marketing value Archives - Page 3 of 6 by Mark Murnahan

Performance Auto Parts Marketing Exercise

Performance auto parts may not be on your agenda to buy, or to sell, but the automotive performance parts industry can still provide the basis for a useful marketing exercise. If you follow this exercise, I ask that you look for ways it can be related back to your industry, whether that is automotive-related or astrophysics.

Challenges of the Performance Auto Parts Industry

The performance auto parts industry, including an astonishing number of retailers, manufacturers, engineers, wholesalers, and users of automotive performance parts have each had a pretty hard time over the past couple years. The economy tanked, gas prices skyrocketed, and the world has tried to become more eco-friendly. The significance of these direct blows to the performance auto parts market makes it a great example of the importance of marketing.

Any of these challenges could single-handedly crush a small or shaky organization, but together, they have created havoc that puts gray hair and wrinkles on business owners. For those who are left while competitors drop off the RADAR, the market gets a little stronger. This creates an opportunity to generate brand loyalty from customers of fallen competitors, and use market failures to increase market share. Without addressing market share, a company will often be just a little closer to falling off the RADAR themselves.

Imagine for a moment that you are in the business of selling performance auto parts. The thought of having heavy financial interest in this market would send a lot of business people screaming and running for the exit, but not you. You are fearless, and you are in it for the long haul. Sure, it is largely a scared market with bad influences from many angles, but you are up to the challenges of looking long-term and setting a course to success. You want the kind of success that uses the lows to come out stronger than before.

Let us think about this as an exercise to stretch our minds and discover new success. I will be your partner in this example, and together we will do some thinking about how to keep our make-believe performance auto parts business bringing in the customers and giving them reasons to tell their friends about us. We need customers, but how will we reach them, and what will we do to place ourselves ahead of the competition? Come on, partner … we are in this together, so let’s get to thinking.

This will require a lot of ongoing work, but I will offer some ideas to get us started.

Maybe We Should Blog About Our Performance Auto Parts

Blogging is popular, and it can bring in a whole lot of valuable website traffic and build brand awareness, but what can we blog about? How much can we really say about fuel injectors, turbochargers, and race-tuned suspension parts? Wouldn’t that get pretty boring?

I am stunned by how many people I speak to who think of a blog in terms of simply reaching immediate customers, and neglect the blog’s contribution toward building a brand and creating a community of loyal readers. Many companies neglect blogging, because it all starts to seem like work, and they do not recognize the many benefits. So, if you don’t care about or understand all of the other valuable reasons to blog, just consider the enormous link building potential that will help your website rank better for more “performance auto parts” related search phrases.

Something we should perhaps consider is not just blogging about fuel injectors, turbochargers, and race-tuned suspension parts, but rather things like auto racing, race car drivers, automotive events, car maintenance, and a variety of other things car lovers are interested in. Maybe we could do a series of automotive performance “how-to” articles along with diagrams and YouTube videos. Maybe we could publish something about the American Le Mans Series Michelin Green X Challenge and how it is improving eco-friendly race technology. We could discuss how it affects consumers, now and into the future. Maybe we can create something interesting, informative, entertaining, or otherwise useful to our market influencers.

The racing industry and performance automotive engineers do great works to improve “greenness” of the automotive industry. If we get really creative, maybe we can even find some ways to grow our brand recognition for pointing out the good … and even great things our industry is doing to help people, economy, and our planet.

It is starting to seem like there could be a whole lot more reasons to blog than we thought. It seems like a good time to read “10 Really Good Reasons to Blog” and keep the thinking cap on.

Do Facebook Users Like Performance Auto Parts?

The fact that over five hundred million people are using Facebook seems to indicate that Facebook is useful for reaching people. With half a billion people, there is sure to be a race fan, race car driver, racing team, automotive engineer, ecologist, popular automotive blogger, or speed junkie in there somewhere who would like our company. There must be something there for us!

A mistake many companies will make is trying to pitch a deal to people instead of creating a reason for people to know and like their “performance auto parts”, and the people and culture of the organization. It is wise to note that name recognition always comes with an attached mental image. A sales pitch usually leaves little or no image at all.

See reason number 5 in 7 Reasons Your Marketing Sucks.

On the surface, it seems that nobody in our market is doing so great at reaching the Facebook speed junkies. Does this mean Facebook is not a good tool for building a community? After all, it is not working for most of the others in the performance auto parts industry. Maybe it is a waste of time.

Upon a closer inspection, it seems that this is largely because nobody is making significant creative efforts. Most of the performance auto parts people I found are only trying to advertise their performance parts like a bad used car salesman and do very little to create a genuine interest in their brand from people who purchase or influence the purchase of performance auto parts. It seems that since spewing advertisements fails so miserably for the majority of companies, many of the Facebook pages I saw have not been updated much.

Now, doesn’t this start to seem like an opportunity for us, or would we rather let other people’s failures of strategic planning and marketing creativity dictate our success? No? That is what I thought, my fearless performance auto parts selling partner … we are in it for the long haul, and that is why we will win the hearts and minds of Facebook. Let us go there and do something brilliant!

Automotive Performance Meets Twitter

Should we use Twitter to communicate with customers, potential customers, and market influencers? It seems like it may be just a big waste of time. Who is going to do that tweeting, and what will they tweet about? What if they tweet the wrong thing and make us look bad?

Have you ever looked at the competition to see just how terrible their marketing is? It is a pretty good place to find ways you may be missing the mark with potential customers. Sometimes it is a good idea to see what people are doing in some other random industry, because then it is even easier to be critical.

Maybe we should do some Twitter searches to see what others in the performance auto parts industry have to say, or what people are saying about them. Who knows, maybe we can pick up some good information and ideas as spectators. Then, maybe we can find an angle to help us build our market and find out what people like. I suppose that may be worth a shot, what do you think, partner? Should we see what Twitter is talking about and think about ways we could do better?

What Do I know About Performance Auto Parts?

I know that it can be hard to think outside of your own four walls, but with a little exercise, it can provide great benefit to your marketing. Most people, and most organizations do not have a really spectacular plan to improve their market. When you do, you can come out ahead, but it means that you have to try harder than them. You have to think differently than them.

I hope that giving a little thought to the performance auto parts industry will be helpful to you, whether it is actually your industry or not. I suppose I could be wrong with my automotive industry suggestions and analogies. Although, considering how many performance automotive parts suppliers’ logos I have put on brand new Corvettes, it would be a shame if I was wrong. 😉

YourNew.com Racing Corvette Z06: Driver Mark Aaron Murnahan

NOTE: There are winners and losers in every industry. Marketing is often the biggest determining factor.

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Automotive Marketing Example: Selling Cars Online is More Than Cars and Dealers

Car dealers (the whole automotive marketing industry for that matter) are just an example I will use, but this is about a lot more than the automotive industry and car dealers. It applies to the automotive market, anecdotally, but this is mostly about overlooking the reasons people would want to buy from you, and being blind to what people are really looking for.

Without understanding people’s motivations and expectations, it is nearly impossible to deliver what they want. In the cases where you are able to reach the market and get the sale, it is usually only a small slice of the pie, and it is more blind luck than marketing talent. It is like driving a car with your eyes closed … you may not crash the first time, but it is just a matter of time.

Picture the car dealer for a moment. Maybe you know one who is doing things different and better than the rest, but it is pretty typical that they are looking for the immediate sale. They do a whole lot of advertising, but often lack a sustainable marketing strategy. Sure, if you throw out enough ads for the lowest priced cars, you will make a few sales (at the lowest possible profit), but sustainability suffers. The dealership marketing suffers in multiple ways, and here are just a few to consider:

The profit really stinks, because you are spending a lot of time and/or money to reach people based largely on their motivation to get the most for the least amount of money. Price is a motivator, but certainly the least profitable motivator.
Advertising without a people-focused sustainable marketing strategy diminishes the sustainability of referral business which comes with brand-loyalty.
Outbound marketing (marketing without ears) lacks the sustainability that comes with people having a reason and willingness to talk to you about your brand. It is important to realize that only a small number of brand-loyal customers and angry customers will tell you what they really think. When that limited information is what you use to make your marketing decisions, it is easy to make future mistakes.

I have criticized the automobile industry for their marketing shortsightedness, because it is a pretty easy target, and one that many of us can relate to. As an industry, they largely have a hard time looking beyond the next 30, 60, and 90 day cycles of their business. You can read more about my thoughts on that in my article titled “Topeka Kansas Car Dealer Social Media Marketing Case Study” which talked about car marketing and their self-centered approach.

Auto dealers’ urgency for more business stunts their vision, and diminishes their recognition of why people really buy cars. This is a challenge common to many industries. As I described in a recent article titled “7 Reasons That Your Marketing Sucks“, people buy cars for reasons such as freedom to roam, fun road trips, family safety, peace of mind, personal status, comfort, pride, dealership reputation, brand reputation, and other things. Buyers are not usually brand-loyal because of the screaming idiot in your commercials, and things like inflatable gorillas and guys in bad suits are tactics of the past. Today’s version of the loud mouth in the bad suit is to tweet and facebook your latest specials and hope it lands in the right place.

Automotive Marketing Goes Internet

These days, it seems that a lot of industries tend to mock the old-school marketing tactics of the pre-Internet automotive industry. Perhaps the flashy, screaming, “in-your-face” style of advertising was just all they knew, so they mocked it in hopes that it would work. It led to a significant amount of noise, but noise at a higher volume is still just noise.

While all of those “car dealer types” are out there making noise, it is a good time to move forward and market differently, using foresight, and giving people something compelling. The contrast between the good and the pathetic is stronger than ever, and for those who address the customer, the benefits are great. You know, the kind of marketing that addresses the things people want. The kind of marketing that doesn’t turn them off and allows them to feel comfortable enough to tell you why they are or are not buying from you. This is the kind of marketing that shows customers that you are listening.

On today’s “scan-and-click” busy Internet, you will have a lot less time to reach your market with your goods or services. Maybe you will blame “the Internet”, but let’s face it, if you are blaming the Internet; you are looking at this all wrong. The Internet affords companies amazing opportunities to reach their market and to create brand-awareness and loyalty, but it will require looking at things from a different perspective than it used to. It requires looking at things from the customer’s standpoint and discovering what it is that truly motivates them. This means you must listen to them.

Successful marketing today means that you have defined and delivered what the consumer wants. That means being able to look at yourself through their eyes and without your preconceptions and greed. You can have your greed back later, but you have to put it on the shelf at least long enough to make good marketing decisions.

Marketing Cars is Not Just About Cars and Car Dealers!

I use the automobile industry as a harsh example of short-sightedness and self-centered thinking, because many of us can relate to that. Now, regardless of your industry, just imagine what I said about some of the reasons people buy a car. Use it as an exercise and try to imagine how you would reach the people who may be in the market. Maybe their car keeps breaking down. Maybe they have a class reunion coming up and want to look good. Maybe they are not looking at all, but if they connect with somebody they like and that person happens to work in the industry, they may feel more loyal to a particular brand.

There are so many reasons for people to buy what you offer, but if you are trying to market to the wrong ones, at the wrong time, and with a message that is all about you and mostly addresses your interests, most of it will fall on deaf ears.

Perhaps instead of the same old price-boasting and deal-pimping, a look from the consumer’s standpoint is in order. How will you address them on their terms and based on their desires? How will you find what motivates them and makes your brand more interesting? If you want to sell more cars (or anything else) try thinking more like the buyer.

These are just a few of my thoughts. What are yours? I’m listening.

Photo Credit to Rmhermen via Wikipedia

7 Reasons Your Marketing Sucks

Get ready to feel defensive, because I am going to tell you what you are doing wrong. I am going to share seven (of many) things that suck about your marketing efforts. These are things that you are doing wrong, or not doing at all which suck so bad it is like a vacuum cleaner pulling money right out of your pocket. I am not telling you how terrible you are at your marketing just so you can pout about it and leave nasty comments on my blog. I am telling you this so you can stop going broke and making bad excuses for your failures. Note that I am also not telling you this to sell you a solution, because if you are screwing these things up, you are probably not in my target audience. I get paid for my work, and if you are screwing up this badly, you cannot afford me.

Got it? OK then, pick up your bottom lip and stop drooling on yourself about all the money you are going to earn with this new information. I am not giving you the keys to the kingdom. I am just going to try and help your marketing to suck less. So let’s stop sucking and start fixing some of your marketing screw-ups.

In case you wondered: Do I really have to be so abrasive? Not really, but unless I slap you around a little and let you know how much terrible marketing really sickens me, you may not get the point as clearly as I intend it. Maybe it will help you to realize that this is not just another ploy to dig my hands into your pockets. Besides those points, who wants to read another dull blog post about how to perform better marketing? I think the Internet already has plenty of that. Heck, have you seen my archive? Yeah, you didn’t pay close enough attention or your marketing would probably not suck this badly.

On with the list! Here are seven reasons your marketing sucks. These are not in order of importance or suckness. They all suck, and I will bet a photo of my middle finger that you are doing at least a couple of these.

Reason One That Your Marketing Sucks: Lack of Measurement

It is really easy for people to just keep tossing out their name and trying different ways to increase their business, but if your results are not measurable and accounted for, your marketing sucks. What good is it to gain more business and not know precisely why, and how to repeat it? I see this a lot, and it is a novice mistake that you make because you do not understand the value of good marketing. Without useful measurement, you never will.

Reason Two That Your Marketing Sucks: Lack of Plan

When you do not have a plan, it is hard to have proper measurement. Many would-be great marketing efforts fail by lack of a sustainable plan. A plan includes research, goals, measurement, budget, and good old fashioned hard work. If you are opposed to work, you really should avoid marketing what you offer anyway.

Reason Three That Your Marketing Sucks: Lack of Budget

A measurable plan will still suck if there is no budget. People tell me all the time that they do not have a marketing budget. Seriously? No marketing budget? How can you be in business and not have a budget set aside for marketing? A marketing budget should be based on known factors surrounding your market and it uses logic-based, mathematically provable facts. This is not mythical, this is the real world. If you don’t have a marketing budget, your marketing sucks … and it sucks really bad.

Reason Four That Your Marketing Sucks: Lack of Goals

A goal does not need to be 120 pages of unsustainable crap. It should be easy to understand and it should be achievable. It should be based on real information, and not on hype, fear, or other subjective junk your mind will throw at you. Goals should be meaningful. Just think about this: If some thug comes to pick up your daughter for a date, do you look at him differently if he lacks goals? Set some purposeful and researched goals so that your marketing can begin to suck less.

Reason Five That Your Marketing Sucks: Selling Product

You are trying to sell a product or service rather than address the reasons somebody would want your product or service. If you want to sell a car, you are not selling four wheels and a bunch of metal. You are selling freedom to roam, fun road trips, family safety, peace of mind, personal status, comfort, pride, dealership reputation, brand reputation, and other things. If you are selling the car without understanding the reasons people will benefit from buying your car, your marketing is wasted … and it sucks.

Reason Six That Your Marketing Sucks: Price-Selling

We all heard about this recession, right? It is not a secret anymore, but if you are marketing based on cost over value, your marketing sucks. There will always be somebody willing to sell it for less and bastardize your market. When you join them, there is little chance you will ever beat them. Raving fans and brand advocates are not created by price tags. Look at Apple Computers as an example of not selling based on price alone. They may not rule the personal computer market, but they rule their market.

Reason Seven That Your Marketing Sucks: Zombie Marketing

Zombie herding is a thing of the past, but yet you still try this against all odds. When you think that simply finding a bunch of people to pitch your goods to is marketing, your marketing sucks. You try to reach out with your message as far and wide as possible, but then forget the importance of all those active and vibrant living human beings who will spread the message for you if you just stop treating them like zombies. Tweeting and Facebooking your latest special is easy. Any mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging, drooling and babbling fool can do that … and they are! Pull yourself together and be memorable. Your customers are real people with real brains. Stop treating them like zombies.

I see this all day long on the Internet. People tend to forget that the intent is to reach real live people, and not just some fuzzy demographic.

Summary of Marketing That Sucks

There I go again, giving away what I know. I keep saying I will stop doing that, because when you know everything I know, I am out of a job. The good news is that if everybody who comes to me for marketing had this much sucking in their market, I would not want to do my job anyway. Knuckleheads be gone! Come back when you begin to suck less and want to do more business.

Bonus Reason Your Marketing Sucks: You have no backbone and you are trying to please too many people. Build a brand and stand strong to the brand. If you are afraid that somebody will not like your brand, let me burst that bubble for you early. Some people will hate you. They will hate everything you stand for and everything you do. If you are too afraid to polarize your audience, give up now. Being famous often requires having the guts to be infamous.

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How To Sell Paper Clips: A Closer Look at Marketing

Think about paper clips for a moment. They are about the most basic thing you will find in your desk drawer. When you consider your marketing, try to imagine selling paper clips. You probably do not think much about what brand you are buying when you need to replenish your paper clip supply. This is likely true of your product or service, too. Unless people have a good reason to remember you, it will be a lot harder to grow your paper clip market share and to become more prosperous.

If you challenged multiple companies with a truckload of paper clips to sell, somebody would sell out sooner than the rest. One would almost surely hit their stride and empty that truckload of paper clips before the others, and there must be a reason.

A basic essential of marketing is to get people to talk about you in a positive way. When other people talk about your brand, it is far more valuable than when you talk about your brand. This is proven every day, and in many markets. Just think about the ones you remember and why you remember them.

In order to emphasize the point, I have created this short video to show you how to sell more paper clips. I hope that you will enjoy it.

Addendum: After comments from Jim Rudnick at Canuck SEO (JVRudnick) both below and on social networks, I picked up the phone to call and thank him. We chatted and he told me of a remarkable story about a man who traded a paper clip for a house. If you doubt the value of good marketing and how to build value in something as simple as a paper clip, you should see the story of Tyler Wright.Thanks for sharing, Jim!

Your Recession is Yours, My Recession is Mine

I talk to a lot of people. I have some amazing friends, with amazing perspective. The wise ones are not afraid to talk about recession, and brainstorm ways to improve their respective place in this recession.

You are a bit scared, right? I hope so, because you should be. If you have just consumed a small fraction of reality over the past couple years, you have certainly noticed something different about people’s spending habits. Lines at restaurants are shorter, and lines at homeless shelters are longer. Let’s not sugar-coat it. Shit hit the fan and business is harder to come by these days.

One of my long time close friends is a well-informed Magna Cum Laude Princeton University graduate of economics with his MBA and a bunch of letters at the end of his name. He is a top-level economist and one that many other number-crunchers rely on to evaluate major business decisions. He is about as scared as it comes. Me, I lost squillions since recession started in 2007, and I got sick of being scared. Instead, I made a plan, and I continually work with my plan.

Improve the Future You’ve Got

This is not an uplifting “rah rah, go get ’em” sermon I am here to give you, but rather the cold hard truth of where things stand, and ideas to improve the future you’ve got. Ahh, but there is the key! If you note that I said “the future you’ve got” I mean that the future is something you already have. It is not some unrealistic thing that lives in some other dimension and never comes to pass. Time keeps marching on, and every day marks another day into your future. You do have a future, and if you are too freaked out about today, the future gets pretty blurry. In any case, your future will get here, and you are the one who makes all the tough decisions on how it will look.

I understand that it gets harder to envision your future when you are still fighting today. I have seen the future become blurred, too, but I have made a plan. I made a flexible plan, and one that can be amended as needed. I keep my eyes moving, and I always look in all directions. It is tricky and requires constant attention, but without a plan, results would be pretty bleak. Don’t you think?

If you feel like you are alone in the recession, stop feeling that way. Not just because I said “stop feeling that way”, but because you know it is true. You see it all around you. There are two divergent ideologies on the topic. One says the sky is falling and we are all doomed, and the other talks in ambiguous Wall Street phrases about improved economic indicators and tries to influence a stronger market by helping people feel safer to spend money. Reality is somewhere in the middle, and your economic reality will come from the actions you take.

Owning Your Recession

Let’s face it, you own your recession, and the sooner you realize it, the better. Sure, it has affected most of the people you know, but there are still people thriving in a bad economy, and I will give you some reasons why. It starts with making good decisions, having confidence in your decisions, and taking action on your decisions. That is a lot of decision making, and many people are more comfortable making the decision to “wait and see what happens” and to follow the same course. Getting ahead means getting uncomfortable, and if you are in business, you must understand that fear affects success in more than logic.

I can own up to my recession, although it is not all my doing. I still know that my decisions have everything to do with where I am and where I go from here. I will give you an example. In 2007 and 2008 I watched some huge suppliers to my company kill thousands of jobs and shut down some of their operations. One of my suppliers of network services laid off 5,000 people in a single day. I knew my industry very well, and I knew in advance that I should have sold off or severely downsized one division of my company. Instead, I wanted to be a hero to my clients, so I took a “wait and see” approach. It was not long before the “wait and see” kicked me squarely in the ass.

You will not catch me seeking sympathy, but I saw my corporation’s annual accounts receivable drop by over half a million dollars in a single month during 2008. As the CEO, I knew that it would eventually hit my personal economy pretty hard, so I made sacrifices. I cleared out $250,000 worth of cars from my garage, I suspended a six figure per year auto racing budget, I downsized my home by over 3,000 fewer square feet, and I worked harder and for less money than I had in many years. It made sense to cut certain things that I did not require, and it made sense to kick myself back into gear. I made many sacrifices!

Making the Right Sacrifices

I write a lot to help people regain vision for their business and personal lives. In fact, I wrote three books last year and a whole lot of blogs. You surely cannot knock me for dedication. So much of what I write is aimed at helping others to grow their market and regain the market they once enjoyed. I know I make some people very uncomfortable, and I am pleased for that. If you are comfortable with how things are, you have less reason to do something brilliant. On the other hand, if you get sick of being scared, like I did, maybe you will come to make the right choices to build upon your own economy.

Maybe you never read any of my biographies or ever heard of me before, but from the time I dropped out of school at age 15, I have built multiple very successful companies. Something I have learned well is the value of sacrificing unnecessary comforts today in return for a better tomorrow. Sure, you can say that tomorrow never comes and that you should seize the day, but isn’t that the same thing your credit card issuers count on? If you work harder, try harder, create a solid strategy, and do more for your future, you are the one who collects the interest.

The Wrong Sacrifice

I could bang my drum and toot my horn all day and night, and you can still call it all “bullshit”. I can give you good ideas and direction, but you can still call me crazy. A lot of good thinking has been called crazy. Christopher Columbus was “crazy” for saying the world is round, and Albert Einstein said “Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.”

Crazy is relative to your own sense of reality. I was crazy to leave school at 15, but less crazy as I earned millions by 25. Something which cannot be denied and is based on solid math is that effective marketing will grow a business. Effective marketing can get you the job you want. Effective marketing and reaching the right people with the right message is what creates opportunities, from meeting the right spouse to becoming the head of a political party. So how can you possibly abuse and neglect your marketing when it is the one quantifiable thing which can lead you to your goals?

My Murnahanism for Today: “If you want something, it mostly requires asking the right people. You should place quality first, and quantity second, but success usually requires both. If you keep asking the wrong people, refine your efforts. When that fails, you probably need to ask more people.”

If you want a better economy for yourself, do something different. As I have said before, “Do Shit They Will Remember” and note that sometimes you must “Choose Logic Over Emotion“.

If you want more, market more, and market better. Of all the sacrifices I ever made in business, marketing has never been in the list. It has always been the one thing that mattered most. Recession is actually the best time to market your goods, because your competition is running scared, too.

I wrote of sacrifices I made to create millions of dollars in business from my 6th grade education (I left at 15, but I failed a few times first) in my book “Living in the Storm“. This is not my evil plot to shake you down for the huge $2 royalty I make per book, but if you have a hard time understanding the sacrifices it takes to grow a business, you should consider reading it.

Accepting your own recession and doing more to improve it does not mean everything will be amazing again. However, if you are not doing more to market yourself or your business, you are accepting what you have and that will become less as others keep moving forward.

Photo credit to Eric Pouhier via Wikipedia