5 Ways to Succeed in Marketing
Follow these, and you’ll be a winner, but read at your own risk! These aren't easy principles to follow in this world that aschews taking risks, but do so, and you will have the chance at succeeding utterly.
By James Manouse
Head of Marketing at the two fastest growing Independent Broker/Dealers from 2001 – 2005 and 3-time winner of the Broker/Dealer of the Year Award.
1. Marketing is hard. It’s emotion and if you don’t feel something from it, you haven’t got it. Marketing is not a factory. It’s an Art studio. Marketing is hard and it should be. Avoid the easy path. You want to reach people? You have to suffer for it and you have to pay for it. It is illusive, but it’s there, where you least expect it. If you think what you’ve done is good, tear it up and start all over again until you have something better than good. Strive to create something “new.” Always remember, the most important word in all of marketing is the word “new”. The word “better” is just an arms race. What is “better” anyway? “New” is what you want. It’s what people want. They hear “better”; and they say “so what?” You say “new” and they say, “Can I have a look?” and “What is it?” If anything has been born-out over the last few years in society – from technology, to entertainment, to music, it’s that we have an insatiable lust, as a people, for that which is “new”. This is because “new” makes us feel alive. It makes us, as a collective, relevant. It marks the upward surge of mankind as a whole and we, as human beings, find that exciting, and that which excites us, interests us, and that which awakens us, renews us, and that which renews us, wakes us from our slumber and welcomes us back to the world with energy and vigor. In short, “new” makes life worth living. So, live it, feel it and make it NEW! As for “better”, give me a break. I don’t want “better”, I don’t want “next”, I want revolution, I want “new”.
2. Marketing is not efficient, so avoid that. If you think you can mass produce it and turn it into something repeatable, you’re on the wrong track. Avoid this at all costs. Efficient, boilerplate marketing is middle-of-the-road, plain vanilla, safe, corporate and will never, ever reach anyone. Neither will you ever stand out. Case in point – a Porsche is more than a car, they are works of Art. Professor Von Porsche once said that his cars “will never be created by a committee, because committee’s have no soul”. Truer words were never spoken. Find the soul in what you attempt to create, or go home. Find the least offensive direction, usually arrived at by committee and congratulations all around, and you have arrived at a destination called mediocrity. What you want, as hard as it is to believe, are sort of blank stares all around the board room. Are you up for that? Can you handle the worried looks and the always ubiquitous “concerns” of the powers that be? Marketing ain’t easy. You think coming up with something original is hard? Wait until you have to defend it. Now you’re a politician and most marketers aren’t politicians – that’s why they’re in marketing.
3. Few will agree with you, and those that do will shrink from that once the heated debate begins, and the 'stuff' hits the fan (so to speak), so be prepared. Allies are few because victory has a hundred fathers (and there is always time to hop on-board after the fact) while failure is an orphan, and in the corporate world you survive by avoiding being the fall-guy. Will you fight for your ideas when all is on the line? It’s lonely out there when the moment of truth arrives.There’s a hilarious line from the play “How to succeed in business without really trying” where the protagonist (usually the actor Robert Morse) is reading a book with the eponymous title of the play where he reads the chapter where it congratulates him on reaching the level of VP – unless he’s the VP of Marketing. At which point he’s basically screwed. The author knew what he was talking about. You know, it is said in Hollywood that not everyone thinks they can direct, or act or produce – but that everyone thinks they’re a screenwriter. Not that they could do it – just that everyone, with their opinions, could improve upon what’s been written. How you handle the meddling and the interference when creating marketing inside the corporate world will dictate how long you’ll last.
Here’s a hint – get an idea of the process from the start – how things work, the culture and so forth. Make sure you are guaranteed some freedoms, preferably in writing, because if you’re not, if everyone in the firm from the lawyer to the head of compliance to the COO to the CEO has to approve what you’ve done, or offer ideas and suggestions, you’re in for a very difficult ride. No way you’ll ever create something ground-breaking and attention getting from within that environment – because, quite simply, no one ever has. The more people wiegh-in, the less impactful and the less revolutionary will be the end result.
You don’t have to have total absolute control because you won’t get it, but creativity along with the political skills to shepherd an idea through the powers-that-be go hand in hand and are equally important. That's a tough skill set to find in anyone, which is why so few individuals are really good at it. Unfortunately it is the indivudual that embodies the latter, rather than the former, who normally survives and thrives in the corporate world. This, in my opinion, needs to be reveresed. Back on point, if you know going in that you’re going to be given the chance to show what you can do, that’s about all you can ask for. Artists have to fight for what they wish to create, and so, therefore, are then labeled ‘temperamental’ – ergo, the temperamental artist. You can be somewhat temperamental, just not too temperamental or you will just wind-up being labeled a mal-content.
4. Don’t overload it! By far, the mistake I see the most is the tendency to turn an ad or a piece of marketing material into a prospectus or a manual on the thing being offered. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Again, avoid at all costs. Marketing is a singular thing. You hit one idea and you pound that one idea into the ground. You’re not trying to educate people with how much knowledge you can fit into something, or how much stuff you can cram into a four-page marketing brochure. Quite the opposite. Do not fear blank space in an ad or brochure. Hit your idea, and hit it hard. Remember, it’s not about education, it’s about attention. Grab the reader’s attention and maybe you’ll be remembered. There is an awful lot of information bombarding people at the moment. It’s like never before and it comes from everywhere. It used to be the newspaper, then radio, then TV, then the internet, then your phone, then social networks, then apps like Tweeter, via the internet and on your phone, and now every single thing I’ve just mentioned. You want someone’s attention? You have a fraction of a second. Grab their attention, maybe get them to see your logo and remember it, grab it again, grab it again, have your logo finally sink in, now you’ve branded, and then, maybe, if you’re lucky, the sales process can begin. You’re not being clever by overloading a brochure, you’re being dense. No one will read it, and worst of all, they’re heading to your competitors ad or brochure and looking at that instead. Why, because aesthetically speaking, it is more appealing and people search for that which they find appealing.
5. Marketing is silent and you need to feel the heat coming off it. It’s what’s not written that is important. What the silence brings is emotion. What do you feel when you look at an ad or a marketing brochure? Is there anything there? If not, congratulations, you’ve probably created a middle-of-the-road, safe, non-threatening piece of boiler plate marketing that can be replicated by a marketing factory. A template for use over and over. What a monumental blunder, in my opinion. Guys, that’s not what it’s about. Marketing is risk. It’s taking the chance to stand out there, all alone and dare to be different. Will it be accepted right off the bat? Probably not, but we’re talking Sgt. Pepper here. We’re talking about Pet Sounds here. What we’re not talking about, is Pat Boone’s Tutti Fruitti. We’re talking about Little Richard’s Tutti Fruitti. Pat Boone was safe and sold lots of records and everyone thought it was s success in white America – and it was utterly forgettable and even laughable today. Little Richard scared the Hell out of parents in White America, but today he’s a genius and was an inspiration to the great bands that came later. Pat Boone? Not so much. So, you’re Little Richard. You’d better look at what you create for what s not written there, and get some heat off it. Never release anything until you feel the heat coming off it. Remember, someone had to go in and convince Geico to go wt Cavemen and a green gecko – at the same time. Logically, you have to be kidding, but it worked and it worked precisely because Geico is not wasting time explaining car insurance. Word to the wise.