Successful Marketing Starts With a Strategy

Donald Cresitello and George Burke were running neck and neck for a town-council seat in Morristown, N.J., when Mr. Burke died in the middle of the campaign. But that didn’t stop Mr. Cresitello from worrying, though. "Now he’s liable to get the sympathy vote," he complained. (Yes, this is true; I read about it in a wonderful compendium of off-the-wall clippings called News of the Weird.)

By BOB ROSNER StartupJournal.com

Of course, Mr. Cresitello’s concern wasn’t entirely unfounded: Several dead politicians have ridden the "sympathy vote" to election victory. But I have yet to hear of customers opening their wallets to create "sympathy sales" to resuscitate a dead or dying product. So for advice on how to turn your company into a lean, mean marketing machine, turn to "Selling the Invisible" (Warner, 1997) by Harry Beckwith. It was on every business best-seller list for months because it uses stories and simple examples to illustrate key marketing concepts. The following questions have been adapted from it.

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Is marketing part of every employee’s job description? Mr. Beckwith quotes an old Jewish proverb, "Don’t open a shop unless you know how to smile." Your receptionists, business-office staff and delivery people often spend more time with customers than your salesmen do. Think of these staffers as marketers so you encourage and train them to put a good face on your business.

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Are you trying to win over customers at every point of contact? Phone-book ads, brochures, telephone operators, customer-service representatives and even business cards are customer contact points. Make sure you make the best of even the most mundane interactions with your customers.

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What are your clients really buying? The answer is: more than just your product. It might be reliability, convenience, security — whatever it is you need to know. So learn everything you can about your customers, how they use your product and why. Once you discover this information, tout it in all the places listed above, then be sure to deliver on these points every time.

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Can you reduce your customers’ fear? Buying a new product is a leap into the unknown. Offering a trial period, test product or product guarantee is a way to reduce such fear. Rather than always trying to make customers say yes, try to make it impossible for them to say no.

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Are you hiding all your warts? Conventional wisdom says you should cover up anything that could be considered a weakness. Mr. Beckwith disagrees. He says including some self-criticism goes a long way toward making your self-praise seem more believable.

"Selling the Invisible" maintains that marketing isn’t a department — it is everyone’s job. If you can convince all your employees that they are marketers, too, your company probably won’t be dead — or even in the red.

— Mr. Rosner is the author of Working Wounded, a Web site and internationally syndicated column. He’s also the co-author of "The Boss’s Survival Guide" (McGraw-Hill, 2001) with Allan Halcrow and Alan S. Levins.

http://www.startupjournal.com/columnists/newventure/20030509-nva.html