CHAPTER 1

What Marketing Communications Can Do for You

Many business professionals outside of marketing don't really understandmarketing and marketing communications. In this chapter, I want to correct that.Marketing communications is a lot more than "doing ads."

The Importance of Good Marketing Communications

The scarcest resource on the planet is no longer money or diamonds or oil. Thescarcest resource is attention. The demand for attention today far exceeds thesupply. The resulting scarcity of attention is the greatest problem facing anymarketing communicator.

By almost any measure, the noise level or clutter in media has gotten sooverwhelming that it is difficult for any one message to stand out and benoticed. Estimates vary depending on the study and the group studied, but theaverage American is exposed to somewhere between 200 and 5,000 commercialmessages a day. We have more demands on our attention in just one day than ourgreat-grandparents had in an entire year. By the time you die, you will havespent years of your life watching commercials and seeing ads.

The vast majority of these messages are ignored, a few are hated, and a tinypercentage are noticed and appreciated. And even if a marketing communicationmanages to penetrate your consciousness, it must compete with the estimated45,000 to 50,000 thoughts a day inside your brain.

What Is Marketing Communications?

Marketing communications is anything your organization does that affects thebehavior or perception of your customers. The marketing communications processis a conversation between you and your customers that is as much about listeningto your customers as it is about sending them messages. It is not a one-waystreet.

It doesn't matter who your customers are or what you are selling or promoting.Every decision you make and everything you do influences what your customershear, see, or experience and will affect how they think and feel about yourcompany and your product and/or service. This, in turn, influences what they do.Perception always precedes behavior.

Be Authentic

"Everything you do" includes product development, price, locations, hours,placement and distribution, hiring, listening, promotion, design, contactpoints, news quotes, mistakes, and word of mouth, as well as classic advertisingmedia communications. In general, direct experience trumps word of mouth, whichtrumps sales communications.

If your sales communications are making claims that are not supported by word ofmouth or, worse, not supported by direct experience, you are better offadjusting your communications downward to fit reality. Otherwise, you areteaching people not to believe your communications. You are teaching them thatyour brand is a liar. Unless your product or service is a once-in-a-lifetimepurchase (such as a presidential election!), it is always better to underpromiseand overdeliver, even if your competition is making exaggerated claims.

Most people distrust corporations, sales, salespeople, and marketingcommunications. One way to stand out from the competition is to always tell thetruth.

Marketing Communications Multiplies Word-of-Mouth

If your marketing communications claims are supported by word-of-mouth anddirect experience, your advertising acts as a multiplier. It can actuallyimprove the amount of positive word of mouth (how often and how many people saygood things about you), and it can even improve and reinforce your customer'sdirect experience of your product.

Marketing Communications and Your Brand

A brand is perception, and perception is reality for customers.

The total of all the customer impressions of your product or service is yourbrand. Your brand is not the buildings, equipment, boxes, objects, or people youmanage. Your brand is a perception that lives in your customers' minds.

One of the most frustrating experiences for a company is to create a technicallysuperior product that is not perceived as a superior brand by prospectivecustomers. That is one problem that superior marketing communications can helpresolve. In fact, any marketing communications on which you spend time or moneythat doesn't improve perception is pure non-value-added overhead.

What Is a Target Market?

While it is tempting to try and sell your product or service to everyone in theworld, it is not cost effective. You might convince adult men to buy women'smakeup, but it's likely that the return on your investment would be negative.You are much better off selling makeup to women or, better still, selling makeupto young adult women who are fashionistas.

To profit from your marketing, you must have a target market—a primarygroup of people you serve. Your primary market is the group of customers whoaccount for a disproportionate share of your sales and profits. They are theones you can't afford to do without.

You may also have secondary and tertiary markets, customers who are important,but not as important. For example, in the U.S., women buy most of the men'sunderwear, usually for their husbands and sons. Wives and mothers are theprimary target market for men's underwear. But younger single men and divorcedmen also purchase their own underwear. They are a secondary target market. Thisis important to understand because they have different motives and beliefs, theyneed different messages, and they are reached through different media.

One of the most important marketing decisions you will ever make is to decidewhich group of people is your primary target market. You can't pursue allmarkets or even just two markets if they are incompatible. For example, if momslike something, teen boys distrust it; and if amateurs like something,professionals are embarrassed to use it. Sometimes you just have tochoose—you can't please everyone. More about this in later chapters.

What About Your Competitors?

We live in an era where customers can instantly find many alternative productsand services to meet the same need. Sometimes your competition can even be yourotherwise potential customers. For example, for businesses that sell fast oilchanges for cars, one competitor is the do-it-yourself oil changer. Sometimesyour competition can come from completely different...