In his book Relationship Marketing: Successful Strategies for the Age of the Customer, Regis McKenna names certain truths of marketing known to a marketing genius. Some of these are:
- Being the first to market is no guarantee of success.
- All successful products are adapted to specific markets or are altered to meet competitive challenges.
- Writing your strategic marketing direction in one sentence or 10 is not the issue. The real question is ''Do you have a strategy?''
- Product improvement and innovation is a leading indicator of success.
- For people in marketing jobs, service is an integral part of the product’s definition.
- Service has become a way of differentiating products and building strong relationships with customers.
- Maintaining ongoing relationships with key user groups is a sure way to keep products on target in a fast-paced market environment.
- Customer involvement in the early stages of development not only ensures early sales of the product but helps to eliminate problems. People in marketing jobs know that the customer relationship enhances the product and establishes a base for word-of-mouth promotion.
- If people in marketing jobs build solid market relationships, then their knowledge of the customer and communication with the customer is a constant value.
- If marketing realities and perceptions do not match, then it’s because you have not done your marketing job properly and failed to communicate the value of your product or service to the market.
- The purpose of advertising is to achieve awareness. Unfortunately, awareness is not synonymous with behavior change. The expectation that advertising or public relations can manipulate the potential buyer is like putting all the emphasis on the component rather than on the system.
- Complex products and most services are best sold by word of mouth and a reference strategy. Advertising can build awareness, but it can rarely do the marketing job of communicating the same level of confidence delivered by a reference system.
- Professional services have used word of mouth because trust and confidence are of primary importance. When the product or service is central to the strategy and performance of the customer, confidence and trust are the two most important assets people in marketing jobs can convey, especially in highly competitive markets involving many players and lots of activity. Those two qualities can be communicated only through an experience-based reference system.
- While niche markets are often thought of as safe havens, they are in fact more demanding.
- Your reputation is of prime importance in niche markets since customer needs must be met and supported more precisely and the reference system needs to be more tightly coupled.
- Studies show that companies achieving leadership in niche markets have a higher return on investment and are more profitable than those going for market share in broader established markets.
- Every aspect of business has an influence on every other aspect. Flexible organizations understand that the roles and capabilities of all parts of the organization are interrelated.
- Marketing is closer to the customer than other management. Competent marketing people take leadership roles in the direction of new-product development.
Enjoy your journey!
