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Marketing Mondays - the 2nd edition (K-I-S-S)

12/7/2009

2 Comments

 
Hello everyone & welcome back to the 2nd installment of Marketing Mondays brought to you by me, Miriam!
 
This weeks blog involves one of my favourite things to do: KISS-ing.
 
As I'm sure you can gather, I'm playing a bit with acronyms here.  When I refer to KISS I'm not mentioning it in the true sense of the word.  The KISS I'm talking about is the age old way of saying we need to Keep It Simple Sweetheart.
 
This topic felt like a good one this week as I've been a busy bee lately and realize most of us in the marketing world are too - so, in light of that reality, I'll keep this fairly short & sweet and be true to the topic of the week.
 
Keeping it simple means a lot more than just making our messages easy to understand by being clear and concise - it also has relevance generally in the business world today.
 
Through my experience in large organizations, marketers often join a company with a remit that is to revolutionize the organization in some way, shape or form.  Exciting right?  Well, often this can be short lived and we soon realize that the company may not even be getting the basics right. 

If this sounds familiar, implement the K-I-S-S philosophy now!
 
Keeping it simple - like understanding what our customer needs/wants, who our competitors truly are and what our organization can offer a customer - are things that sound obvious but are often the things that are unknown.  This was a shocker for me when I left the university life for the reality of a full-time marketer. 
 
How can these 3 elements - so key to what we are supposed to be doing as marketers - be unknown to others like us, sales people and even senior management!?!?  So...in order to K-I-S-S, I beg all of you out there who relate to what I've just said above to put forth a "back to basics" campaign.  It actually is very simple -
 
1) Understand your customer in every way you can - research, shadow your sales teams and whatever else tickles your fancy & then make sure the organization knows about what you find - shout to them if you have to as this is a marketers primary responsibility.
2) Figure out what we have to offer and if this is what our customers (who we now know so well) want/need - if not, go back to the drawing board.
3) Get to the bottom of who else is out there & if they are a real threat to what we have - now I'm not just talking about a google search - I'm talking about going out there in your space and finding out who people are buying from and why, attending industry events like trade shows & networking as much as you can because people want to do business with people they like. 
 
Again it's basic, it's simple.
 
 I truly believe by keeping it simple (sweetheart) marketers get about 80% of the way of achieving what we are here for.  If the basics aren't in play, the other stuff has no chance!
 
Thanks again for taking the time out (with your morning cup of coffee on your fave day of the week) to read my blog...appreciate the support. 
 
Enjoy your week and don't forget to have your say!!!
(You know you want to comment, so do it!)
 

Cheers,
Miriam Berger
2 Comments
Keith Foutty
12/8/2009 05:57:26 am

Too many organizations do not work to understand their competitive advantage (if they even have one), nor do they do enough to articulate that in specific terms. Its interesting watching, then, how these companies mysteriously expect their sales organizations to compete on value when no value has ever been identified. Training sellers on sales skill techniques matters little when there is no competitive advantage to highlight on a sales call.

And the other subject--competitive benchmarking--your former employer (and my current employer) does very little in that department and it continuously mystifies me. I just had an example of that this week where our product management had no idea what our competition was doing, how we might compete and little interest in changing that dynamic.

OK a bit of a tangent from your KISS comments maybe but you are right in that things can be very simple and no-one is better served when they are overcomplicated by people trying to look smarter than the next guy.

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Miriam link
12/9/2009 12:01:47 am

Hi Keith, Thanks so much for commenting on the blog! I really appreciate your participation in it.

I can totally relate to where you are coming from. Unfortunately, this is way too common in the corporate world today.

Understanding of our competition and what we have as a unique selling proposition are keys to success.

As marketing professionals we need to demand that this is happening. This will not work in all companies so sometimes it creates a professional dillema that is not for the weak.

Miriam

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