marketing

Focus on the champion

The iPhone is a hero product

An ancillary product refers to an additional product that is obtained as a free or supplementary purchase while buying another product. These types of products are usually offered as an incentive to customers, rather than reducing prices or offering discounts, to encourage them to purchase the primary product. The main product of a brand is typically considered as their flagship (or “hero”) product, which embodies their values and is prominently displayed in presentations and displays. It is the product that people recommend to others and urge them to try. Regardless of how many products a brand offers, the flagship product is the one that best represents the brand. I think we tend to be willing to pay for the flagship product as we believe it provides good value for money, unlike ancillary products.

Better choices

I think that one of the most wonderful things about marketing is that you can create huge amounts of delight, memorability, and distraction with relatively small levels of expenditure. Organisations, businesses, and governments often seek grandiose solutions, overlooking the fact that small things can also have a profound impact human behaviour. Encouraging people to make better choices has a greater influence than using punishment as a deterrent. Most human actions deviate from physical laws, and are often disproportionate in nature, unlike the predictability of physics. The correlation between ‘Input A’ and ‘Output B’ is usually insignificant in human behaviour and can even be contradictory.

One of the factors

Via KEA Startup Hub, Copenhagen

Start-ups, by definition have no momentum, and in business, before you gain momentum, you have to create the perception of momentum. This is why start-ups need marketing from the beginning of their journey, and this should not be - fake it, until you make it - either. Many people confuse marketing with telling lies or overt hyperbole (over exaggeration). It's about building excitement, curiosity, and interest about what you're doing. I have a proven track record of exceeding results in highly demanding environments from start-ups to corporates. Are you thinking about springing out as an entrepreneur? Contact me via e-mail for a 1:1 discovery meeting.

Stories of change

c/o Harvard Business Review

What kind of stories should we be telling to help people rekindle hope as we come out of the war in Ukraine, and is connectedness the route to achieve this?

All marketers tell stories and as individuals we tell ourselves stories as this is what guides our behaviours, decisions, and choices. So many of the big stories people believe in have crumbled away, stories of progress that tomorrow will be better than yesterday. We have lost so much that we don’t have the stories that provide the scaffolding we can use to climb out of all our difficulties. We must decide personally and as a community about where we are going as we are looking at a world that is making new rules, new connections and new decisions. Change is happening and as marketers this is what we do - We make change!

The capacity to increase the valuation

Here’s a framework for creating marketing value for your organisation (V.A.L.U.E)

-       Understand how VALUE is created within your organisation and how it is created for customers.
-       Be ACCOUNTABLE to your organisations value creation metrics.
-       Use the LANGUAGE of value creation.
-       Scale the UNDERSTANDING of value creation across your organisation.
-       Have an EVIDENCE based mindset and report regularly using the agreed value-based metrics.

 

Creativity is critical not only to brand building, but also to value creation as a whole.
a) Do you understand where your brand value is created?
b) Do you understand how your customers perceive and receive value?
c) Do you understand the value your brand delivers both short and long term?

Contact me via e-mail for a meeting on why you should use business language and not marketing jargon deeper when speaking about your organisations brand value.

Forget football

How do you tell the right story to the right people?

The best way to learn marketing is to do marketing, and you can do marketing in lots and lots of different ways. This is because you don’t need a budget anymore as marketing is not advertising. This is the decade of change, and we must figure out the narratives that we want to tell to bring connection and possibility to people. It’s a fact that making people feel bad for drinking water out of plastic bottles isn’t going to solve the environmental crisis. I think we must weave things together to make things better, not just to make profit because we can’t shrink ourselves to greatness. Why are people not shouting from the rooftops that solar power is cheaper than coal?

Exchanging knowledge

The hardest part of marketing meetings is persuading people to stop trying to prove that they were right all along. Defending the business, they came in with, defending their position and all their previous decisions. I’m sure these people mean well but they are limiting the possible because they are trying to defend what got them here in the first place. Everybody knows that knowledge is power, right? Knowledge is not power, I think it’s our ability to influence people that is power, and once you know, you cannot unknow.

““Any fool can know. The point is to understand.””
— Albert Einstein

Marketing for kind

Getty Images ©

I think that there are only two kinds of marketers:
1) Market chasers, and
2) Category creators


Which one are you?
Not all marketing is marketing for good. I belong to a community of marketers and change makers who believe that as most of the world’s problems depend for their resolution on forms of human cooperation, so we have a responsibility to better use marketing to create positive change. We partly do this by stepping out of our day jobs and upcycling our marketing skills in support of inspiring charities and social enterprises. We coach each other into becoming more purposeful and impactful marketers in the digital fireside. And we recognise that the systems that which we are a part of are themselves shaped by stories that we tell each other across society.

Acting in a new way

We never know the truth of anything, what we know is the story we receive. We can tell a story or not, either way, there is going to be a story told. Marketing is the art of telling a story that you are proud to make true on behalf of someone who’s going to engage with you. I don’t think that marketing by its nature hurts society, in fact, I can think of many examples where it helps.

 

Here is a list of questions I will ask during the discovery phase:
·      Who are your customers and what are their needs and expectations? 
·      How is your marketing strategy going to deliver on your business strategy?
·      What unique value are you providing? 
·      How do you support it with content?
·      How will you actively place your message in front of the right people? 
·      Why should anyone care or take notice? 
·      How do you communicate about your product and services? 
·      What is your customer journey? 
·      What data do you need to support your marketing?
·      How can I help you improve?
Contact me via e-mail for a meeting about measuring and optimising your marketing performance?

Making things better

What is marketing and what can we use it to achieve?

Marketing is about making things better by making better things. Marketing isn’t about hype; marketing isn’t about hustle and marketing isn’t about selfish short-term narcissists seeking to maximise profit in a misguided capitalistic sort of way. My mission is to continue narrating and guiding other people do the heavy lifting of persistently and consistently making things better. And because I am not shouting from the rooftops about what I am doing or how I helped this or that organisation, it appears that I don’t do anything. Metaphorically speaking, I know how to step by step put a stake in the ground, so they fit in an arc and not necessarily in perfect order.

Complex interdependencies

Probability is a much healthier conversation than if I was to speak about risk, as the word risk conjures up a negative picture. The first rule of mathematics and statistics is that if there is anything unrepresentative about your sample set, you’ve got to compensate for it. And with marketing we tend to look at what happened last year rather than what’s going to happen next year, or in 5 years’ time. What we deal with as marketers is the future, and the future is to some degree unknowable. In fact, the only thing you can say with any certainty is the future is going to be very different from the past.

 

The speed at which change occurs varies, in some cases last year will be very similar to this year and in other times you may for example have a pandemic or a global inflation crisis, which means the future is unrecognisably different. The butterfly effect is the idea that small things can have non-linear impacts on a complex system. In other words, the butterfly effect rests on the notion that the world is deeply interconnected, such that one small occurrence can influence a much larger complex system.

Just another day

Marketing isn’t advertising or hype, it’s not shortcutting, it’s not selfish, it’s not pushing people to do things they don’t want to do! I define marketing as work that matters for people who care. It’s the work of making things better, doing things that you are proud of. I think marketing isn't about selling products; it's about solving problems and creating value for your customers.

·  Do not brag about how busy you are, instead let your work speak for itself.
·  Do not brag about how much you know, instead teach others.
·  Do not brag about who you know, instead connect like-minded people.
·  Do not brag about the past, instead celebrate the present.

Old fashioned and still relevant

I’m in London for the festive season and was thinking how much difference it would make if these three words - “Word of mouth” - were in most 2023 marketing plans. Word of mouth is the process of telling people you know about a particular product or service, usually because you think it is good and want to encourage them to try it. Word of mouth is the oldest form of marketing, and I think you will materially increase your revenue by incorporating these words into your marketing strategy.

““The best form of intelligence is not artificial” ”
— Burrellism

Can you answer these three basic marketing questions?
1.      Who are you talking to?
2.      What do you do that no competitors can?
3.      Why should we believe you?
Send me your answers via e-mail and win a one hour consultation with me.

Black Friday

Yesterday was Black Friday and it showed that retail stores are no longer just distribution points for products. Bricks and mortar spaces are powerful acquisition points for customers, and I think physical shops are the most powerful way to draw customers into the brands eco-system. Once acquired, shoppers can cross any number of channels elegantly woven with branded technology. Physical stores will a become media channel and media will become the store. I think the future will be where brands drive people towards media and stores will no longer be the end of the marketing funnels; they will be the beginning.

The generation effect

George Lois (RIP) was an advertising legend and he created one of my favourite adverts of all time and a masterpiece in strategic communication. The generation effect is a phenomenon where information is better remembered if it is generated from one's own mind rather than simply read. In 1985, Lois positioned the then unknown designer, Tommy Hilfiger on the map when he created a billboard with missing letters and placed it in Times Square. The billboard made Hilfiger a household name by placing his name in the same bracket as established greats like Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein, and Perry Ellis.

Think about that

The majority of customers visit your website or your brick-and-mortar location only one time. All the marketing efforts and money that is spent on driving traffic to your business results in most customers only giving you one shot. And it can cost 5 times more to attract a new customer, than it does to retain an existing one. According to Bain & Company’s research, increasing customer retention rates by 5% increases profits by 25% to 95%. With these statistics in mind, it makes sense to focus efforts and funds to nurture your existing customers who are spending their money on your goods or services time and time again. This is not to say that you shouldn’t market to new consumers, which is a must, of course. But these statistics should be taken into consideration when budgeting how much you spend on acquiring new customers versus taking care of your existing customer base.

Sounds obvious

I think clarity comes from engagement not thought, as we learn best by action not through theory. I have observed many great marketeers throughout my career and the advise would give to anyone aspiring a career in marketing would be to study consumer psychology and focus on the following:

• Cognitive biases
• Objections
• Struggles
• Emotions
• Behavior
• Triggers
• Beliefs
• Desires

Fighting for attention

Digital marketing is an excellent way to reach a large audience. Influencer marketing is a type of social media marketing that involves endorsements and product placement. An influencer is someone who has a large following on social media and can influence what people buy or where they go. When a brand partners with an influencer, they usually receive payment, free products, or services from the brand in return for posting favourably about their experiences. Linking up with influencers that align with your brand is a relatively simple way of boosting your social media marketing strategy. And this is a wonderful way to gain exposure on platforms you may not have a huge following on.

Marketing 101

Marketing campaigns are sets of strategic activities that promote a business’s goal or objective. A marketing campaign could be used to promote a product, a service, or the brand as a whole. To achieve the most effective results, campaigns are carefully planned and the activities are varied. And I think marketing campaigns are most effective when they are the offspring of a corporate purpose rather than originating from one. Remember when you take responsibility for your beliefs and judgments this will give you the power to change them.
Now ask yourself the following questions:

1.          Why your company?
2.          Why your product (or service)?
3.          Why should they choose you?

“One important key to success is self-confidence. An important key to self-confidence is preparation”
— Arthur Ashe

Stating the obvious

I think that marketing and innovation are basically the same thing. This was confirmed after attending “The Great Wine Experience” opening event in Copenhagen, where jazz music, photography (The Uplift Sessions) and delicious wines were in focus. There are hundreds of wine bars in this city, so in reality there are only two ways where you can add value in the marketplace:
a)    You can either find out what people want and work out a clever way to make it, or
b)    You can work out what you can make and then find a clever way to make people want it.
The money you make is the same regardless of which option you choose, therefore, it’s not necessary to reinvent the wheel and spend thousands of kroner on creating a new concept. Another way is to take an existing concept and this case a wine shop, and then presenting, pricing, positioning and framing it in a completely different way. Natalie and Wilfred have done a wonderful job, and this is just the beginning.