 |
| Malcolm Frank, Senior Vice President, Marketing and Strategy, Cognizant |
| |
| |
| The author, Malcolm Frank, Senior Vice President, Marketing and Strategy, Cognizant, explains that as markets shift, technologies change, and customers gain superior information in new ways, marketing teams need to continue to evolve and adapt. |
| |
| |
|
|
Marketing, particularly in IT and IT Services, has been in crisis for some time. With the rapidly evolving nature of markets, client needs, technology and – most importantly – how clients make buying decisions, most marketing departments have not kept pace.
There are myriad reasons for these failures, but five of the key ones that must be addressed are:
1 The “You Are Here” dot: The role of strategic marketing in determining your market position
2 Build your Brand: Make a choice, take a stand
3 Naked Marketing: How one markets in fully transparent environments
4 Flat World Marketing: Translatable messages and marketing approaches
5 Get a (Second) Life: Leveraging new technologies
The “You Are Here” Dot: The Role of Strategic Marketing
I love the “You Are Here” dot. You know it - the dot that one finds on the map of a shopping mall, zoo, or airport. That dot provides a sense of clarity, which is rarely found in life, and certainly not in our markets. Our markets are increasingly dynamic, and the mistake that many marketers make is that they never know where they are. Is your market an emerging one, or is it mature? And if it’s mature, specifically, what is its level of maturity? How much is the economy (good or bad) impacting your messaging and value proposition? How has the competition hurt, or helped, you in the past few quarters? What are customers really looking for now? At the end of the day, do your marketing messages and your marketing methods fit with
|
|
your current market position? Some firms never find the dot. Others find it once, but then don’t recognise that it has moved and are stuck with marketing messages and approaches, which no longer resonate.
Sam Walton, the founder of Wal-Mart, was once asked about his marketing budget. He responded by saying, “I know I have to cut 50 percent. I just never know what 50 percent.” What he was really saying is that, “Some of our marketing is ‘on the dot,’ other aspects are not.” As a marketing leader, if you don’t understand all these contextual issues – and then properly place your firm over the right spaces with the right messages – you will most certainly waste more than 50 percent of your marketing budget on useless campaigns.
To find the dot, take a continual walk through your firm and your industry. In both formal and informal ways, poll employees, customers, analysts, competitors, economists and thought-leaders. Understand how other industries might be influencing your own. And stay humble in this journey, being open to new information along the way, always remembering you were born with two ears and one mouth.
Make a Choice, Take a Stand to Build Your Brand
If one looks at the world’s great brands, they’ve all made choices. They have consciously decided that they will appeal (in the strongest sense possible) to a minority of their target market. This seems counter-intuitive in its nature. After all, why ignore the needs of the majority of your buyers? |
