My preferred way of reading books these days is by “listening” to them using the Audible app.
I just started a book about direct response marketing called “Overdeliver” by Brian Kurtz.
I like it already because Brian says early on in the introduction, “Marketing is Everything.”
Of course, all marketers think that. 🙂
Normally I would that “Sales is everything,” but in direct response marketing, as opposed to general brand marketing, asking for the sale is usually included in the direct response marketing campaign.
My Precious Product!
So with that understanding, I too will claim that, “Marketing is everything.”
For those of you who learned about marketing in an academic setting, you will be familiar with the “4 Ps” of marketing – Product, Price, Promotion, and Placement (Placement means distribution).
Of course, development of a product is the most important part of marketing, therefore, the most important “P” of the “4 Ps”.
Without a product to offer a prospective customer, the other three “Ps” are meaningless.
As I pointed out last week, product developers have a tendency to fall in love with their products (In The Lord of the Rings, think how much Gollum loves the ring: The Precious!).
It’s hard not to fall in love with the products you develop when you have a passionate belief in the potential of those products to benefit others.
However, problems emerge when product developers spend so much time on the product – over-engineering! – that they forget about the importance of the other three “Ps.”
Successful marketing is a package deal with the “4 Ps.”
You can be great at three of the “Ps,” and terrible at one of them, and that can tank the whole thing.
Yet, the “product is so good it sells itself” mentality stubbornly persists among many product developers.
We Build Champions!
I have many stories to demonstrate this, but one of my favorites is about a Karate DoJo where my wife, kids and I trained about 15 years ago.
This karate business had one master karate trainer, at one location.
The karate master was the business, and while he offered standard beginning karate classes to anyone (he even took me!), he also produced karate champions who won international karate tournaments.
So his product was top of the class.
Yet, he had only one location in a strip mall (Placement), under-priced his offering relative to the quality provided (Price), and brought in customers by word-of-mouth only (Promotion).
His business struggled mightily to stay afloat.
He had to move locations often (couldn’t afford rent increases), and had myriad other business operations challenges.
Yet, no one denied that he offered the best karate product.
But We Build Profits!
In contrast to this, the product of his nearest geographic competitor, a business called Tiger Schulmann’s Martial Arts, was not quite as good, but still a very good product.
Unlike the single location karate dojo that generated a number of karate masters, Tiger Schulmann’s wasn’t turning many of its customers, if any, into international karate tournament champions.
However, Tiger’s TV ads (Promotion) showed normal everyday folks training hard, and dressed in cool looking karate clothes (called “gi”).
You may not actually become a karate champion with Tiger’s training, but Tiger made you look and feel like you were a karate champion.
He had convenient locations all around the city (Placement), and offered attractive “starter packages” (Price) to entice you to try out his training.
You could say that Tiger’s product, karate training, was not the top of the class, but it was “good enough,” and importantly, his business also excelled at the other three “Ps.”
I think you can probably figure out which business is more successful, and creates more perceived value for more customers.
Tomorrow, we’ll look at how this applies to the Pro-Life Business Industry.
Regards,
Brett