Marketing Above the Noise

Achieve Strategic Advantage with Marketing That Matters

Linda J. Popky

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781351861410
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Marketing
• Index: Business

Marketing today is out of control. With all the new marketing techniques accessible to the masses, it's becoming harder and harder to stand out from the crowd. The result is more and more messages, hitting us more often in new and more intrusive ways. For customers, it's a lot of noise. Through her work with a wide range of organizations from small companies to professional service providers to Fortune 500 companies, Linda Popky has developed Dynamic Market Leverage(TM), an approach to help cut through the clutter, stand out, and effectively build business. Marketing Above the Noise takes a contrarian approach by not focusing on social media, digital marketing, or other new tactics, and instead helping organizations understand: * The critical upfront work needed to really understand customers, markets and unmet needs * The value of consistent, focused messaging * Why empowering employees to effectively represent the brand is so critical * How to thrive in an age of user-generated content and customer driven marketing * Why it's key not to confuse selling with installing The book introduces the Dynamic Market Leverage Model, which measures marketing clout by looking at eight core marketing disciplines and five additional Leverage Factors that can help an organization focus on key aspects of their marketing function that will provide the most significant return on their marketing investment. Today's businesses need to stop trying to keep pace with the latest and greatest marketing tactics and instead focus on developing those long term strategies that build customer loyalty and convince prospects to buy. Yes, businesses need to be aware of and integrate new media and new approaches, but they need to do it in a way that makes sense for the business. They need to maintain a clear focus above the din of the roaring crowd--above the marketing fray. Most organizations don't have the luxury of being able to start from a clean slate to develop new marketing strategies. They have existing customers, existing channels and relationships, existing ways of doing business. With limited resources, they're not able to integrate every new tactic as it appears and they're not sure how to prioritize all of these options. What's needed is a timeless framework--a way of looking at marketing as tied to both business growth and the building and nurturing of ongoing customer engagement. It's time to move the focus from social media and evangelists, sales and marketing alignment, and the latest hot cloud-based marketing tools, to what really counts: convincing customers to trust you with their business--not just once, but time and time again.

PartI
The Marketing Landscape

1
In the Heart of the Noise

I’ve spent my career in marketing, advising clients like Cisco Systems, NetApp, PayPal, Plantronics, Autodesk, Applied Materials, Sun Microsystems, and others on everything from branding to strategy to market analysis. I’m also a classical pianist. I’d like to start our discussion with a story about music that illustrates what can happen when you rise above the noise.

It was November 1923. Bandleader Paul Whiteman wanted to stage an experimental jazz concert in New York City the following February. He asked composer George Gershwin to create a concerto-like piece for the event. Gershwin declined, thinking he wouldn’t have time to compose a piece of the complexity required.

Gershwin thought that was that. Then he saw an article in the New York Tribune in January 1924 noting that he, Gershwin, was at work on a jazz concerto for Whiteman’s event. With only five weeks left, Gershwin scrambled to compose the piece. It was completed and orchestrated just eight days before the premiere.

According to historians, the program was quite long. It included twenty- six separate musical movements, plus a pre- concert lecture by Whiteman. Many of the pieces sounded similar. The ventilation system in the concert hall was broken. Gershwin’s new composition was second to last on the program. By that time, many people in the audience were losing their patience. The room quieted. A haunting clarinet solo began, and American music was never the same.¹

The new piece caught the attention of nearly everyone who heard it. Nearly a century later, Rhapsody in Blue is considered a cornerstone of our American musical heritage. Thousands of arrangements have been played in settings from musical salons to airports, and featured in genres from movies to TV commercials. United Airlines licensed the piece in the mid-1980s and is still using Rhapsody as its theme music three decades later.

Customers today sit in the equivalent of that hot, stuffy hall in New York. We are all overwhelmed with a seemingly endless parade of marketing messages from an ever- increasing variety of media. There’s no break. No room to breathe. And it all sounds the same. As a businessperson, you need to understand how your marketing team can help your company stand out above the noise. You need to know how your organization can use marketing to create lasting business success and strategic advantage.

The idea for Rhapsody in Blue came to Gershwin on a train ride to Boston. He told his biographer Isaac Goldberg in 1931, “It was on the train, with its steely rhythms, its rattle-ty bang, that is so often so stimulating to a composer— I frequently hear music in the very heart of the noise . . .”²

What George Gershwin did in Aeolian Hall in New York City on February 12, 1924, was to get above the noise. This book addresses how you can use marketing to do the same for your business.

What Is Noise, Anyway?

The Merriam- Webster Dictionary defines noise in several ways, but the most relevant definitions are “any sound that is undesired or interferes with one’s hearing of something” and “irrelevant or meaningless data or output occurring along with desired information.”³

For senders, noise is what gets in the way of delivering their message. For the receivers, noise is what disturbs their sense of equilibrium, the normal pleasantness of their day. In business, noise is what prevents us from making appropriate connections with customers. It’s what distracts us from maintaining focus. It’s what prolongs the sales process, causes misunderstandings with customers, and leads to squandered opportunities.

FIGURE 1-1: Noise

As marketers, we contend with two types of noise. The first is the noise in the marketplace. This may be from competitors, from unclear and unfocused messaging, or from a barrage of communications released simultaneously across a wide spectrum of channels. The second is the noise that builds within our own organizations. Even if you have great creative concepts, terrific messaging, and outstanding marketing campaigns, you’ll still need to compete for resources and attention with all the other activities happening within your organization on a day-to-day basis.

Have your executives bought in to what your marketing team has proposed? Are you aligned with executive strategy, working together with the rest of the organization to fulfill the corporate vision? Do you have the support of your CIO when it comes to accessing the data you’ll need to effectively target the right customers? Is your customer support team properly resourced to handle the aftermath of a successful marketing campaign?

One way to get above the noise factor is to simply try and be louder than everyone else. We all know people who try this. Their strategy when entering a large, loud conversation is to simply talk louder and LOUDER and LOUDER until they’re shouting above the rest. This may work for a limited audience for a short period of time, but it’s not sustainable, thank goodness!

A second way to defeat noise is with absolute silence. This may work for monks who have chosen a life of solitude and silence, but in the business world, silence will not help your business prosper. Within an organization, silence will not gain favor for the marketing organization among peers and colleagues clamoring for recognition and resources.

There’s a third, more effective way to cut through the noise, and that’s by creating a positive sound. A sound that people want to hear. A sound that makes people want to stop what they’re doing and listen. A sound that resonates with your target audience. The music in the heart of the noise.

How does this work?

First, like Gershwin on the train to Boston, you’ll need to become aware of the ambient noise around you. Understand what’s going on in your environment. What are the dynamics of the market in which you intend to compete?

Second, you’ll have to listen carefully to what your customers are saying: to what’s working for them, what’s frustrating them, where they need help, where they don’t want you to interfere. Then, and only then, can you craft your response. Do it in a way that combines messages and media to create a powerful, pleasant sound, and the results will be music to your customers’ ears.

Remember that what’s considered noise and what’s considered beautiful music are within the ear of the listener, not the musician. Igor Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring was considered so revolutionary at its debut in 1913 that it actually incited riots in Paris. The hard rock anthems of my youth were nothing but noise to my parents. Rap and hip- hop are noise to a country music fan and vice versa.

Marketing Today Can Be Downright Scary

Late- night infomercials promise us the ability to get in great physical shape, look younger, improve our sex lives, and sharpen our minds . . . just by purchasing the products offered for that low, low price. If it is so easy to do these things, why aren’t we all thin, muscular, highly attractive, and operating at peak performance levels?

It’s tempting to be enticed by a magic pill or an exciting new device that offers a quick shortcut to the goal. Personally, I’d love to be able to sit down at the piano and play a Beethoven piano sonata immediately. But I know it’s not that simple. There’s ongoing work required to get to an optimal level of performance. No magic pill changes that.

Just like anyone else, marketers can be distracted by the idea of the quick fix. We may be looking for a fast, easy way to achieve our objectives. We can also become enamored of technology, hoping it will allow us to circumvent the hard work and long processes previously required to be successful. The problem is, we need the basics of marketing— knowing our customer, building a solid product at an attractive price, promoting it in the right places— just like we need good habits and exercise. Without these, we will find ourselves on the wrong track, with badly performing marketing campaigns that leave us wondering where we went off key.

Marketing above the noise takes strategic thinking. It’s not something you can throw together quickly and expect to revolutionize your business immediately. It takes time to understand the market, to get to know your customers and prospects, to learn about your competitors, and to become fully aware of the environment in which you sell.

On the other hand, some of the key factors are so timeless and basic that you may read this and say, gee, is that all there is? But just like learning to play an instrument, knowing what to do is the simple part. Exercising the discipline to do that right thing on an ongoing basis is what’s tough.

If you follow my recommendations, you won’t necessarily be on the bandwagon of the Next Biggest Coolest Thing. If being first to market is your chief goal, feel free to stop reading and jump into the fray. However, before you go, remember that Apple was not first to market with an MP3 player or a smartphone. Google was not the first online search engine, nor was Facebook the first social network.

Business success is not about being first. It’s about building a sustainable competitive advantage by doing what’s necessary to stand out from the crowd and get above the noise.

What Does Mastery Look Like?

How will you know when your organization is effectively getting above the noise? The answer will differ from company to company, but there are several indicators that your organization is succeeding.

To start, you’re likely to see more definitive results from your marketing campaigns and initiatives. When you have solid metrics in place, it will be easier to see when an initiative is delivering and when it is not pulling its weight. If you know exactly what your strategy is, who your customers are, and what your marketplace is doing, you’ll be able to assess whether your messages are resonating. But there are other less obvious benefits of marketing above the noise.

You’ll find your organization is less reactive and less driven by “fire drills”— false emergencies that waste people’s time. Interestingly, I’ve found that in many, many cases, the folks putting out the so-called fires are also the arsonists. Beware!

You’ll see more thought leadership. Your marketing team will be looked to as thought leaders. This may occur at several levels— within your business or organization, within your industry, or in a more general business sense. Zappos, for example, is seen as a leader in customer service practices rather than in the sale of shoes, even though the company is extremely effective at that, too.

Marketing will be seen more as a driver, setting direction and driving strategy. This is opposed to just taking orders from a set of constituents with a seemingly endless appetite for ordering more, more, more marketing deliverables and wanting them now, now, now. In one organization I worked with, this situation was so bad, I threatened to buy the marketing leaders T-shirts with the inscription, “Would you like fries with that?”

Marketing will be part of the core business discussions. Too often, marketing is brought in to implement decisions that have already been made. After showing results from strategic initiatives, however, marketing will become part of the corporate strategy discussion and take their proper seat at the table.

There will be more buzz in the industry and beyond about what your organization is doing. Others will use your organization as an example of marketing done well. Your executives will be invited to share best practices with other organizations.

You’ll see higher engagement and loyalty from customers. This will allow you to grow your share of wallet and keep acquisition costs low. Customers will be more willing to collaborate with you in creating winning products and powerful marketing campaigns.

The company will make greater progress in terms of establishing and building a brand. Your brand will help differentiate you in the marketplace, providing the impetus for customers to consistently choose you over the alternatives available to them.

You’ll see more growth. This is real growth, above and beyond the rate of market or industry growth.

Finally, you’ll make better use of scarce resources. Employees will be more engaged and enthusiastic. That, in turn, leads to less stress and more excitement in general. And what’s the life of a marketer about, if not to have a little fun?

Who Does Strategic Marketing Effectively?

It’s a funny thing. When I asked around for examples of companies that market above the noise, not many hands went up. It’s much easier to find examples of companies that are not managing their marketing well (for example, those with the bad taste to try to inject humor into plane crashes, military coups, or natural disasters, and those that do a plain vanilla job). It’s tough to find great examples.

In researching this book, I spoke with people at companies outside the typical business-to-consumer (B2C) space. In particular, I was interested in finding organizations that have really impacted their organizations by leveraging marketing well. For some companies, like Zillow (profiled in chapter 7), marketing helped create an entirely new category— in Zillow’s case, that of online real estate marketplaces. Others, like Caribou Coffee (chapter 4), have used effective marketing strategies to stand out in the crowded, competitive retail coffee market.

The examples spread through the book vary in terms of industry, audience, organization size, and maturity of both the company and the market they serve. One thing, however, is common. None of them had an extremely large marketing budget. In some cases, the resources allocated to marketing were quite small. In others, there was a reasonable budget but not an excessive one. The days of marketing organizations having carte blanche to spend whatever they deem necessary are way behind us, for better or for worse.

The organizations I’ve featured are creative and innovative. And they are resilient. When something didn’t work, they picked themselves up, shrugged off the setback, and went on to try other avenues. I hope they will serve a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction
• PART I The Marketing Landscape
• PART II Competing for Attention
• PART III Striking the Right Chord
• PART IV Above the Noise
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• References
• Index
• About the Author