Andys Blog
Andy Graham is the founder of One
Brand Group. He's positively brimming
with thoughts and ideas, not just about
B2B marketing, but about other things too.
Have a read, or – if you'd prefer to have a conversation – get in touch.
More thoughts here at Andy's site.
Have a read, or – if you'd prefer to have a conversation – get in touch.
More thoughts here at Andy's site.
Failure is not an option - it is essential
29/07/2010
Recession-proofing the marketing strategy
29/07/2010
29/07/2010
Recession-proofing the marketing strategy
29/07/2010
The marketing budget can neither be created nor destroyed - it just moves around.
Added 07 January 2007
Reviewing the marketing mix should be a continuous process.
The best companies embrace the required flexibility, sometimes focussing the budget inward and sometimes outward in a controlled and flexible way. With an increasing number of demands on the marketing budget it pays to know your priorities.
The worst companies will spend exactly the same this year on exactly the same things as last year and the year before that and the year before that etc. This is not a marketing-mix recipe for success.
As a B2B company it makes sense to attempt to achieve differentiation in the product itself - this is the wholly grail of innovation, and the basis of most venture capitol investment decisions - to be the first, to blaze a trail for others to follow, to achieve first mover advantage - all very macho and hard objectives. If only it were that straight forward.
We need to be more multidimensional when we consider value creation and be aware of the importance of the broader marketing activity, not just the product itself.
There is a collection of great products that were maybe fantastic in their own right but failed to deliver value. It is recognised that between 33% to 90% of product developments are cancelled or fail (In 1982 Booz, Allen and Hamilton published findings from an exhaustive study 700 corporations on the subject of new products (New Products Management for the 1980s). Simply put, they found that most new products fail.
Consider as well that approximately 22,000 products are introduced each year into supermarkets, mass merchandisers, and health food stores: The Sinclair C5, Nescafe coffee in a can, The Spruce Goose, Dyson rotary washing machine, Beta Max video, Coca Cola Clear to mention a few. Not all these failures are because they were poorly made or manufactured. Many new products fail because they were developed with poor insight, or lost out to an inferior product because of inadequate communications. New product development is necessary for business success and can not be wrong per se, rather that failure is the result of the sin of a one dimensional, imbalanced marketing mix.
B2C can be just as guilty of losing sight of the bigger picture and believing too much in one dimension rather than connecting to the whole. Just like the sin of over product developing, B2C can be guilty of over promising, over selling and under delivering - the dotcom bubble, Marks and Spencer's in 2000 and most recently Mercedes, and Apple Ipod have been guilty of over marketing or over selling.
Competitive marketing is a question of balance, which begs the question what balances what?
How much do you spend on marketing?
To look beyond a narrow bipolar analysis of B2B and B2C, We need to look at a bigger picture that encompasses marketing in the broadest sense to understand:
what are the fundamental marketing elements
where is the money spent,
why do the differences appear so significant
how we can provide greater clarity.
what is the most effective allocation of budget to ensure the most competitive results.
Rather than just emotionally bemoaning our frustrations we can take a more rational and logical approach. Our aim is to enable you to make more considered and strategic choices when deciding your marketing mix, rather than necessarily and sometimes blindly following the expectations of your particular market.
Added 07 January 2007
Reviewing the marketing mix should be a continuous process.
The best companies embrace the required flexibility, sometimes focussing the budget inward and sometimes outward in a controlled and flexible way. With an increasing number of demands on the marketing budget it pays to know your priorities.
The worst companies will spend exactly the same this year on exactly the same things as last year and the year before that and the year before that etc. This is not a marketing-mix recipe for success.
As a B2B company it makes sense to attempt to achieve differentiation in the product itself - this is the wholly grail of innovation, and the basis of most venture capitol investment decisions - to be the first, to blaze a trail for others to follow, to achieve first mover advantage - all very macho and hard objectives. If only it were that straight forward.
We need to be more multidimensional when we consider value creation and be aware of the importance of the broader marketing activity, not just the product itself.
There is a collection of great products that were maybe fantastic in their own right but failed to deliver value. It is recognised that between 33% to 90% of product developments are cancelled or fail (In 1982 Booz, Allen and Hamilton published findings from an exhaustive study 700 corporations on the subject of new products (New Products Management for the 1980s). Simply put, they found that most new products fail.
Consider as well that approximately 22,000 products are introduced each year into supermarkets, mass merchandisers, and health food stores: The Sinclair C5, Nescafe coffee in a can, The Spruce Goose, Dyson rotary washing machine, Beta Max video, Coca Cola Clear to mention a few. Not all these failures are because they were poorly made or manufactured. Many new products fail because they were developed with poor insight, or lost out to an inferior product because of inadequate communications. New product development is necessary for business success and can not be wrong per se, rather that failure is the result of the sin of a one dimensional, imbalanced marketing mix.
B2C can be just as guilty of losing sight of the bigger picture and believing too much in one dimension rather than connecting to the whole. Just like the sin of over product developing, B2C can be guilty of over promising, over selling and under delivering - the dotcom bubble, Marks and Spencer's in 2000 and most recently Mercedes, and Apple Ipod have been guilty of over marketing or over selling.
Competitive marketing is a question of balance, which begs the question what balances what?
How much do you spend on marketing?
To look beyond a narrow bipolar analysis of B2B and B2C, We need to look at a bigger picture that encompasses marketing in the broadest sense to understand:
what are the fundamental marketing elements
where is the money spent,
why do the differences appear so significant
how we can provide greater clarity.
what is the most effective allocation of budget to ensure the most competitive results.
Rather than just emotionally bemoaning our frustrations we can take a more rational and logical approach. Our aim is to enable you to make more considered and strategic choices when deciding your marketing mix, rather than necessarily and sometimes blindly following the expectations of your particular market.