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I’ve cajoled, poked and prodded. I’ve ridiculed my fellow marketers and shouted from the hilltops. The silence was deafening....
Last year, I wrote an article for the MarketingProfs newsletter titled Who Comes First: Good to Great Marketing in which I argued that too often marketing professionals are focused on "the WHAT." What tradeshows should be reviewed, what types of direct mail should be sent, whatInternet portals should gain the most ad spend, etc.
Instead, to make marketing more effective, marketing executives needed to focus on "first WHO."
If it sounds elementary, perhaps it is. Too bad few companies practice it.
I stated, “In the B2B world, the application of 'first WHO' means it is no longer acceptable to have a target list of 500, 100 or even 50 companies. Instead, the list would be narrowed to a group of 10 or 20 key companies. Next, a marketer must ensure that he or she has a deep and thorough mastery of the 'WHOs,' or core decision makers within those target organizations.”
Too obvious? Too simple?
Then why do we still see B2B, Fortune 500 companies taking out full-page ads in the Wall Street Journal? Why do companies still spend over a million dollars on the largest trade shows in their particular industry? Why do we still do “spray and pray” direct marketing and accept 1-2% return rates?
Depressed and contemplating medication, I was elated to see a recent Wall Street Journal article titled Unisys Pitch Finds the I in Niche. The article described the efforts of Unisys to customize and target media and advertising to reach a very small group of CIOs.
Through a special deal with Fortune magazine, Unisys is customizing the covers for 20 high-ranking executives on its target list. Each magazine shipped to these individuals will have a mock Fortune cover with the executives own face gracing the cover. In addition, he or she will discover a letter -- individually tailored from a senior Unisys manager -- describing challenges in the target’s specific industry.
According to the article, “Fortune cover-wraps also offer personalized Web addresses where executives can find mock news videos that mention their names and how they achieved business success.”
This, my friends is niche marketing at its finest. It’s tailored, it’s focused and (in this instance), it’s all about stroking the egos of the target audience.
I wrote in my MarketingProfs article,
“Applying 'first WHO' to the marketing organization means marketing dollars will no longer be spent on gaining awareness. For example, marketing dollars will now be spent on gaining awareness with the right WHOs. Advertising, once focused on a few publications, will be halted until research can clearly show the target audience reads the publications in question. If a marketing dollar does not touch the right 'WHOs,' then it is a wasted dollar.”
My ego is not large enough to assume that someone from Unisys read my article and applied the concepts therein. In fact, the concept of deeply understanding your target audience and tailoring marketing programs to reach them, and only them, isn’t a new idea. It’s just rarely practiced.
Imagine:
--advertising dollars focused on the right audience…
--a message tailored directly to customer needs
--awareness gained with the people actually responsible for buying your product/service…
--an actual return on investment from a marketing dollar spent!
I love this quote from Ellyn Raftery, VP of Marketing and Communications for Unisys, “We’re not trying to have grandma at home understand who we are and what we do…it’s a very narrow set of executives we really want to reach.”
So the bigger questions are: Why is “First WHO” marketing not widely enacted? Is it because “First WHO” requires more analysis and legwork than “spray and pray” marketing? Why does an article of a company enacting focused, targeted and tailored marketing make the front page of the WSJ?
Are marketing professionals too lazy to really dig deep and attempt to segment, understand, and then market exclusively to their target audiences? Ask yourself, who is the "I" in YOUR niche?
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Comments
Marketing and sales are about the “who” (The Happiness Quotient) and communicating the right message, the right way, to the right customer. If you don’t lead with the heart (putting people—the who—first and foremost in everything you say and do) and drive upwards The Happiness Quotient of every person who touches your Brand in even the smallest ways, you cannot often develop communications that work.
Lewis
Posted by: Lewis Green | 10.26.06
i think you've nailed the biggest reason...it requires more work to target your customer. There's also a bit of denial in that decision too, because organizations often thing they deserve and can handle a lot of leads. It's an extension of being all things to all people. To suggest that we start with the first 20 or 50 or 100 people and be important to them is admitting you'll not what you think you are...to those people who don't get it.
We work with small B2B clients all the time and we often discuss using their FIRST marketing dollar to reach their FIRST customer, and grow it from there. The clients who get it appreciate the thrift and the focus of such an approach.
-Mark
Posted by: Mark True | 10.26.06
Too often marketers 'skip to the creative' and don't do the heavy lifting required to do exceptional work. The off-handed comment of, 'well, we know who our target is' is an over-used cop out.
My first real experience seeing this in action was attending a Sony launch meeting for MiniDisc (ouch) and hearing that no, there was no real research on consumer behavior in hand, nor were there plans to do any, nor did they see a need for it. They positioned it to the "Gen X" audience when the only people who could afford a $1000 Walkman drove Jaguars. A massive train wreck ensued, as we all painfully remember...
Excellent point here.
Posted by: shdenny "www.note-to-cmo.blogspot.com" | 10.26.06
I've been a real bear on advertising, but really just on national advertising designed to "raise awareness." I've often found that phrase quite nebulous.
Tightly focused advertising does work, but as Mark True mentions, it's a lot of work. It's much harder to dig deep on what publications your audience reads, what coffee shops they frequent, their routes to and from work (for billboard placement).
The reward however, pales in comparison to the extra work!
Posted by: Paul Barsch | 10.26.06
Great article!! The insights are really enlightening. After reading your article I realised that well established companies like those of the TATAs here in India (which I am a citizen of) take out ads regularly in print media for B2B purposes! The newspapers are read by common people : fathers, mothers, students etc and spending money to reach this group is definitely a waste of money.
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