Author: Fabrizio

Positioning

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What does a book from the 80s have to teach to marketers today?

Let’s see.

Advertising is, for the most part, unwanted and unliked. In some cases, advertising is thoroughly detested.

[…]

In general, the mind accepts only that which matches prior knowledge or experience. Millions of dollars have been wasted trying to change minds with advertising. Once a mind is made up, it’s almost impossible to change it. Certainly not with a weak force like advertising.

[…]

as the effectiveness of advertising goes down, the use of it goes up. Not just in volume, but in the number of users.

These are some of the aspects Ries and Trout start from in their book, Positioning: how to be seen and heard in the overcrowded marketplace. And they bear quite incredible similarities to the environment marketers operate in nowadays. Almost 40 years after the book was written.

The solution to this mix of sensory overload and advertising inefficacy is positioning, the process that leads (better, should lead) companies to identify a space in the prospect’s mind and leverage it for growth and success. Contrary to common shared belief, indeed, growth and success are not in the product and its features, they are in how the audience and particularly your prospects remember and talk about you.

Not surprisingly, Ries and Trout share quite many examples of companies who did positioning right and companies who did it wrong (back in the Seventies and Eighties), and perhaps the more interesting examples are the ones the authors dedicate a full chapter each in the second half of the book. Some commonalities.

  • Find a space (“cherchez le creneau”, as they say in French) that is not taken, no matter if it is a small one, and be the first to move there.
  • To find that space, the company needs to know a whole lot of things that have very little to do with the product or service they offer: market, competitors, audience, prospects, and so on.
  • Be mindful of the importance of the name of your product or service, better if it is a name that reminds what the product or service stands for.
  • Avoid name extensions to the best of your abilities (“When a really new product comes along, it’s almost always a mistake to hang a well-known name on it“).
  • Be consistent with your positioning strategy in the long-term, particularly in times of change, when it is more beneficial to change tactics rather than strategy.

Positioning is one of those books that anybody who starts a career in marketing should read and keep close throughout their careers. It really is too easy to forget about the importance of everything that is not the product/service you are offering (competitors, environment, audience, etc.) and fall in love with words and messages that mean literally nothing to the people you seek to serve.

This is the classic mistake made by the leader. The illusion that the power of the product is derived from the power of the organization. It’s just the reverse. The power of the organization is derived from the power of the product, the position that the product owns in the prospect’s mind.

 

 

In search of a sweet spot

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Taking responsibility is important, and it shouldn’t mean we have to beat ourselves up.

Not beating ourselves up is wonderful, and it shouldn’t mean we don’t have to take responsibility.

There’s a sweet spot we are looking for here.

It’s the point at which we understand that things happening are never fully one’s fault, we recognize that we had a role in making the situation what it is, and we attempt to move forward with a small or big improvement. Possibly, bringing the others involved along with us on the same path.

Metrics that distract

Fabrizio1 Comment

Reading this reminded me of the time I found a job ad for Social Media Manager listing 1,000 (or was it 10,000) friends on Facebook as a requisite to apply.

We are easily mislead by what is not important, and so we believe that doing Marketing on social media is about metrics that are as much visibile as they are insignificant. And of course, managers and executives are then disappointed when they come to this very realization.

Continue focusing on bringing consistent value to your audience where they are, and stay clear of distraction-metrics. Long-term success will be your reward.

Deaf to ads

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Banner blindness is a concept that dates back to 1998. It is a phenomenon according to which when scrolling a web page, we consciously or unconsciously ignore banner like information.

As consumers (and therefore advertisers) shift towards audio consumption, I have the impression we are also developing a sort of advertising deafness. Similar to banner blindness, advertising deafness means that when we are listening to a podcast, music streaming, or even a video, we tune out the promotional messages, as we perceive them as a disturbance.

Considering the serial nature of podcast in particular, and the fact that the audience tends to listen to them regularly, a nice way to overcome advertising deafness would be to take advantage of the potential of this medium. So, instead of running 30 seconds ads, marketers could try to tell episodic stories about their brand, their product, their service, and the way they are impacting the world.

It is lazy and inefficient to use old formats in new media. If you give people something to wait for, something to even long for, they will listen. And your message will have the power it (perhaps) deserves.

Naming and acting

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If you call mean, “mean”.
Or if you call kind, “kind”.

That is OK, and despite some discomfort in the first case, people will have the tools to decide if they want to stick around or not.

The real disaster, though, is when you call mean, “kind”.

As in.

The most important asset is our people, and then people are asked for regular overtime to keep up with management/customers/partners requests.

We embrace innovation, and then to kick off a new project people have to go through a rigid approval system.

We want to hear from you, and yet it is a machine responding the call, and before I get there I have to wait 20 minute on the line.

How we name things is important. And even more important is that we follow up to the naming with actions and practices.