Why PowerPoint rules the business world

A CALL FOR VISUAL LITERACY

In many organizations, the beginning and end of any business activity is marked by the PowerPoint presentation. In the early stages of an initiative, PowerPoint is used in strategy sessions, to present proposals and put forth plans. Later, it’s used for updates and progress reports. In the final stages, it’s used to report back and to present findings and conclusions. PowerPoint is everywhere, and it shows no signs of going away anytime soon.

Why is it used so broadly? And how did this simple tool become so entrenched in business? Here are a few thoughts:

1. PowerPoint is accessible. For the novice, it’s easy to learn and use.
2. PowerPoint is everywhere. Pretty much everyone has it, or has the ability to view a file. This makes it easy to share ideas and generally move meaning around. Slides can be borrowed, stolen, recycled and re-used.
3. PowerPoint is flexible. The same document that is used to present information in a meeting or conference, can, with little or no modification, be emailed as a document or shared online, retaining much of its meaning.
4. PowerPoint is easy to read. PowerPoint documents can be scanned and understood more rapidly than text documents. Because they are primarily visual they tend to be more easily understood and remembered.
5. PowerPoint is modular. It can be broken down into single slides, which can be arranged and rearranged into numerous different sequences. Over time you can build up a storehouse of slides that represent your – or your team’s – collective knowledge about any subject, which can be distributed, shared, discussed and modified as things evolve over time.
6. PowerPoint is powerful. For the more experienced user, it’s a powerful multimedia tool, with animation and other advanced effects. It’s easy to add information of any kind: Video, charts, photographs, maps – just about anything that can be digitized can be added to PowerPoint.

People use PowerPoint to represent knowledge, and the main element is relatively small and useful atomic unit we call the slide.

So what’s the problem?
“Death by PowerPoint” is the popular term for the much-dreaded meeting where a presenter subjects his audience to slide after slide, each one densely packed with bullet points or complex, confusing information, leaving the audience bored, frustrated confused.

But PowerPoint is not the enemy. When used appropriately, slides, and short sequences of slides, are excellent tools to represent knowledge. A good slide contains visual and verbal information in equal measure, and as an “information container,” a slide is just about the perfect size for memory and retention: big enough to hold meaningful information, but not so big that it’s likely to become overwhelming. A well-designed slide – one that’s comfortable to view and read – holds just about the same amount of information that you can hold in your short-term memory.

The problem is much, much deeper than PowerPoint. The issue is this: PowerPoint is a visual tool, and we are a visually illiterate society.

What do I mean by this?
In the modern world we are constantly confronted – you might say bombarded – with visual information: Television and film are the primary culprits, followed closely by billboards, brochures, and, yes, bullet points. Advertisers have long known that visualizing an idea is one of the quickest and most reliable ways to insert it into a human brain.

Due to this visual assault, we have, over time, become more sophisticated in our reading of visual information. In a world where information is digital, where photos can be altered in Photoshop and where films can show impossible things like dinosaurs and talking animals with a high degree of realism, we understand that seeing is no longer believing.

But this kind of visual sophistication is not literacy. Literacy is the ability to both read and write. If a child could read written language but not write it – if he could read a mathematical equation but not perform such operations himself – then we would not consider him prepared for success in the world.

In our school systems we teach our children the three R’s – reading, writing and arithmetic, because we believe them to be fundamental skills for successful integration in society. But the three R’s are no longer enough. Our world is changing fast – faster than we can keep up with our historical modes of thinking and communicating. Visual literacy – the ability to both read and write visual information; the ability to learn visually; to think and solve problems in the visual domain – will, as the information revolution evolves, become a requirement for success in business and in life.

PowerPoint has risen to its current position for two reasons:

1. We’re processing more information than ever before, at unprecedented volumes
2. We don’t have as much time to read anymore, and
3. Much of the information we need to share is non-linear in nature.

PowerPoint is a visual medium. If you want to convey information visually, it’s the most accessible and ubiquitous tool there is. The answer to bad PowerPoint is not to eliminate the tool, but to improve our visual literacy. We need to teach visual literacy in our schools, and to our business people. We need an ABC book of visual language (a project I am working on).

We’re leaving an industrial age and entering an information age, yet we continue to teach, and operate our schools, as if they were factories. In an information age, visually literate societies will succeed and thrive. Shouldn’t we be one of them?

source: http://www.davegrayinfo.com/2008/05/22/why-powerpoint-rules-the-business-world/

How Marketing Can Go Beyond the 'Make It Pretty' Syndrome

by Laura Patterson

At a recent conference, Sylvia Reynolds, chief marketing officer for Wells Fargo, asked, "When did Marketing become the make-it-pretty department?" Reynolds then reminded conference participants that the fundamental role of Marketing has always been about the customer.

Essentially, Marketing's role is to find, keep, and grow the value of customers. So what does that mean, and how does a marketer get beyond the "make it pretty" syndrome?

We can use the American Marketing Association's (AMA) definition of marketing as a guide. The AMA defines marketing as "an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders."

By using this definition, we can see that marketing is more than a creative function; rather, it about a set of four critical customer-focused marketing processes.

Creating Value

Marketing sits in the space between the company's capabilities and what the customer wants. By understanding the core capabilities of the company, and then matching it with customer wants and needs, marketing drives value creation.

This means Marketing must fully understand the customer. In this capacity, the marketing organization serves as a driver of an organization's value chain by insuring products and services are shaped by customer expectations and demands.

Communicating Value

To be the chosen supplier for your customer, you first have to be on your customer's short list. To be on the customer's short list, you need to know what the customer values so that you can communicate how your company and its products/services deliver on this value in such a way as to create preference for your company and its products/services over alternative options.

Every customer touch point affects the customer's decision and action; therefore, every touch point needs to tied to and communicate the value proposition.

Delivering Value

By establishing a strong link between customer value requirements and the major value-producing activities in the company, Marketing is in the unique position to enable the company to deliver on customers' value expectations. Marketing can then use these value expectations to drive customer preference and stimulate purchase decisions.

One way to think of this is that at every customer touch point—whenever a customer will be affected by a decision or action—the people involved in that touch point need to understand and deliver on the value. In some organizations this is known at "moments of truth."

Marketing is in the unique role of being able to look across all the touch points and monitor whether the value is actually delivered. Through constant monitoring, Marketing can help determine whether it is delivering on its value promise and whether the value proposition needs modification.

Managing Customer Relationships

We need to think beyond technology when we think of customer relationship management (CRM) and instead realize that CRM is a business philosophy in which the customer plays a central, critical role in all business activities.

Though we can debate who "owns" the customer, Marketing is in the ideal position to be the centralized point for aggregating, segmenting, and analyzing customer data. This ability to create a single view of the customer comes with responsibility—to take a leadership role in the creating and managing the processes associated with the company's customer relationships.

* * *

For organizations to grow, the leadership team relies on Marketing for more "than just the pretty stuff." It should be able to depend on Marketing to develop marketing strategies that create and deliver superior perceived customer value.

With this emphasis on increasing value, Marketing can help the firm achieve growth by penetrating existing segments, developing new markets, and creating new products and services.

Accordingly, marketers should be willing to own and be accountable for these four processes if they want to serve as growth champions within their organization and leave the "make it pretty" syndrome behind.

See Laura in person at the MarketingProfs B2B Forum, Driving Sales: What's New + What Works. Catch Laura's session on "Proving Marketing's Value: Tangible Tools and Metrics for the 21st Century." Sign up for the event and use promo code ESPK08 to save $200 on the registration fee (save $350 if you sign up before May 19).

Laura Patterson (laurap@visionedgemarketing.com) is president and cofounder 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.

Published on May 13, 2008

Marketing after a merger

The goal of delivering a better product should dictate what brand is used - and how

by Bernadette Johnson
page 1

Most people agree a successful marriage takes work: Among other things it calls for communication and commitment.

It's not unlike marrying companies or brands. Consolidation can lead to greater efficiencies, better products - stronger companies overall - but it requires a thorough integration strategy and marketing plan to convince shareholders, employees and especially customers that the move is a good one.

Studies have shown that a high percentage of mergers worldwide fail to create value; in some cases they even destroy it.

"The challenge is that more fail than succeed," says Nancy Helstab, managing director at marketing consultancy BrandEdge of Toronto, citing a Canadian Business study, conducted by the Boston Consulting Group, that showed 60% of the large Canadian mergers over the past decade (among publicly traded companies) underperformed their sectors and actually destroyed acquirer shareholder value.

"The ones that succeed," she continues, "are doing it not strictly for growth reasons but because they think there is some added value they can provide; combining forces to deliver something better. That's what should motivate [a merger]...and dictate what brand will be used, and how."

There's no blueprint for success, no one common strategy. Rather, pundits point to several different formulas employed by the likes of Telus-Clearnet, TD Canada Trust, Rona-Revy, Chapters-Indigo, Sun Life-Clarica, and even the newly named Conservative Party.

Over the last year, Montreal-based Rona has actively sought to solidify its brand across Canada, says senior national marketing director Michael Brossard. In the West in particular, the home improvement chain completely rebranded its Revy (Revelstoke) stores, which it purchased in 2001, under the Rona banner.

"It was important for us to own a brand name out West, but the Revy name was so well-established that we decided to keep both brands for a while, and [ease into the] integration."

The transition was spurred on by a successful integration campaign (print and radio), that featured then Revy spokesperson Bob advising consumers that while the name was changing, the brand promise and heritage would not. In fact, Brossard adds, that campaign achieved top-of-mind-awareness of about 50%.

Similarly Rona's most recent Ontario campaign, produced by Montreal agency BCP, stars the Building Box's (now Rona Home and Garden) Hammerhead mascot shedding his suit in an effort to explain the change to consumers. While its Building Box and Revy stores have all been consolidated under the Rona banner in Ontario, the company still maintains sub brands Lansing and Cashway, both purchased between 2000 and 2001. These banners have a very strong brand equity among their key trades people and contractor targets, Brossard says. "We want to maintain that heritage."

Consolidating its banners is a wise move for Rona, says retail consultant Ed Strapagiel of Toronto-based Kubas Consulting, adding that it is tough to sustain - and rationalize - several brands that hold the same promise: Each brand is serving a similar need in the marketplace, so there is not an awful lot of difference.

"They're likely going to increase the efficiency of their advertising, and of their presence in the marketplace, by being known as one thing," he speculates. "Trust in uniformity."

Rona's consolidation is also an example of a regional-to-national strategy, adds Helstab, whereby a company that wants a national presence will buy up local or regional brands, much in the way Telus moved East by acquiring Clearnet. In such cases, she adds, the parent brand will almost always keep its name/positioning, or at least incorporate it over time.

The latter should also hold true in cases where a company purchases another organization in an effort to further its industry growth and/or market leadership, she adds.

When Montreal-based pulp and paper firm Domtar purchased four paper mills from Atlanta-based Georgia Pacific in 2001, it effectively doubled its size - becoming the number-three player in the category. But it realized that its plethora of brands could overwhelm the consumer, says Scott Townsend, director of strategic marketing initiatives at Domtar.

"We went from 54 brands to one brand, which is Domtar," he says. "Product names have become sub-brands, and they are phased out if they are too confusing."

The approach has permitted Domtar to deliver a consistent marketing message. Everything from its lifestyle-oriented advertising by New York-based agency desgripped gobe group to its newly developed packaging, featuring silhouettes of people at work, links back to its positioning, "a different feel."

But there are instances where the acquired company's name and positioning can be leveraged.

In early 2002, when Sun Life purchased Clarica, senior folk from both companies got together to determine the fate of both brands. According to Peggy Jarvie, EVP customer knowledge and branding, many different options were considered: one brand vs. the other, a co-mingled brand, and a completely new brand. In the end, with the help of focus groups and a brand assessment, they elected to use Sun Life as the corporate brand, but maintain use of the well-known Clarica brand to continue to target its retail mid-market customers.

"We put an enormous amount of effort into communicating to our customers and employees and advisors what the relationship was going to be," says Jarvie, pointing to the two waves of cross-country advertising Sun Life did at the time of the merger to allay any customer concerns.

Jarvie says they've been tracking consumer response to the Clarica brand since it launched in 1999 (pre-merger), as well as perceptions of other brands in the market. And though there have been some fluctuations over the last few years, her sense is that they haven't been impacted by the merger.

Toronto-based Chapters too has maintained separate identities for its Indigo, Chapters and Coles brands mostly due to the brand equity behind each one, says Sorya Ingrid Gaulin, director of PR and regional marketing. In fact, she adds, the book retailer has made the selection across both of its superstore formats (Chapters and Indigo) very similar, however, the perception from the customer is that they are getting something different. Coles' mandate, meanwhile, remains one of convenience (because of its mall locations) and community (customers tend to be voracious readers and visit the retailer frequently), she says.

"We want to be respectful of those different perceptions. The key for us is not so much amalgamation - it is making our stores as relevant as possible to the customer. And that to us means drilling down to the selection and the customer experience," says Gaulin, adding the retailer now has a new inventory system to help it do exactly that. Eighteen months in the making, the system will eventually allow it to tailor the inventory in each store across the country based on spending patterns, among other things, and help it further its goal of being relevant, she says.

Since the merger though, the retail chain has focused its marketing (mostly print ads supporting national campaigns) around its large-format brands - often positioned together since most of its offers apply to both brands; and always listing the integrated Web site www.chapters.indigo.ca. However, she says, in the year to come it will turn its attention to the Coles brand.

This month, it launched a promotion called Bag-a-bargain that actually extends across all formats and will include all of the brands in its print ads, which it sometimes does if the offer is not brand-sensitive. Gaulin says: "It's value- and savings-based, so it is relevant to all our customers."

- with files from Lisa D'Innocenzo

How to Create Marketing Demos That Sell Products

by Amy Gesenhues

One of the biggest challenges that marketing departments face is producing marketing tools that actually get used by the sales team.

If you are like many frustrated marketing professionals, you spin your wheels trying to create effective marketing communication materials that are left unused; or worse, you give up hours and hours fine-tuning your product's messaging to communicate key features and benefits, only to hear each salesperson giving a different pitch.

You want to create marketing tools that help sell products, not collateral that sits on a shelf. So how do you do it? How do you create a marketing tool that not only gets used but also can reinforce your marketing messaging so that everyone is speaking the same language?

A professionally produced product demo can do wonders for your marketing initiatives. It can accelerate your sales cycle and generate qualified leads. You can leverage it on multiple platforms and within various campaigns, from your site to your tradeshow booth, on marketing CDs and in email marketing efforts. And when done right, a great demo can get everyone speaking the same language.

Four Questions to Ask Yourself

Before you begin building your demo, you have to answer the following four questions:

1. What's your demo's objective?
2. What type of demo will best fit your needs?
3. How do you build a demo so that it gets the maximum return on investment?
4. Do you have the resources to build your demo in-house, or should you outsource it?

Producing an effective demo that gets used on a regular basis can be an overwhelming task—but it doesn't have to be. Once you go through the following four questions and corresponding answers, you'll be able to start your demo project with confidence and end up with a marketing tool that sells your product.

What's your demo's objective?

Just as with any project, a clearly defined objective is mandatory. Do you want to generate more leads from your Web site? Do you want an engaging, dynamic tool that pulls prospects into your sales cycle more quickly? If you are selling a software product, do you want to shorten your sales cycle? If you have a Web site, do you want to increase registrations?

Know your objective so that your product demo's content is aligned with your goal.

Your demo's objective will help you select the visuals that you want to use and the script that you will write.

For example, if you're a marketer for a retail Web site and your goal is to encourage more users to purchase products online, build a three-minute demo using actual screen shots of your site with a voiceover that tells users how to buy online as it shows them.

Put the demo on your homepage, provide links to it in emails and in online newsletters. Give the link to your demo to the customer service department so that they can email it whenever they take a call.

What type of demo best fits your needs?

In the world of product demos, there are two schools of thought: product-centric demos and conceptual demos. Which one you use depends on what you are selling. A product-centric demo focuses primarily on your product, offering up visuals of what it looks like and how it works. A conceptual demo is more animated and often leverages more graphics and marketing language.

If you have a product that does not immediately resonate with your prospects, then you will receive the most benefit from a product-centric demo. People don't buy what they can't see or don't understand.

Any complex product that does not render itself recognizable by name alone can be well served by a product-centric demo because it offers prospects the chance to see the product. For example, if you're selling a software product, showing prospects your software's top three key features in action does a lot more than giving them fading bullet points that tell them what your key features are.

A conceptual demo can be thought of as more creative than a product-centric demo, because you don't have to show the product. Conceptual demos work best when prospects have a profound understanding of what the product is.

For example, if you're selling a car, you can be more conceptual by using graphics and creative language that touches the buyer's soft spots when it comes to purchasing a vehicle. Obviously, you'll show pictures of the car, but you don't have to go into detail about how key features like the brakes or power-locks work.

How do you build a demo that it gets maximum return on investment?

ROI—the three-letter acronym that marketers live (and die) by. For your demo to receive maximum return on investment, you have to make it easily accessible and leverage it across the board. Live demos are great for prospects already deep into your sales cycle and ready for a 40-60-minute overview of your product.

But for prospects who are still in the research or evaluation stage, you need to offer a 3-6-minute automated demo that can be accessed from your Web site. Hit the highlights quickly, be clear and concise, and make it easy to find. Use technology with high user-adoption rates. Flash is great tool for automated demos. Whatever you do, don't rely on applications that have to be downloaded and don't force a prospect to use a plug-in.

The demo needs to stream instantly and deliver your message in five minutes or less. An automated demo can be used throughout your site, looped at tradeshows, linked to in an email, and placed on laptops for your sales team to use on the road.

The more ways you can deliver your demo to your prospects, the more cost-effective it becomes.

Do you have the resources to build your in-house or should you outsource it?

You have a full marketing department: copywriters, designers, flash experts. But do you have the right resources to build an effective demo that looks professional? And does your team have the time to turn the project around quickly?

A great demo is the result of blending a well-crafted script with expertly selected visuals. Outsourcing your demo to a demo-development firm may be your best bet to create a professional demo using a minimal amount of your team's time.

If you choose to outsource the demo project, select a firm that specializes in product demos. Make sure it has a defined process and pricing structure without any hidden fees. Check out the client list and view samples before you start working with the firm.

If your budget is too tight for a demo-development firm, tools are available that allow you to create your own demo. Just remember, your demo may be a prospect's first impression of your product. You want to put your best foot forward; the more professional your demo looks, the better your product looks.

* * *

A great product demo puts your product in the best light. It gives prospects an immediate understanding of what they are buying so that they come to your sales team already interested. Not only does it serve up qualified leads, it reinforces consistent messaging by getting your internal forces on the same page.

When sales, customer service, and all else who interacts with your customers, are offered a dynamic marketing tool that gives a voice to your marketing messages, everyone starts speaking the same language. Before you know it, your product demo will become your most popular marketing tool, because it will sell your product for you (and your sales team).

Amy Gesenhues is the Director of Marketing for Autodemo LLC (www.autodemo.com), a developer of software and Web site demos. She can be reached at amy@autodemo.com.

Published on April 22, 2008

Marketing's New 5 Ps: Turning What You Know Inside Out

by Jason McNamara

With apologies to Philip Kotler, whose four Ps—product, price, place, and promotion—have been integral to any successful product or service marketing effort of the past 50 years, today's successful marketing hinges on five new Ps.

Whereas the Ps we studied in college are all from the provider's point of view, these new Ps focus with laser-like clarity on the customer.

But customer-centricity can't be the mantra of just the marketing department. Every group, from the boardroom to product leaders to IT, must place the customer at the core of every decision it makes.

Responsibility for evangelizing within the organization rests squarely on the shoulders of the CMO. After all, if the marketing chief isn't living and breathing customer focus every minute, and encouraging others to do the same, who will believe its importance?

The CMO's office must consistently demonstrate to the rest of the enterprise the value of looking at all products, messaging, and brands through the customer's eyes. The entire organization can then get closer to the hearts and minds of their prospects and customers, with the added benefit of proving the value of every initiative that the company undertakes.

The new Ps are composed of five equally important, tightly interwoven components, designed to more tightly integrate marketing in the future.

1. People

Certainly, the audience must be at the heart of any marketing initiative. That isn't news to anyone in your department. Smart marketers have always had an instinctive sense of what their audiences would respond to. But no longer is it enough to know about your target in aggregate. Perhaps "person" might be a better heading for this P—because now it's important to know your customer intimately, as a human, emotional being.

It's one thing to know how people who generally look and act like your customer might respond. It's another to know exactly how John A. Sample has responded in the past, and what's likely to interest him next time. Why did he make his last return or exchange? What did he look at before placing an order? Has he purchased anything since his last call to customer service? What size does he wear?

Chances are, he's already told you who he is and what he wants—but were you listening?

2. Passion

Marketers are passionate about their profession. But no good marketer can function using only the right side of the brain anymore. Creativity and instinct are still important, but the anal side—the analytics side—is gaining fast.

Marketing is part of the business, and the business exists to perform. As a result, you're being held to greater accountability than ever before. Today, your passion for marketing must be driven by facts—the full view of all the data now available about customers, campaigns, and returns.

You already know that this passion for a 360-degree perspective can have an incredibly powerful effect. Being able to apply sophisticated marketing analytics to every piece of information you collect about your customers is like bringing the customers themselves in-house to tell you not just what's working and what isn't, but why. You can use this passion to your advantage, helping generate ideas, proving their relevance, and justifying the money you spend.

Still, a survey published in March by the Association of National Advertisers found that the top two concerns of senior marketing executives are integrated marketing communications and marketing accountability. Further research by the same group found that 60% of respondents had none of the necessary cross-functional involvement in their companies' development and management of marketing accountability programs to make them truly effective.

If you're like many CMOs, you've already identified the needs but may be uncertain of the solutions. Fortunately, each of these issues can be addressed by enterprisewide marketing analytics.

3. Processes

Marketing processes must become more enlightened. It's time for everyone to sing from one song sheet—instead of having discrete departments creating dissonant communications and hoarding data. Database and digital marketing, marketing operations, and customer relations all need to work in concert—a concept foreign to many companies in which other departments are often viewed as competitors rather than collaborators.

Again, the answer is a passionate, organization-wide approach to customer-centricity. If it doesn't come from the CMO, where will it begin?

Just two years ago, more than 40% of database marketers surveyed by Forrester Research lacked a complete picture of customer contact history, and one-third were missing transactional data from one or more channels.¹ That is clearly less than ideal.

In an organization with customer-focused processes, everyone strides toward a common goal. In a sales organization, for example, this can mean that the group which handles generating and tracking leads works closely with the sales team to contact, close, and communicate with prospects. Everyone has a hand in determining how often to communicate, how to allocate budgets, campaign lifecycles and more.

Forrester Research analysts suggest that "socializing" the customer database is a necessary change, so that everyone in the enterprise can contribute to and benefit from this tremendous asset. It's time to throw siloed systems, ideas, and processes out the window. But a sea change like this one has to start at the top.

4. Platform

An industry of ideas, marketing also now relies heavily on technology to guide contact strategies, deliver messaging, integrate information and processes, and measure performance. This takes powerful tools, only a few of which are up to the task of managing the vast data stores available across multiple channels, but they're out there.

Of course, software and technology can't solve the issues—they can only provide the platform for coordinating and accessing information, helping to apply customer-centric thinking to every initiative an organization undertakes.

Peter Kim of Forrester Research suggests that "many brand marketers don't understand IT's value beyond email and Ethernets. Conversely, many IT departments think of marketing as the 'make it pretty' department. In the best interests of the organization, marketing and IT must come together and share resources to build an experience infrastructure layer to support the customer experience. Marketers should add a high-level internal role to champion marketing technology and to manage the construction of a marketing technology backbone."²

Of course, the internal IT department may not be the answer. They have their hands full trying to satisfy new regulatory, privacy, and security demands that crop up every day. Marketing technology, however, is a specific discipline that applies technology to traditional and emerging marketing functions that can help companies deliver consistent customer experiences, integrate marketing processes, measure performance, align themselves to the needs of their businesses, and become more accountable to senior management.

5. Partners

Partners are an integral part of marketing—they always have been and always will be. The expertise they offer adds value over and above what can be achieved in-house. Consequently, CMOs must ensure that they have solid partner relationships that are part of the process and integrated more closely into the marketing department.

As marketing becomes more sophisticated, marketing service providers, agencies, and systems integrators must all be tapped to deliver on their particular areas of expertise. It's impossible to have all the skill sets in-house and do everything well and cost efficiently.

For many companies, this isn't a new idea—they already look to different providers for various types of creative, media buying, production, and more. It just becomes more critical as highly technical capabilities come into play.

Looking to the right partners means outsourcing key responsibilities to those best equipped to deliver on them, and that reduces the risk associated with investing in new infrastructure and specialist teams.

The Five Ps in Practice

When wholly, enthusiastically deployed, the new five Ps all work together—a passion for pleasing the person with whom you're doing business gives rise to new processes, the adoption of smarter platforms and value-adding partnerships that can make the promise of one-to-one marketing real.

But it has to be an enterprisewide way of thinking that comes from the top and infiltrates every member of every team. And it has to start with you.

Sources:

^1"Best Practices: Socializing The Customer Database," Forrester Research, Inc., July 23, 2007.

^2"Best Practices: Customer-Centric Marketing," Forrester Research, Inc., July 25, 2007.

Jason McNamara is chief marketing officer of Alterian (www.alterian.com).

Published on March 18, 2008

How to Create a Marketing Plan

What is a marketing plan and why is it so essential to the success of your business? Find out here, in the first section of our comprehensive guide to creating a marketing plan.


URL: http://www.entrepreneur.com/marketing/marketingbasics/marketingplan/article43018.html

Firms that are successful in marketing invariably start with a marketing plan. Large companies have plans with hundreds of pages; small companies can get by with a half-dozen sheets. Put your marketing plan in a three-ring binder. Refer to it at least quarterly, but better yet monthly. Leave a tab for putting in monthly reports on sales/manufacturing; this will allow you to track performance as you follow the plan.

The plan should cover one year. For small companies, this is often the best way to think about marketing. Things change, people leave, markets evolve, customers come and go. Later on we suggest creating a section of your plan that addresses the medium-term future--two to four years down the road. But the bulk of your plan should focus on the coming year.

You should allow yourself a couple of months to write the plan, even if it's only a few pages long. Developing the plan is the "heavy lifting" of marketing. While executing the plan has its challenges, deciding what to do and how to do it is marketing's greatest challenge. Most marketing plans kick off with the first of the year or with the opening of your fiscal year if it's different.

Who should see your plan? All the players in the company. Firms typically keep their marketing plans very, very private for one of two very different reasons: Either they're too skimpy and management would be embarrassed to have them see the light of day, or they're solid and packed with information . . . which would make them extremely valuable to the competition.

You can't do a marketing plan without getting many people involved. No matter what your size, get feedback from all parts of your company: finance, manufacturing, personnel, supply and so on--in addition to marketing itself. This is especially important because it will take all aspects of your company to make your marketing plan work. Your key people can provide realistic input on what's achievable and how your goals can be reached, and they can share any insights they have on any potential, as-yet-unrealized marketing opportunities, adding another dimension to your plan. If you're essentially a one-person management operation, you'll have to wear all your hats at one time--but at least the meetings will be short!

What's the relationship between your marketing plan and your business plan or vision statement? Your business plan spells out what your business is about--what you do and don't do, and what your ultimate goals are. It encompasses more than marketing; it can include discussions of locations, staffing, financing, strategic alliances and so on. It includes "the vision thing," the resounding words that spell out the glorious purpose of your company in stirring language. Your business plan is the U.S. Constitution of your business: If you want to do something that's outside the business plan, you need to either change your mind or change the plan. Your company's business plan provides the environment in which your marketing plan must flourish. The two documents must be consistent.

A marketing plan, on the other hand, is plump with meaning. It provides you with several major benefits. Let's review them.

* Rallying point: Your marketing plan gives your troops something to rally behind. You want them to feel confident that the captain of the vessel has the charts in order, knows how to run the ship, and has a port of destination in mind. Companies often undervalue the impact of a "marketing plan" on their own people, who want to feel part of a team engaged in an exciting and complicated joint endeavor. If you want your employees to feel committed to your company, it's important to share with them your vision of where the company is headed in the years to come. People don't always understand financial projections, but they can get excited about a well-written and well-thought-out marketing plan. You should consider releasing your marketing plan--perhaps in an abridged version--companywide. Do it with some fanfare and generate some excitement for the adventures to come. Your workers will appreciate being involved.

* Chart to success: We all know that plans are imperfect things. How can you possibly know what's going to happen 12 months or five years from now? Isn't putting together a marketing plan an exercise in futility . . . a waste of time better spent meeting with customers or fine-tuning production? Yes, possibly but only in the narrowest sense. If you don't plan, you're doomed, and an inaccurate plan is far better than no plan at all. To stay with our sea captain analogy, it's better to be 5 or even 10 degrees off your destination port than to have no destination in mind at all. The point of sailing, after all, is to get somewhere, and without a marketing plan, you'll wander the seas aimlessly, sometimes finding dry land but more often than not floundering in a vast ocean. Sea captains without a chart are rarely remembered for discovering anything but the ocean floor.

* Company operational instructions: Your child's first bike and your new VCR came with a set of instructions, and your company is far more complicated to put together and run than either of them. Your marketing plan is a step-by-step guide for your company's success. It's more important than a vision statement. To put together a genuine marketing plan, you have to assess your company from top to bottom and make sure all the pieces are working together in the best way. What do you want to do with this enterprise you call the company in the coming year? Consider it a to-do list on a grand scale. It assigns specific tasks for the year.

* Captured thinking: You don't allow your financial people to keep their numbers in their heads. Financial reports are the lifeblood of the numbers side of any business, no matter what size. It should be no different with marketing. Your written document lays out your game plan. If people leave, if new people arrive, if memories falter, if events bring pressure to alter the givens, the information in the written marketing plan stays intact to remind you of what you'd agreed on.

* Top-level reflection: In the daily hurly-burly of competitive business, it's hard to turn your attention to the big picture, especially those parts that aren't directly related to the daily operations. You need to take time periodically to really think about your business--whether it's providing you and your employees with what you want, whether there aren't some innovative wrinkles you can add, whether you're getting all you can out of your products, your sales staff and your markets. Writing your marketing plan is the best time to do this high-level thinking. Some companies send their top marketing people away to a retreat. Others go to the home of a principal. Some do marketing plan development at a local motel, away from phones and fax machines, so they can devote themselves solely to thinking hard and drawing the most accurate sketches they can of the immediate future of the business.

Ideally, after writing marketing plans for a few years, you can sit back and review a series of them, year after year, and check the progress of your company. Of course, sometimes this is hard to make time for (there is that annoying real world to deal with), but it can provide an unparalleled objective view of what you've been doing with your business life over a number of years.

Source: The Small Business Encyclopedia and Knock-Out Marketing.

An Open Letter to CFOs

By Shane Atchison , January 24, 2008

Last year, I wrote a letter to CMOs, giving them some guidance from an agency perspective. I wanted to help them become more effective in working closely with their agency partners to drive successful business results. With the dawn of a new year, I thought it might be helpful to write a letter to you, the CFO.

You may wonder, "Why are you addressing this to me at all?" Many CFOs are used to keeping marketing and agencies at a distance, knowing CMOs are in place to ensure success. However, the Web and newly empowered customers have forced most businesses to reinvent themselves in the past five years. This reinvention has broken down traditional barriers between departments and fundamentally reshaped the structure of corporate activity. The distance between marketing and finance has been reduced to the steps across the hall from your office to the CMO's office. I hope my perspective will give you some tools to make that distance even smaller.

The Pro Forma

A message I've been delivering to marketers over the past year has been the importance of being able to make assumptions about data and using those assumptions to build financial pro forma models. These models help drive an overall monetization strategy for the Web (and often for all online channels) and lend themselves to robust ROI (define) calculations. I suspect you've already seen some of these models in budget meetings.

My advice: get more involved in developing the pro forma for the Web team. Help them gain a greater understanding of all the financial elements involved in running the business and lend your expertise to improving the models' robustness. Use your experience and knowledge to raise their game.

The Profit Center

If you're already selling goods and services on your Web site, you know the impact it can have on your bottom line. If your site is just a brand advertisement or information/support site, perhaps it's time you put it under a little more scrutiny. Every site needs to be able to move from just being an expense to becoming a potential profit center, and someone must drive that point home.

Consider a site that's currently doing only brand building. How can you turn that into a potential profit generator? Perhaps your company has strong customer advocates and they're interested in buying branded merchandise, such as shirts and bags (don't laugh; have you visited M&M's World?). On a more serious note, how far along the path toward online customer self-service have you traveled? Now might be the time to see how easily that can be integrated into your brand-only site.

The Nuts and Bolts

As the worlds of financial analysis and Web site analytics grow closer, now's the time to designate a lead in your organization to help bridge the gap. The Web and marketing teams are creating scorecards, making investments, and pushing hard for big ROI. Lend them a hand through a dedicated individual that will ensure their work becomes part of your overall organizational perspective.

One of the best reasons for doing this is the requests you may have already seen for performance-based bonus added to the marketing budgets. My recommendation to marketers is to reward individuals, teams, and agencies for achieving site results. This is a natural extension of traditional performance-based compensation to a domain where results can actually be measured. Getting your team involved helps legitimize these practice and ensures it's done in a fair and responsible fashion.

Finally, sit down with the CMO and his analytics team, create a monthly scorecard that meets both of your needs, and communicate it effectively to the rest of the organization. This integrated scorecard for online performance can demonstrate the importance of Web analytics to the entire company and the close connection between investing in the online channel and creating profit from it.

If you're already doing all of the above, I salute you. The companies that acknowledge the new world of measurable and actionable marketing and its connection to ROI are going to be first to the brass ring.