On Marketing

Chris Anderson, writing in Wired Magazine, reminds us that King Gillette achieved business success in the early 1900s by giving away razors so he could sell razor blades.  He finds many more examples of the “give it away free” marketing approach in today’s electronic marketplace. Chris says:

“It’s now clear that practically everything Web technology touches starts down the path to gratis, at least as far as we consumers are concerned.”

But I don’t think that’s the lesson we should learn from Mr. Gillette. Or (for that matter) the lesson we should learn from the marketing of cell phones, ink jet printers, or iPods. (more…)

Patent reform got a lot of attention in 2008. Depending on your point of view, the United States patent system is either badly flawed or just fine, thank you. Court decisions have forced inventors and their counsel to reconsider the way patent claims are drawn and even whether certain kinds of inventions - such as business methods and computer software - are patentable at all.

What does this have to do with marketing? Well, before you start to market a product or service you had better figure out your unique position in the marketplace. This may have nothing to do with technology; your unique market position may be more related to something like channel presence or pricing. But if you are marketing a first-of-its-kind product, one element of your uniqueness will likely be technical novelty. And one way to protect that unique position is through the patent system. (more…)

I was thinking today about established companies and why they have such a hard time launching products in new categories. Or digesting a start-up that is launching such products. Somehow, the launch effort just doesn’t get off the ground. Sometimes this is obviously due to lackluster marketing effort. But maybe, even with the kind of blockbuster launch only a large company can muster, it doesn’t work.

Why is that? We tend to blame “largeness” or “bureaucracy” or the “politics” of large companies. But I don’t think that’s the real reason. New launches fail in established companies because they require the company to have multiple personalities.

Let me explain.

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I recently spent some time with Jane Adamson and Rick McPartlin of The Revenue Game. These folks are consultants who focus on helping their clients (small and mid-sized businesses) figure out why they are not meeting their revenue targets. It seems that most companies in this situation look at simple-minded fixes like changing their sales commission structure or launching a new ad campaign. But Jane and Rick usually find that there are more systemic issues — for example, their client may not be making a clear offer to their prospective customers because they have not clearly defined the offer they wish to make.

Jane and Rick have a number of diagnostic tools that help them dig down to the root causes of revenue shortfall. But one of these caught my eye because it is so relevant to a company’s marketing strategy.

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Back in April, Mike Volpe of HubSpot presented an excellent webinar on the potential for using social networking sites as marketing tools. Mike’s presentation changed my view of social networking as a useful business tool. It also confirmed another important marketing trend I’ve been noticing — a trend that may make your current marketing programs totally ineffective (or even detrimental).

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