3 piles of Marketing bulls–t

Marketing is really simple, Marketers are complicated, and occasionally complicating.

I’ve been involved in Marketing for 4 decades of my life and the more I think about Marketing the simpler it appears to me.

For the uninitiated, marketing attracts a lot of loquacious intelligent and impressive people who complicate the obvious ( my favourite example is Lovemarks, see here for a debunking of this).

One way this is done is through the use of jargon and buzzwords, which could serve as shorthand for more complex concepts but that tend to express ideas that nobody really understands. But to debunk such common knowledge is dangerous, as marketers can rally round to support their “professional” jargon.

Here are three buzzwords that i believe are nonsense and lead us all astray.

engagement

1. Engagement
Engagement is a fundamental buzzword because it is so obvious, yet nobody can actually define what it means. It appears to me to be  a very vague way of pointing out that what you do should interest customers and not bore them. But Marketers have built careers, and many books, promoting engagement. But hanging round saying “Hi” to prospective customers isn’t a strategy.

A better strategy us to think about  exchange of value , which can either be related to the product (e.g. Apple computers), content (e.g. this website, the Economist, etc.) or social experience (e.g. meetings friends in a coffee-shop or on Whatsup, etc.) Unlike something vague like engagement, thinking about exchange of value  can lead you to more serious strategies for building brand assets in the marketplace- it recognize that you must have something of value, that it’s defined by a customer, and there must be a connection of some kind to exchange this- your product for their resources. Engagement leads you to just being happy hanging around and counting tweets, likes and video views- none of which assesses anything of value nor whether there is a connection nor an exchange of value.

The bottom line for me is if customers perceive something has real value to them, they will be engaged.

loyalty

2. Loyalty
Marketers love loyalty. They point to the idea that it’s easier to retain a customer than to win over a new one. So when sales are suffering, Marketers tend to dive into loyalty metrics and identify methods to increase loyalty.

On its own, there’s not much marketers can really do to increase loyalty. Studies show that “loyalty programs” are generally not effective and that the most important factor for instilling loyalty is customer experience, an area many marketers try to avoid. But a delighted customer is a loyal customer, so boost delight rather than trying to find ways to boost loyalty.

So don’t get caught up in the loyalty trap. Your time and effort will be much better spent promoting advocacy through better understanding why your customers value what you offer, and in boosting customer experiences rather than devising gimmicks to get repeat purchases.

The bottom line for me is if a consumer perceives increasing value in your product and has a great experience with it then loyalty is a by-product not an end in its self.

uniqueness

3. Unique
My old company was caught up with being the number one or two player in the markets we were involved in, and if we weren’t then we should exit them. This sort of worked, until we came to discussing China or Australia. Being the #1 or #2 brewer in China or Australia was way beyond our means and we had no intention of divesting our hard won positions there. So the simple thing to do was to re-define our market  in such a way that enabled us to be #1 or #2 and  in this way we quickly would appear a leader.

Marketers like to play the same game with “unique selling propositions,” narrowing down the product definition so that they are unique in a category of one, like “the very best imported premium beer urban player.” This is a complete waste of time.

First, if you were unique in any meaningful way it would be blindingly obvious that you were. Second, if you aren’t,  having a long drawn out discussion to create a way that you could be unique  is a waste of time and energy. Finally, research suggests that differentiation plays a limited role in purchase decisions anyway. Better to spend the time an energy in understanding how you can become more relevant, differentiating and motivating to customers and then build this in the an effective connection program.

The bottom line for me is very very few things are unique, better to focus on what you offer and the experience it gives your customers and making this relevant, distinctive, motivating and consistent.

Buzzwords are great, especially if your customers like them. But if they baffle you, return to first principles; your product, the customer  and the connection between the two. Do you have any favourite buzzwords to share with us and why they should be dumped and what they should be replaced by.

3 Replies to “3 piles of Marketing bulls–t”

  1. great ideas but i don’t think you’ll change the minds of dyed in the wool marketers, but great for Board members

  2. wow, i disagree – violently – I think you miss the point of engagement, you have to create some level of engagement to be able to start a relationship. I think you are WRONG calling this bulls**t its not.

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