Small Business & Startup Demand Generation: Marketing Innovation & Sales 2.0

At the end of last year I asked MVP members what areas of focus they would like to see in 2010, and marketing coaching was prominently mentioned, so here goes. Make no mistake about it the first step in demand generation is still marketing.  As Regis McKenna so aptly said in his 1991 Upside magazine article entitled New World Marketing, “marketing is everything.” He also quoted a celebrated CEO saying that “marketing is too important to be left up to the marketing people. And businesses are not going to do away with the marketing department any time soon.” Today marketing is all about the five Ps, product, place, position, and price and now people, I have said this several times in the last year. In our new world of marketing we need to go where the customer is, don’t expect them to come to you. The new social media revolution in communications is where it is at and it is impacting all business and organizations large and small, just look at Yelp. Business is war and those that adapt that attitude win, unless of course you are in a life style business that suits you needs. Today the new front lines of that war begin with marketing communications and sales 2.0.

The first step in the process of innovating your marketing and communications is taking a close look at all your marketing processes aligned with the five Ps.

  • Product: What are your products and/or services and can you innovate your business model within your ecosystem through partnership and/or coo petition?
  • Place: Where do you sell your product, who is the audience and where else do they go?
  • Position: Competitively what is your unfair advantage from a positioning perspective?
  • Price: Do your products and services deliver value for the price, but remember price is equated with value in many markets?
  • People: Look at it from the social media perspective and knowing if your customers are members of social media peer groups and or face to face peer groups.
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      • What is your social media and public relations strategy and do you have one?
      • Are your sales people leveraging the Web 2.0 platforms?

I remember my old friend and foe Craig Schmidt always pounding the four Ps into my head and they are indeed the foundation of sales and marketing. The one important thing I have learned in marketing are that the best marketing people carried a bag and they clearly know that understanding “the needs of customers both stated and unstated is the hallmark of marketing and sales,” this is called the pain.

Of course when sales are down in almost any company marketing almost immediately gets the blame and the cuts. These days the blame is the economy and small business has been hit hard with many companies losing 30-50% of their revenue in a couple of quarters. This is a huge blow to any small business and often the first thing that gets cut is marketing and that is a mistake. Customers see this and react accordingly, out of sight out of mind. In these days and times it may be difficult to justify marketing expenditures, however, when the economy turns you could benefit mightily from this investment and actually take competitive market share because of your awareness level is higher than competitors that haven’t invested. I learned this during the recession of 1989 when Cousin Steve and I started Zona research; we invested in marketing starting with a great logo and put our butts in the field. Many of our competitors had scaled back travel and marketing at the same time we scaled it up, suddenly in a course of 18 months we took significant market share just because we were out there. Remember that old saying 90% of success is just showing up, well its true.

Some actionable ways of innovating your marketing involve:

  • Execute the first step in CRM, do a customer satisfaction survey.
  • Spend a day in the life of a customer; this enables you to observe their entire ecosystem.
  • Pretend to be a customer of a competitor; this enables you to see the chinks in their armor.
  • Innovate outside- in; ask your customers how they would improve your products and services or what additional products they would purchase from you.
  • Build a solid collaborative culture between marketing and sales.
  • Reward risk, failures and results, never try never win.
  • Become a trusted source of information for your product area by blogging.
  • Create and post video testimonials of your customers on YouTube; make your customers stars.
  • Create Facebook fan groups and participate in other SMPGs on LinkedIn and other sites such as Eons for the baby boomers. (Check out what products are advertized there)
  • Leverage Web 2.0 enabling technologies into sales processes.

In summary, the majority of marketing processes today are broken and/or antiquated and that is in part due the Internet and the social media tsunami that is revolutionizing communications. Just think for one minute about how many magazines and newspapers are no longer. Also it is always a good thing to reexamine and rethink your business processes, and if you can model them. This discipline enables you to look outside-in and immediately identifies areas that need optimization; change and/or innovation and it also shows you where you have gaps or leaks in the process. Examining and mapping the customer experience that you deliver I believe is one of the keys to modern marketing and believe it or not that often starts with the receptionist.

Suggested reading this month is Anneke Seley’s fabulous new book Sales 2.0, this book is the modern day play book for any sales person that wants to harness to power of the Internet.

The Personality of Fish: Squid Cannibals of the Sea

There are many species of squid in our oceans, and for the most part they too are understudied. Very little is known about their habits, range, population estimates, and their predators. Squid including some giant squids such as the California Humboldt squid travel in large schools to incredible depths along ocean currents that support their food sources. Squid are voracious predators and I have often viewed large schools in the tens of thousands on the surface feeding on herring and other bait fish. I would not like to fall overboard into a school of squid. At the center of their tentacles is a large beak like mandible used for chewing once the victim is within the grasp of the tentacles, I have been bitten by a squid and it’s no fun.

Squid have internal propulsion systems not unlike modern day hydraulic systems and utilize the water to propel themselves at high speeds. They also have developed a highly sophisticated defense system and can shoot a blast of black ink into the face of a potential predator facilitating their escape. Their nervous system has been studied for years as they have a large axon that travels the length of their bodies. My uncle John a renowned marine biologist made a good living selling squid for nervous system research during the 1960’s and 1970’s.

Squid schools travel in a caste system order with the largest usually on the top and because they can change color rapidly and are translucent they are very hard to see under water. They also eat younger squid when prey is limited, this may aid in survival of the school. The National Marine Fisheries Service, who I worked for in the 1980’s, has allowed squid harvesting for many years by Spanish and Russian ships. Squid have survived in spite of the fishing pressure, lack of sustainable management practices and our lack of knowledge of the various species. Just think about how irresponsible the NMFS was in allowing foreign countries to come into our waters to harvest what they called an underutilized species. This is indeed far from a sustainable fisheries practice and it continues today. Until next time I wish you all great marketing and selling in the millennium.