years. It’s no surprise then, that businesses should focus on leads that are highly relevant. Sometimes, a lead from a Fortune 500 company may not be the right one simply because they’re very price sensitive or their purchase is a straight re-buy or there’s a lack of fit between your products and their needs.

So, it’s essential to qualify the nature of the lead to a point where you know the urgency of the business need, the budgets involved, the participants in the buying process and finally, the time of decision-making.

Here are 6 parameters that are required to be predefined in order to completely qualify a lead and take it into the next step of your prospecting process. » Read more: B2B Lead Qualification – 6 Critical Criteria

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Posted in B2B Marketing

Tags: B2B Marketing

How to grab Market Share from an existing leader

September 27th, 2009

This sure aint easy. You want to enter or expand in a market where someone is a dominant player who has excellent distribution, is strongly positioned as the leader and has a few brand extensions. What do you do?

Situation : You’re a runner-up firm in a certain industry and you want to enter/ expand. Start with the basics. Ask yourself what you would like to accomplish here. » Read more: How to grab Market Share from an existing leader