Use Them to Make Your Message Memorable
By Elizabeth J. Goodgold
Taglines are the invisible communication today. They’re rarely discussed, barely analyzed, and sparingly researched. Yet, a good tagline can provide the essential underpinning upon which to build all your marketing messages.
What is a Tagline?
A tagline is the name for the words that are used with the business name or brand. It should be such a natural outgrowth of the company’s positioning that the two are inextricably linked. It can differentiate you from your competitors, express your personality, and add consistency to your marketing campaign.
Most importantly, it becomes the common thread woven throughout all of your communication. It also provides the acid test: if your brochure, advertising campaign, or sales letter conflict with the tag line, it’s obviously time to rethink your creative message.
Owning Your Tagline
In a carefully crafted tagline, the key point of difference is either overtly stated or strongly implied. This strategy reinforces your positioning and pre-empts your competitor from using the same idea. Remember: the goal is to own a unique benefit in the customer’s mind.
Any company in any industry could borrow People Soft’s "we work in your world" whereas Lincoln’s "what a luxury car should be" suggests that it has created the standard in the narrowly defined luxury car market. Merely stating parental heritage doesn’t help UUNET’s "a Worldcom Company", yet it expresses personality when used with Virgin Vie’s "for life and for living" new beauty line.
A good tagline should be so clear that even if your audience had never heard of your company, they could determine what business you’re in. Good examples include Timken: "leader in bearings and steel" to PK Ware "the data compression experts."
Differentiating in a Crowded Market
When a market becomes overcrowded or a company name becomes confusingly similar, it is a good time to introduce a tag line. This statement is particularly applicable to the high-tech field in which the number of new companies appearing with the name "cyber" "micro" or "net" grows every day.
"We put the Net to work for you" provides critical information about Netcom whereas Microway’s tagline merely makes it a "me too" player with "technology you can count on."
Another opportunity to employ a tagline is when your company name tells little about your business. Consulting firms have adopted this approach with Anderson Consulting proclaiming "business performance improvement" and Deloitte, Touche counter punching with " TBD." Even Dell Computer’s "be direct" tag informs its audience that it is a direct marketer.
Avoiding Acronyms
In the current alphabet soup maze with companies using initials versus words, a tagline provides the first clue as to the company’s business. AIG, for example provides a hint of what business it is in by its tagline of"…." TPG on the other hand, provides merely more acronyms with "the world behind TNT & PTT Post" as does QNX with "the leading realtime OS for PC’s."
Taglines vs. Slogans
Although often confused, a tagline is not a slogan. Slogans change with the advertising campaign whereas a tag line remains virtually static for many years. Ford Motor Co. only recently changed its tagline to "built Ford tough" after having used "have you driven a Ford lately?" for over 15 years.
Yes, taglines can change, but they should be evolutionary not revolutionary in nature. The United States Post Office has edged away from "we deliver for you" to simply "we deliver." Ameritech had nicely evolved its tagline from "your link to better communication" to "your link to better technology." Unfortunately, they’ve now lost all continuity and brand reinforcement provided by the "link" word by recently unveiling "in a world of technology, people make the difference."
Cliché Taglines
If you’re not careful in creating an ownable tagline, your line may quickly degenerate into a cliché. In the banking world, "bank on us" is applicable to any bank, but appropriate for none because it doesn’t communicate a sound benefit. On the other hand, Citibank’s pre-merger "The Citi never sleeps" line worked well because it communicated a 24 hr, accessible, reachable institution.
The "we mean business" line is also overemployed. Examples abound from American Airlines to the City of Seattle. Again, the message is too generic to work well for any type of business.
Guidelines for a Good Tagline
Although there’s no secret formula in this highly subjective area, there are a few guidelines to remember about taglines:
• Ensure that it is consistent with the company’s positioning;
• Communicate one simple idea;
• Opt for a few, short words;
• Always use the tagline with the company name on business cards, brochures, and printed materials;
• Test to see if it is "ownable" and could not be usurped by your competitor
• Avoid acronyms even if the term is widely known in your industry
• Communicate a clear, jargon-free message
Taglines as a Post Script
Since taglines are often at the end of a commercial or at the bottom of an ad, they act as your PS: the last best hope to propel your message. Employed properly, an audience will understand your company and its unique point of difference.
Business 2 Business Marketer, July/August 1998. Reprinted with permission.
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Sunday, January 13, 2008
The Balanced Scorecard: Prelude to a Marketing Dashboard
by Pat LaPointe
No matter how much we advocate the science of marketing, its art has not disappeared.
Take the balanced scorecard, for instance. In the tradition of marketing creativity, a graphical document—the balanced scorecard—translates marketing strategy to operational terms and sows the seeds for marketing accountability as measured and highlighted on the marketing dashboard.
Balanced scorecards, very simply, help marketers and the executives to whom they answer visualize strategic project planning.
But the scorecards don't end with their simplicity or their coordinated colors. They represent an approach to strategic management that surfaced in the early 1990s with Robert Kaplan and David Norton, the same guys who brought us Success Mapping.
Recognizing some of the weaknesses and vagueness of previous management approaches, the pair wrote a 1992 Harvard Business Review article about a format that communicates what companies measure in order to "balance" their marketing goals with broader corporate aims.
The balanced scorecard provides feedback around both business processes—from employee communications and training to launching a pilot program with print, outdoor and online advertising—and outcomes. When fully deployed, the balanced scorecard transforms strategic planning from a creative exercise into the interim tool for organizations migrating from purely intermediary metrics—brand awareness, customer satisfaction and the like—to a marketing dashboard of hard metrics like ROI.
Kaplan and Norton introduced four perspectives to include on the balanced scorecard: financial, customer, internal business processes, and learning and growth.
Whether you subscribe strictly to their outline or adapt it for your own use, the balanced scorecard suggests that you view the organization from different perspectives, developing metrics, setting goals, defining timeframes, and analyzing data relative to each. It relates corporate missions to marketing efforts—or vice versa—through a tool in which even unrelated key objectives such as brand development metrics, customer satisfaction scores and channel penetration can be plotted and tracked. This mix-and-match illustrates how individual initiatives and integrated campaigns work toward fulfilling enterprise-wide goals.
With unique missions on the corporate level and visions within marketing, balanced scorecards tend toward customization. Some even go by different names. However, all work toward the same ends—improved business process outputs and strategy outcomes.
The balanced scorecard methodology builds on some key concepts of previous management ideas (total quality management), including customer-defined quality, continuous improvement, employee empowerment, and measurement-based management and feedback. Because of its ties to other recommended management disciplines, many companies use a balanced scorecard without even knowing it.
Achieving Equilibrium and Excellence
As stakes around accountability of business functions within organizations rise, marketers don't want to monkey with measurement. To maintain the reliability and quality of the marketing scorecard, users agree that they must focus on every step in the process, keeping an eye on their proposed marketing initiatives as they progress from the planning phase, to introductions to the C-suite, general employee base and beyond.
These "feedback loops" check back from specific action plans to see that they will accomplish stated goals, ensure that applied metrics will identify success or failure of action plans and adjust timeframes to realize outcomes. The scorecard lives through constant improvement. Outputs, in numerical form, guide improvements, show performance over time, evaluate measurement methods and provide models for future goals and action plans, working from small goals to larger ones.
Through the analysis of data from the tracking processes, the measures or key performance indicators (KPIs) themselves may be evaluated and changed to better support such goals.
Build It and the CEO Will Come
To build a balanced scorecard, you first have to consider your organization's corporate mission and determine marketing's place within it. On which portions of the mission can marketing have a direct impact? Where does marketing have to start? Does it first have to win respect from the C-suite? Respect that will help executives acknowledge the value of marketing and of its scorecard?
From responses to these questions, marketing develops a vision of its own, a higher calling that it aims to answer to elevate its position within the company. Where is the organization going? How can marketing help it get there? In other words, what sub-strategies belong to marketing?
In looking at these, consider the different internal and external audiences affected, and include each of their perspectives in your marketing scorecard, at the same time defining marketing's core competencies able to assuage each perspective's needs.
You'll be happy you've done such homework before deciding on metrics. Remember that you'll review metrics continuously to make sure you've matched them to marketing's strategies and audiences appropriately and that they maximize the outcomes, displaying the complete value of marketing's success or pointing out, if possible, the missteps in marketing's failures.
With a solid scorecard—one that you feel confident will balance marketing's strengths to fulfill the function's vision of the corporate mission—action plans such as product and service rollouts, reinvigorated brand toolkits, increased media coverage of the brand message and others come to the fore.
The next step prepares to start the process over again, adjusting for missions accomplished and those left at the starting gate, in need of better metrics or cross-functional help from inside the corporation. Charge a high-ranking marketing team member with managing the scorecard and moving it forward, with sins confessed and salvations praised.
A Strategy for Action
These are benefits of activating a balanced-scorecard approach to marketing management:
* It helps align KPIs with strategy.
* It provides management with a picture of marketing operations.
* It facilitates communication and understanding of business goals and strategies to different audiences, internal and external.
* It provides strategic feedback and learning with a forward-looking thrust, not a study of past performance patterns.
* It organizes marketing information and converts it into numbers—an attractive outcome for the CEO and CFO—from a broad system that champions long-term marketing excellence.
No matter how much we advocate the science of marketing, its art has not disappeared.
Take the balanced scorecard, for instance. In the tradition of marketing creativity, a graphical document—the balanced scorecard—translates marketing strategy to operational terms and sows the seeds for marketing accountability as measured and highlighted on the marketing dashboard.
Balanced scorecards, very simply, help marketers and the executives to whom they answer visualize strategic project planning.
But the scorecards don't end with their simplicity or their coordinated colors. They represent an approach to strategic management that surfaced in the early 1990s with Robert Kaplan and David Norton, the same guys who brought us Success Mapping.
Recognizing some of the weaknesses and vagueness of previous management approaches, the pair wrote a 1992 Harvard Business Review article about a format that communicates what companies measure in order to "balance" their marketing goals with broader corporate aims.
The balanced scorecard provides feedback around both business processes—from employee communications and training to launching a pilot program with print, outdoor and online advertising—and outcomes. When fully deployed, the balanced scorecard transforms strategic planning from a creative exercise into the interim tool for organizations migrating from purely intermediary metrics—brand awareness, customer satisfaction and the like—to a marketing dashboard of hard metrics like ROI.
Kaplan and Norton introduced four perspectives to include on the balanced scorecard: financial, customer, internal business processes, and learning and growth.
Whether you subscribe strictly to their outline or adapt it for your own use, the balanced scorecard suggests that you view the organization from different perspectives, developing metrics, setting goals, defining timeframes, and analyzing data relative to each. It relates corporate missions to marketing efforts—or vice versa—through a tool in which even unrelated key objectives such as brand development metrics, customer satisfaction scores and channel penetration can be plotted and tracked. This mix-and-match illustrates how individual initiatives and integrated campaigns work toward fulfilling enterprise-wide goals.
With unique missions on the corporate level and visions within marketing, balanced scorecards tend toward customization. Some even go by different names. However, all work toward the same ends—improved business process outputs and strategy outcomes.
The balanced scorecard methodology builds on some key concepts of previous management ideas (total quality management), including customer-defined quality, continuous improvement, employee empowerment, and measurement-based management and feedback. Because of its ties to other recommended management disciplines, many companies use a balanced scorecard without even knowing it.
Achieving Equilibrium and Excellence
As stakes around accountability of business functions within organizations rise, marketers don't want to monkey with measurement. To maintain the reliability and quality of the marketing scorecard, users agree that they must focus on every step in the process, keeping an eye on their proposed marketing initiatives as they progress from the planning phase, to introductions to the C-suite, general employee base and beyond.
These "feedback loops" check back from specific action plans to see that they will accomplish stated goals, ensure that applied metrics will identify success or failure of action plans and adjust timeframes to realize outcomes. The scorecard lives through constant improvement. Outputs, in numerical form, guide improvements, show performance over time, evaluate measurement methods and provide models for future goals and action plans, working from small goals to larger ones.
Through the analysis of data from the tracking processes, the measures or key performance indicators (KPIs) themselves may be evaluated and changed to better support such goals.
Build It and the CEO Will Come
To build a balanced scorecard, you first have to consider your organization's corporate mission and determine marketing's place within it. On which portions of the mission can marketing have a direct impact? Where does marketing have to start? Does it first have to win respect from the C-suite? Respect that will help executives acknowledge the value of marketing and of its scorecard?
From responses to these questions, marketing develops a vision of its own, a higher calling that it aims to answer to elevate its position within the company. Where is the organization going? How can marketing help it get there? In other words, what sub-strategies belong to marketing?
In looking at these, consider the different internal and external audiences affected, and include each of their perspectives in your marketing scorecard, at the same time defining marketing's core competencies able to assuage each perspective's needs.
You'll be happy you've done such homework before deciding on metrics. Remember that you'll review metrics continuously to make sure you've matched them to marketing's strategies and audiences appropriately and that they maximize the outcomes, displaying the complete value of marketing's success or pointing out, if possible, the missteps in marketing's failures.
With a solid scorecard—one that you feel confident will balance marketing's strengths to fulfill the function's vision of the corporate mission—action plans such as product and service rollouts, reinvigorated brand toolkits, increased media coverage of the brand message and others come to the fore.
The next step prepares to start the process over again, adjusting for missions accomplished and those left at the starting gate, in need of better metrics or cross-functional help from inside the corporation. Charge a high-ranking marketing team member with managing the scorecard and moving it forward, with sins confessed and salvations praised.
A Strategy for Action
These are benefits of activating a balanced-scorecard approach to marketing management:
* It helps align KPIs with strategy.
* It provides management with a picture of marketing operations.
* It facilitates communication and understanding of business goals and strategies to different audiences, internal and external.
* It provides strategic feedback and learning with a forward-looking thrust, not a study of past performance patterns.
* It organizes marketing information and converts it into numbers—an attractive outcome for the CEO and CFO—from a broad system that champions long-term marketing excellence.
Saturday, January 12, 2008
New Products: The Real Challenge Is in Execution, Not Strategy
by Barry Curewitz
Marketers love talking about products like the Swiffer or iPod, two colossal successes in terms of brilliance in innovation and new product development. In fact, rumor has it there are more consulting firms taking credit for Swiffer's development and success than can fit into the new Yankee Stadium.
The puzzling question remains: Why aren't there more examples of unabashed new product successes?
To gain insight, we recently implemented a research study exploring the factors that have an impact on a company's ability to succeed in the ever-important CPG growth domain.
Our survey, titled "Creativity in New Products, A Reality Check," queried 128 senior CPG marketers to gauge the challenges they face in growing their businesses as well as the strategies and thought processes they employ.
In planning the research, we theorized that new-product development efforts could be influenced by both strategic and tactical elements. Therefore, we developed a list of five strategic and five tactical pitfalls that could limit a company's ability to succeed.
Then, we asked participants to identify those issues that currently challenge them; those they addressed three years ago; those they expect to face three years from now; and which single factor occurs most frequently.
Based on our experience, we hypothesized that strategic issues would be the most relevant causes of new-product disappointment. We were way off base. We learned that, yes, there are strategic issues affecting the outcome of new product activity, but the more relevant issues focus on tactical elements—those things that can be addressed in the short term.
In fact, 63% of survey respondents identified tactical issues as the leading prohibitive factors in the development and launching of new products.
The need to satisfy stockholders (Wall Street) has had a profound effect on our ability to identify, develop, and launch new products as reflected in the lack of human capital, financial resources, and company competencies (another form of human capital). Strategically, we're confident we know where to "place our bets," it's just that financial limitations prevent us from doing it.
The following data illustrate that three of the strategic categories we identified have become less of an issue in the last three years and are expected to become even less relevant over the next three (or at least remain status quo). These include the identification of differentiated opportunities, identification of the key consumer insight, and development of a motivating consumer proposition.
Two issues that will become more relevant to marketers have to do with competitive challenges and the elasticity of brand equities. It appears our own tactical issues have caused a bit of paranoia that the competition is moving faster than we are. And, the research further suggests that brand equities (perhaps our most valuable asset) have reached their breaking point and can't go any further.
Tactically, while all but one factor (the lack of product technology) are expected to decline over time in the amount they can limit our success, several of them are working against higher levels of frustration today, as compared with three years ago.
For example, the lack of human capital and financial resources are more relevant today than they were three years ago, but they are projected to be less relevant in '10 than they were in '04. Why? Because new product development efforts are often disrupted or delayed in order to meet the immediate corporate financial obligation—we're responding to the financial needs of the current quarter.
What are we to do? Well, we're called "managers" for a reason. We need to manage the innovation process so that we can support the best, most promising initiatives, with the limited resources available to us.
And, when possible, convince our management that additional resources are prudent in order to realize the success that the Swiffer and iPod have enjoyed.
Barry Curewitz is managing partner of Whole-Brain Brand Expansion (www.wbbe.biz); reach him at barry@wbbe.biz.
Published on December 11, 2007
Marketers love talking about products like the Swiffer or iPod, two colossal successes in terms of brilliance in innovation and new product development. In fact, rumor has it there are more consulting firms taking credit for Swiffer's development and success than can fit into the new Yankee Stadium.
The puzzling question remains: Why aren't there more examples of unabashed new product successes?
To gain insight, we recently implemented a research study exploring the factors that have an impact on a company's ability to succeed in the ever-important CPG growth domain.
Our survey, titled "Creativity in New Products, A Reality Check," queried 128 senior CPG marketers to gauge the challenges they face in growing their businesses as well as the strategies and thought processes they employ.
In planning the research, we theorized that new-product development efforts could be influenced by both strategic and tactical elements. Therefore, we developed a list of five strategic and five tactical pitfalls that could limit a company's ability to succeed.
Then, we asked participants to identify those issues that currently challenge them; those they addressed three years ago; those they expect to face three years from now; and which single factor occurs most frequently.
Based on our experience, we hypothesized that strategic issues would be the most relevant causes of new-product disappointment. We were way off base. We learned that, yes, there are strategic issues affecting the outcome of new product activity, but the more relevant issues focus on tactical elements—those things that can be addressed in the short term.
In fact, 63% of survey respondents identified tactical issues as the leading prohibitive factors in the development and launching of new products.
The need to satisfy stockholders (Wall Street) has had a profound effect on our ability to identify, develop, and launch new products as reflected in the lack of human capital, financial resources, and company competencies (another form of human capital). Strategically, we're confident we know where to "place our bets," it's just that financial limitations prevent us from doing it.
The following data illustrate that three of the strategic categories we identified have become less of an issue in the last three years and are expected to become even less relevant over the next three (or at least remain status quo). These include the identification of differentiated opportunities, identification of the key consumer insight, and development of a motivating consumer proposition.
Two issues that will become more relevant to marketers have to do with competitive challenges and the elasticity of brand equities. It appears our own tactical issues have caused a bit of paranoia that the competition is moving faster than we are. And, the research further suggests that brand equities (perhaps our most valuable asset) have reached their breaking point and can't go any further.
Tactically, while all but one factor (the lack of product technology) are expected to decline over time in the amount they can limit our success, several of them are working against higher levels of frustration today, as compared with three years ago.
For example, the lack of human capital and financial resources are more relevant today than they were three years ago, but they are projected to be less relevant in '10 than they were in '04. Why? Because new product development efforts are often disrupted or delayed in order to meet the immediate corporate financial obligation—we're responding to the financial needs of the current quarter.
What are we to do? Well, we're called "managers" for a reason. We need to manage the innovation process so that we can support the best, most promising initiatives, with the limited resources available to us.
And, when possible, convince our management that additional resources are prudent in order to realize the success that the Swiffer and iPod have enjoyed.
Barry Curewitz is managing partner of Whole-Brain Brand Expansion (www.wbbe.biz); reach him at barry@wbbe.biz.
Published on December 11, 2007
Recovering the Lost Art of Product Marketing
by Laura Patterson
When the CEO asks questions such as...
1. How can we bring products to market faster?
2. What can we do to eliminate development mistakes?
3. How can we ramp up sales faster and lower the overall cost of sales and marketing?
4. How can we improve our customer retention and referral rates?
5. What can we do to create better product margins?
...the CEO is asking product-marketing-related questions. These questions go to the heart and soul of marketing and actually go beyond what Marketing has evolved into—a function that has come to mean communicating the company's message and creating and implementing a product promotion strategy.
But if this is all Marketing has become, then Marketing has lost its way and is no longer doing its job for the organization.
Peter Drucker, the father of contemporary management, said "the aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself."
The essence of marketing requires that Marketing understand the market problem, enabling the company to create products people want to buy. Understanding the market problem is what drives product decisions, the messaging for these products, the key elements of selling, and Marketing's ability to encourage people to buy from your company.
From this perspective, marketing is knowing what to build and for whom; subsequently, a market-driven customer-centric product strategy can be defined.
This competency of defining and bringing market-driven customer-centric products to market use to reside within what was traditionally known as product marketing, a role that is disappearing from the marketing function.
Yet if marketing is knowing what to build and for whom, then this role, regardless of what we call it, is at the cornerstone of everything we do in marketing. Without this capability, Marketing will fail.
Today many companies no longer have marketers who bridge the gap between the market and product. Rather, they have replaced this expertise with product managers that reside in the engineering or development ranks.
The product manager is generally responsible for ensuring that a product gets created, tested, and shipped on schedule and that it meets the specifications. This function is primarily internally focused, bridging Marketing and Development. This person generally has excellent technical expertise but rarely has the marketing expertise needed to bring a product to market.
That may explain why Robert Cooper in his book Winning at New Products writes that for every four projects that enter development only one makes it to the market, and he estimates that 46% of all resources allocated to product development and commercialization by US firms is spent on products that are canceled or fail to yield an adequate financial return.
If your company is developing great products and services that are either missing their potential or failing altogether, it may be time to retrieve the lost art of product marketing to facilitate a more market- and customer-centric orientation. Organization and process changes might be required to make this transformation.
The following illustrates an example of the types of organizational changes that might be required.
In July 2002, Steve Ballmer reorganized Microsoft into seven business units focused on market segments, not products. Ballmer stated, "We were pretty product-centric in our marketing, which meant we weren't always delivering a higher-level perspective on the value of technology in key areas." The company embarked on a 10-year initiative to reinvent its worldwide marketing team in order to "institute a consistent customer value proposition across the organization." As a result the company renewed its focus on problems their customers need to solve, not products the company wants to sell.
The Microsoft example illustrates how a company can shift from a product-centric view to customer- and market-centric focus. This type of change requires that a company revisit the role of Marketing in its organization, because to be successful the company needs people who truly understand customers and facilitate the company's ability to define, develop, and market products that customers want to buy. This type of company will need product marketing. The transformation isn't an easy one and, as illustrated by the Microsoft example, may require management-team commitment and process and organizational changes.
It may take a while to realize the benefits, but recovering the art of product marketing will be worth the effort. As a result, your company will have individuals who understand your market and what factors and people impact the purchasing decisions about which products to buy. These product marketers will bring the insights needed to make creating the right message—delivered in the right place, at the right time—possible. The benefits far outweigh the investment.
With product marketing, your company will be able to prepare the sales channels to relate to the buyer and enable these channels to focus on the most effective messages and programs. You will be able to develop outbound marketing initiatives that move prospects into and through the pipeline to drive revenue and increase customer retention and loyalty. You will have people on your team who are always thinking about how to use what they know about the market and buyers to influence the product strategy.
With this change, your marketing will be more than just selling and advertising. It will help you define the target market, position yourself as different and superior in that target market, and permit you to stay ahead of the competition.
And you will be able to answer the five questions that we began this article with, because the company can now develop specific metrics and key performance indicators around time-to-market, time-to-revenue, time-to-value, and time-to-profit that ensure a new level of proficiency and confidence.
Laura Patterson (laurap@visionedgemarketing.com) is president and founder of VisionEdge Marketing, Inc. (www.visionedgemarketing.com) and author of Measure What Matters: Reconnecting Marketing to Business Goals and Gone Fishin': A Guide to Finding, Keeping, and Growing Profitable customers.
When the CEO asks questions such as...
1. How can we bring products to market faster?
2. What can we do to eliminate development mistakes?
3. How can we ramp up sales faster and lower the overall cost of sales and marketing?
4. How can we improve our customer retention and referral rates?
5. What can we do to create better product margins?
...the CEO is asking product-marketing-related questions. These questions go to the heart and soul of marketing and actually go beyond what Marketing has evolved into—a function that has come to mean communicating the company's message and creating and implementing a product promotion strategy.
But if this is all Marketing has become, then Marketing has lost its way and is no longer doing its job for the organization.
Peter Drucker, the father of contemporary management, said "the aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself."
The essence of marketing requires that Marketing understand the market problem, enabling the company to create products people want to buy. Understanding the market problem is what drives product decisions, the messaging for these products, the key elements of selling, and Marketing's ability to encourage people to buy from your company.
From this perspective, marketing is knowing what to build and for whom; subsequently, a market-driven customer-centric product strategy can be defined.
This competency of defining and bringing market-driven customer-centric products to market use to reside within what was traditionally known as product marketing, a role that is disappearing from the marketing function.
Yet if marketing is knowing what to build and for whom, then this role, regardless of what we call it, is at the cornerstone of everything we do in marketing. Without this capability, Marketing will fail.
Today many companies no longer have marketers who bridge the gap between the market and product. Rather, they have replaced this expertise with product managers that reside in the engineering or development ranks.
The product manager is generally responsible for ensuring that a product gets created, tested, and shipped on schedule and that it meets the specifications. This function is primarily internally focused, bridging Marketing and Development. This person generally has excellent technical expertise but rarely has the marketing expertise needed to bring a product to market.
That may explain why Robert Cooper in his book Winning at New Products writes that for every four projects that enter development only one makes it to the market, and he estimates that 46% of all resources allocated to product development and commercialization by US firms is spent on products that are canceled or fail to yield an adequate financial return.
If your company is developing great products and services that are either missing their potential or failing altogether, it may be time to retrieve the lost art of product marketing to facilitate a more market- and customer-centric orientation. Organization and process changes might be required to make this transformation.
The following illustrates an example of the types of organizational changes that might be required.
In July 2002, Steve Ballmer reorganized Microsoft into seven business units focused on market segments, not products. Ballmer stated, "We were pretty product-centric in our marketing, which meant we weren't always delivering a higher-level perspective on the value of technology in key areas." The company embarked on a 10-year initiative to reinvent its worldwide marketing team in order to "institute a consistent customer value proposition across the organization." As a result the company renewed its focus on problems their customers need to solve, not products the company wants to sell.
The Microsoft example illustrates how a company can shift from a product-centric view to customer- and market-centric focus. This type of change requires that a company revisit the role of Marketing in its organization, because to be successful the company needs people who truly understand customers and facilitate the company's ability to define, develop, and market products that customers want to buy. This type of company will need product marketing. The transformation isn't an easy one and, as illustrated by the Microsoft example, may require management-team commitment and process and organizational changes.
It may take a while to realize the benefits, but recovering the art of product marketing will be worth the effort. As a result, your company will have individuals who understand your market and what factors and people impact the purchasing decisions about which products to buy. These product marketers will bring the insights needed to make creating the right message—delivered in the right place, at the right time—possible. The benefits far outweigh the investment.
With product marketing, your company will be able to prepare the sales channels to relate to the buyer and enable these channels to focus on the most effective messages and programs. You will be able to develop outbound marketing initiatives that move prospects into and through the pipeline to drive revenue and increase customer retention and loyalty. You will have people on your team who are always thinking about how to use what they know about the market and buyers to influence the product strategy.
With this change, your marketing will be more than just selling and advertising. It will help you define the target market, position yourself as different and superior in that target market, and permit you to stay ahead of the competition.
And you will be able to answer the five questions that we began this article with, because the company can now develop specific metrics and key performance indicators around time-to-market, time-to-revenue, time-to-value, and time-to-profit that ensure a new level of proficiency and confidence.
Laura Patterson (laurap@visionedgemarketing.com) is president and founder of VisionEdge Marketing, Inc. (www.visionedgemarketing.com) and author of Measure What Matters: Reconnecting Marketing to Business Goals and Gone Fishin': A Guide to Finding, Keeping, and Growing Profitable customers.
HOW TO WRITE BETTER ADVERTISING COPY
by Brian Konradt
A successful marketing plan relies heavily on the pulling-power of advertising copy. Writing result-oriented ad copy is difficult, as it must appeal to, entice, and convince consumers to take action. There is no definitive formula to write perfect ad copy; it is based on a number of factors, including ad placement, demographic, even the consumer’s mood when they see your ad. So how is any writer supposed to pen a stunning piece of advertising copy -- copy that sizzles and sells? The following tips will jumpstart your creative thinking and help you write a better ad.
KNOW THE BASICS
All good advertising copy is comprised of the same basic elements. Good advertising copy always:
Grabs Attention: Consumers are inundated with ads, so it’s vital that your ad catches the eye and immediately grabs interest. You could do this with a headline or slogan (such as VW’s “Drivers Wanted” campaign), color or layout (Target’s new colorful, simple ads are a testimony to this) or illustration (such as the Red Bull characters or Zoloft’s depressed ball and his ladybug friend).
Promises Credible Benefit: To feel compelled by an ad, the consumer must stand to gain something; the product is often not enough. What would the consumer gain by using your product or service? This could be tangible, like a free gift; prestige, power or fame. But remember: you must be able to make good on that promise, so don’t offer anything unreasonable.
Keeps Interest: Grabbing the consumer’s attention isn’t enough; you’ve got to be able to keep that attention for at least a few seconds. This is where your benefits come into play or a product description that sets your offer apart from the others
Generates Action: This is the ultimate point of advertising copy -- it must make the reader react in some way. This doesn’t necessarily translate to buying the product immediately or using the service. Your ad could be a positioning tool to enable the reader to think about you in a certain light. Speak to your audience, or the audience you’d like to reach, and you’ll be surprised how frequently they come to you in the future.
KNOW THE MEDIUM
How you write your advertising copy will be heavily based on where you will place your ad. If it’s a billboard ad, you’ll need a super catchy headline and simple design due to the speed at which people will pass. Online ads are similar; consumers are so inundated with Internet advertising that yours must be quick and catchy. Magazine advertising is the most versatile, but this is solely dependent on the size of your ad and how many other ads compete with yours. If you’ve got a full page, feel free to experiment; more page space gives you more creative space. If the ad is tiny, you’ll need to keep things as simple as possible.
KNOW THE STYLE
Advertising copy is a unique type of writing. As the ad copywriter, your aim is to balance creativity and readability into something persuasive and entertaining. Keep the following points in mind when you write your copy:
Be Succinct: Messy wordiness will completely destroy an ad campaign. Use short sentences with as many familiar words as possible; save the thesaurus for a thesis or dissertation. Always make sure to use precise phrasing (why use five adjectives when one good action verb would do?); and eliminate any redundancies, such as “little tiny” or “annual payments of $XXX per year.”
Talk To Your Audience, Not At Them: Though you are announcing the availability of a product or service, avoid being clinical or overly formal. Write as if you’re talking to your ideal customer; use a style they’d use, words they’d be familiar with, slang they’d probably know. But be absolutely certain that you’re using these terms and phrases correctly. A recent McDonald’s campaign attempted to reach a certain audience by using the phrase “I’d hit it” in reference to a cheeseburger, unaware that the phrase is almost always used as a sexual reference.
Avoid Clichés: It’s easy for writers new to advertising copy to fall into this trap, but it’s a trap that can severely damage the writing. Clichés fail to ignite the imagination; and consumers so numb to the phrases will often skip right past them, effectively ruining the succinct element of your ad. If you find yourself tempted to use a cliché, think about the message you want to convey with that cliché and try to rephrase it in a more imaginative, personal way.
Always Proofread: It’s an obvious point, but you’d be surprised how many ads run in a magazine or on a billboard with an error of some sort. Go through your advertising copy carefully to make sure that every word is spelled correctly, the grammar is impeccable and the punctuation is dead on. Even the best ads can be ruined by a misplaced comma or dangling modifier.
© B. Konradt
Brian Konradt is a freelance writer and founder of FreelanceWriting.Com (http://www.freelancewriting.com), a free web site to help writers master the business and creative sides of freelance writing, and BookCatcher.com (http://www.bookcatcher.com), a free website to help authors promote their books.
A successful marketing plan relies heavily on the pulling-power of advertising copy. Writing result-oriented ad copy is difficult, as it must appeal to, entice, and convince consumers to take action. There is no definitive formula to write perfect ad copy; it is based on a number of factors, including ad placement, demographic, even the consumer’s mood when they see your ad. So how is any writer supposed to pen a stunning piece of advertising copy -- copy that sizzles and sells? The following tips will jumpstart your creative thinking and help you write a better ad.
KNOW THE BASICS
All good advertising copy is comprised of the same basic elements. Good advertising copy always:
Grabs Attention: Consumers are inundated with ads, so it’s vital that your ad catches the eye and immediately grabs interest. You could do this with a headline or slogan (such as VW’s “Drivers Wanted” campaign), color or layout (Target’s new colorful, simple ads are a testimony to this) or illustration (such as the Red Bull characters or Zoloft’s depressed ball and his ladybug friend).
Promises Credible Benefit: To feel compelled by an ad, the consumer must stand to gain something; the product is often not enough. What would the consumer gain by using your product or service? This could be tangible, like a free gift; prestige, power or fame. But remember: you must be able to make good on that promise, so don’t offer anything unreasonable.
Keeps Interest: Grabbing the consumer’s attention isn’t enough; you’ve got to be able to keep that attention for at least a few seconds. This is where your benefits come into play or a product description that sets your offer apart from the others
Generates Action: This is the ultimate point of advertising copy -- it must make the reader react in some way. This doesn’t necessarily translate to buying the product immediately or using the service. Your ad could be a positioning tool to enable the reader to think about you in a certain light. Speak to your audience, or the audience you’d like to reach, and you’ll be surprised how frequently they come to you in the future.
KNOW THE MEDIUM
How you write your advertising copy will be heavily based on where you will place your ad. If it’s a billboard ad, you’ll need a super catchy headline and simple design due to the speed at which people will pass. Online ads are similar; consumers are so inundated with Internet advertising that yours must be quick and catchy. Magazine advertising is the most versatile, but this is solely dependent on the size of your ad and how many other ads compete with yours. If you’ve got a full page, feel free to experiment; more page space gives you more creative space. If the ad is tiny, you’ll need to keep things as simple as possible.
KNOW THE STYLE
Advertising copy is a unique type of writing. As the ad copywriter, your aim is to balance creativity and readability into something persuasive and entertaining. Keep the following points in mind when you write your copy:
Be Succinct: Messy wordiness will completely destroy an ad campaign. Use short sentences with as many familiar words as possible; save the thesaurus for a thesis or dissertation. Always make sure to use precise phrasing (why use five adjectives when one good action verb would do?); and eliminate any redundancies, such as “little tiny” or “annual payments of $XXX per year.”
Talk To Your Audience, Not At Them: Though you are announcing the availability of a product or service, avoid being clinical or overly formal. Write as if you’re talking to your ideal customer; use a style they’d use, words they’d be familiar with, slang they’d probably know. But be absolutely certain that you’re using these terms and phrases correctly. A recent McDonald’s campaign attempted to reach a certain audience by using the phrase “I’d hit it” in reference to a cheeseburger, unaware that the phrase is almost always used as a sexual reference.
Avoid Clichés: It’s easy for writers new to advertising copy to fall into this trap, but it’s a trap that can severely damage the writing. Clichés fail to ignite the imagination; and consumers so numb to the phrases will often skip right past them, effectively ruining the succinct element of your ad. If you find yourself tempted to use a cliché, think about the message you want to convey with that cliché and try to rephrase it in a more imaginative, personal way.
Always Proofread: It’s an obvious point, but you’d be surprised how many ads run in a magazine or on a billboard with an error of some sort. Go through your advertising copy carefully to make sure that every word is spelled correctly, the grammar is impeccable and the punctuation is dead on. Even the best ads can be ruined by a misplaced comma or dangling modifier.
© B. Konradt
Brian Konradt is a freelance writer and founder of FreelanceWriting.Com (http://www.freelancewriting.com), a free web site to help writers master the business and creative sides of freelance writing, and BookCatcher.com (http://www.bookcatcher.com), a free website to help authors promote their books.
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