Stop and Think

This is a short article I wrote for The Leadership Thinktank

Stop thinking about marketing!

As a marketing professional I should give you some marketing ‘top tips’ right? However, in 25 years of working with CEOs, marketing is rarely where I step in.

When I am invited in to meet a new client, they always have an idea that they want a marketing plan, a website, a brochure, an event. For the most part they are right and I totally understand that we all like to jump into the creative side of business. However, I usually find that some necessary and focused thinking hasn’t been done.

These are the three areas I address most often with clients before I can begin any meaningful marketing activity.

1. Business objectives before marketing strategy

Setting growth targets and being very specific about the kind of business you want to generate is the best focus and advantage you can give your business.

Many years ago I went to head up Commercial Marketing in a large law firm in London. The senior partners were so excited to have a ‘brand expert’ on board to finally get new brochures, better events and nicer golfing umbrellas. They were very happy until I told them that they would get nothing from my team until we had created a business plan for each of the seven Practice areas.

‘You don’t understand LAW Diana, that’s not how it works.’

‘I don’t need to understand law’ I said ‘there are 4000 lawyers and employees in this firm to do that! I do understand business and unless we know how we want to grow and in which market areas, then a new brochure simply will not turn the business around.’

Six out of seven Practices completed a straightforward business plan with me. Their resulting marketing strategies were specific to their individual needs and they all acquired new clients and a renewed sense of purpose.

The 7th Practice did not buy into my passion for a business focus, my lack of legal experience in general or me in particular. Instead, I put a very diplomatic marketing manager onto their practice to do their bidding and together they created another brochure and of course, much better golfing umbrellas. The practice continued to lose business.

2. Know your target market and purchasing drivers

Being very clear about your precise target market and why those people are interested in your brand is key to the success of all your business and marketing strategies.

Nobody’s target market is ‘everybody’, but I do hear that a lot. You know when you send an email to many people asking for various actions, nothing gets done. But if you ask specific people for specific actions, then you get results? It’s the same thing with marketing. Your product or service should speak to a specific area of the population and be desirable to them, but not out of reach.

I worked at Sony Europe in the 90s as their Sony & Trinitron brand guardian, planning and communications manager.

Surprisingly a major problem country at this time was France where everybody loved the brand, but Sony sales were 7th in the market according to Nielsen & GfK.

Sony France had been running a long standing and very stylish advertising campaign for years, ‘If you can dream it, Sony can make it’ which finished on a shot of a very famous and expensive apartment overlooking the Seine. Speaking to shoppers at several retail outlets, I was surprised and overwhelmed by the love and regard everybody had for the Sony brand.

The problem was that the average buyer of consumer electronics in France assumed they would never be able to afford a Sony and didn’t even put it on their shopping list. Sony France had successfully positioned Sony in the same realm as Bang and Olufsen and in so doing, had alienated 70% of their potential market. Very desirable but completely out of reach for their target market.

3. People & passion will build your business

As a CEO, you create the culture in your business. Let me say that again because this point is often missed. YOU create the culture in your business.

Be bold in stating the kind of business you want, the kind of people you want to surround yourself with and the kind of behaviour you will not tolerate.

This is the culture that you create and it should be one that makes you and your employees want to come into work every day. A culture that will ultimately result in productivity and business success. And if you feel uncomfortable about making a bold stance, shaking your spear and saying ‘this is how it will be’, let me explain what will happen:

• You will leave a cultural void in your business that will become filled with other people’s ideas of what a business should be. Sad but true, most people’s experience of how a business runs includes blame, bullying, disrespect, hierarchical decision trees and poor management styles.
• When people join a new company and unless there is something else already in place, this is the culture and the frame of reference they will unwittingly instill in the void you have left. The result is a mish-mash culture with accepted poor behaviours and lack of unity.

Be brave and strive for a great culture. Hire people who are smarter or have greater experience than you in some areas. Respect their ability to challenge you and teach you something new. Let them be brilliant and trust them to deliver. Support them to succeed and then get out of their way, taking any roadblocks with you.

If you hire good people and enable them to do their job, they will happily run your business successfully and challenge you to always think bigger and better.

Be humble and know that some of the people you work with are better than you at many things, but you are the one with the vision that brings it all together and in that, you are uniquely brilliant.