Welcome to Extreme Marketing
The Problem: Knowing what’s the best way to achieve your company’s overall objectives. The Solution: Extreme
Marketing, the process by which you The Benefit: You make more money. You grow your business. You increase its value (which is the true measure of business/financial success) and reap the rewards that come with it. Rule #1: You will engage in Extreme Marketing, which means every marketing dollar you spend will bring in more than $1 in return. |
Why on earth would I say that “your marketing sucks,” much less give a book this title? Because in fact the marketing at most companies—big and small—has little, if anything, to do with what is needed to grow the business. Just the other day I had an experience that, while unusual, is a near-perfect illustration of what I see as a big problem. Three entrepreneurs, each president of his own company, came to my office in suburban New York to hire my company to create a series of ads for them. (My firm does whatever it takes to help a client grow; sometimes that involves creating ads.)
The men have known each other for years, referring business back and forth. That made sense. One sold insurance. The other was an investment advisor and the third did estate planning.
They had decided to join forces and create one company so that their clients could benefit from one-stop shopping for financial services and experience the benefits of a holistic approach to managing their finances.
The entrepreneurs expected it to be a quick meeting. They’d pitch some creative ideas. We’d throw out a couple of our own and voila, there would be an ad campaign for their merged company.
I think they were shocked that it didn’t go that way.
“What are you guys going to call your company,” was my first question once the small talk was out of the way.
“We are not sure yet.”
“What’s your selling proposition,” I asked.
“We haven’t figured it out yet.”
“How are you different than the competition?”
Silence.
After that silence dragged on for about 15-seconds I jumped in—with a sledge hammer.
“Let me see if I have this right. You want to run a series of ads for a company that doesn’t have a name, doesn’t know what it’s selling, or how it is different and…doesn’t even exist?” No Joke .
This situation while extreme, is far too typical. It also explains where the title of this book comes from.
Most marketing does suck. And it does because people haven’t thought through what they are trying to accomplish, before they start spending money on marketing.
They don’t engage in Extreme Marketing which at its essence means you need to do everything possible to guarantee that every marketing dollar you spend:
A) Is set in a strategic context, i.e. you know why you are spending it. (Saying, for example, “because we have to advertise,” is not a strategic context.)
B) Is based on a plan constructed to make certain that every marketing tactic and tool reinforces every other you are using.
C) Brings back more than $1 in return.
If you don’t engage in Extreme Marketing, that is if you don’t engage in each of those three things, then your marketing sucks. And it doesn’t matter if we are talking about marketing at a big company or a small one. Size is irrelevant. Your company needs to engage in Extreme Marketing—and most likely isn’t.
Why? For the most part, small companies don’t do it because no one at the firm as the expertise. And at big companies, no one has a real vested (my backside is on the line; the money is coming out of my pocket) interest in the effectiveness of their marketing.
I am not exaggerating.
As I write this, it is my favorite time of the year—the period between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Why am I so happy? Well, I will be spending time with family and friends of course, but another reason is I know I am about to make a lot of money. Every day for the next couple of weeks the phone is going to ring and on the other end of the line is going to be one of my Fortune 500 clients. The conversation is going to go like this.
“Hey, Mark, listen I was just going through our marketing budget for this year and it looks like we are going to have money left over. We are about $XXX,000 under-plan. If I don’t spend it, senior management is going to cut my budget for next year. Do you think you could do something for us next year, if I sent over the $XXX,000 now?”
As far as I know, not one of my Fortune 500 clients has ever offered to rebate the money back to corporate, if they found they had marketing funds left over for the year. They’d rather spend it on anything, than risk having their budgets cut for next year.
No wonder their marketing sucks. To them, it’s all about spending money—not growing their business.
This book will teach you how to become an Extreme Marketer, someone who gets a positive return on her marketing investment. We are going to do that by talking about both strategy and tactics.
By the time we are done talking about strategy, you will be able to make sure that:
a) Your marketing efforts are in total alignment with your company’s growth/profit/value-building objectives
b) You are clear about your unique selling proposition. (You can only stand for one primary thing. Otherwise you will confuse your current and potential customers)
c) You know what it is going to take to reach the broadest possible audience for your product or service
d) Qualified prospects—including existing customers—will find your offer nearly impossible to resist.
And when it comes to tactics, by the time we are finished you will know why you need to be able to:
» Describe what you are selling in a single sentence
» Differentiate what you are selling from the competition in such a powerful way that buying from anyone else will strike a prospect as dumb
» Determine the best prospects to sell to
» Have systems in place to allow you to do that selling efficiently
» Capture leads
» Know exactly who you are going to follow up on those leads
» Cross-sell you products and services to customers/prospects
» Grow your business like a snowball rolling down a hill, steadily gaining speed and mass each day.
Extreme Marketing is good business in microcosm.
Let’s go to work.