You may say that marketing is not worth the time, effort, and monetary investment that others claim. Maybe it really isn’t what separates companies within an industry. It could just be luck which drives a company beyond their competitors’ boundaries and makes them successful in business. Maybe it is an awesome product at amazingly low cost supplied by a company that is willing to work hard while going broke. Yes, perhaps that is the real secret to success, and maybe the moon landing was a hoax, too.
The reasons for apprehension about marketing could be any of a squillion things which you can rationalize in your own mind, or it could simply be that you are scared to bankruptcy by the thought of putting a lot of money and hope into something you have pre-qualified as “doomed to fail”. Now, would you like to know why most marketing is doomed to fail, or would you rather just read another blog, buy another book, listen to another lecture, and follow what every other failed company that ever walked in your shoes did wrong?
Oh No! Another Suture Hopeful
Sutures are those things that many people refer to as “stitches”. You know, like the kind you get when you bump your head and lose all of your logic.
I received an email message from the delighted VP of a surgical supply manufacturer a few weeks ago. He read and laughed his way to the bank about a story I wrote to exemplify an online marketing failure. He had every reason to love the story, because it was one of my best wrist-slaps of 2010 to a company that, in layman’s terms, “screwed the pooch”. You can say that it was an edgy move, but when this VP’s rival stiffed their marketing guy, they became an interesting study in just how bad a company can be represented online. I don’t go picking on companies indiscriminately, but I do carry a pretty big sword to wield against aggressors. In fact, this example has provided much amusement and joy to a whole lot of people in my industry.
The company who received my defensive wrist-slap was Suture Express. If you wonder why this rival surgical supply VP was delighted by my work, just perform a search on Google for Suture Express and read the first couple pages of results to find out how much love I gave them. They wanted search engine optimization, and they got it. In fact, they got enough search engine ranking that even the rival VP found me using a search for his own company name.
Anyway, this is not about Suture Express’ lies, or Suture Express CFO, Brian Forsythe. It is about having the guts to pull the trigger, and to understand that marketing is a huge factor in making or breaking a company.
I spoke with the amused surgical supply VP, and he was a joy to meet. He told me that he had a great laugh from my work, and that he could clearly see I know my career well. He also had a job for me to do.
The surgical supply manufacturer VP gave my name to one of his clients who wants to grow his online suture supply company and be more visible to people who buy sutures online. Since I rank right up there when people search for things like “order sutures online”, it seems pretty certain that I can help his client.
I received a call today, from the VP’s eager referral, and I was smacked with a snowball once again. Since I felt that the referral was pretty qualified, I spent some time on the phone with him. I liked him, too. I learned that he has five salaried field reps beating the streets and hitting the surgical centers and doctor’s offices, with some pretty impressive sales results at roughly a 40 percent closing ratio. It starts to sound like this guy has something that can be sold. He has technical studies to back up his products, and he is pretty enthusiastic about reaching the online market with it.
Slam on the brakes! He doesn’t have any goals, any budget, or anything more than a few basic statements to reflect why he even picked up the phone. He wants more people to know about his company, he wants more of them to come to his website, and he wants them to buy his products. It is simple, right? He lays all of his business hopes at the feet of a marketer, as so many people do, but he also wants it cheap. He would love to slide by paying a marketing guy less than he pays a sales rep, even when the rep has no sales. Yet, he wants to enjoy the branding and ongoing collateral that a marketing guy brings. That is pretty brilliant, except that it doesn’t jive. He wants what everybody else does, which is “the most bang for the buck”. Oh yes, but nix the buck part.
What I think he failed to realize, right off the bat, is that he is in a business that will go head to head with Suture Express. He knows the article I wrote explaining how his competitor spent $150,000 on a website and online marketing approach, and then called me to come and fix their mistakes. The article also explained that I turned down a lot of money to delete my story and sweep it under the rug.
With this information in-hand, he sent me the proposal his researcher gave him as the best alternative for their new online shopping cart, which was priced at $2,000. Are you kidding me?! Do people really hope to go to battle against a company who can buy and sell them with a bad day’s revenue, and do it without a real-life budget, or a plan? Worse yet, do they hope to do it with a plan that is comprised of nothing more than soliciting a marketing provider’s “off the cuff” proposal?
There is a lesson in this tale. If you don’t have a grasp on your market potential, don’t have quantifiable and achievable goals, and don’t have a solid and merit-based budget reflecting those goals, you need to pay somebody to do that research for you. Successful marketing does not come from shooting into the dark without a strategy. It is not the action of implementing ill-prepared tactics that a marketer suggests. Success requires research that experienced marketers are prepared to offer, but if you don’t have any of the basic groundwork, we get paid for that, too.
If you think that asking for a marketing proposal is how you will get the best research, think again. I can whip out a boilerplate marketing proposal that will keep you reading for hours, but it is not going to be anything more than a big number on a page if you are trying to get somewhere with your carriage pulling your horse.
I find that too many people think of marketing as simply an implementation of generic processes. If that is how you look at marketing, you may want to look again. You can search the Internet to buy sutures online, order sutures online, and an extensive list of other fancy search keywords like suture company, suture supply company, suture companies. You will find me very easily that way, and I don’t sell a single suture. To do that, it would take more than just a listing at the top of search engines and a lot of people talking about it.
Now, I ask you, does it look like I am writing a marketing proposal tonight? Oh, I guess you could call it that, but my proposal is this “Get serious, or go broke!”
That’s my rant for the day. What’s yours?
Photo Credit to SuperFantastic via Flickr
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