The former vice president achieved some level of Hollywood stardom a few years back for his documentary “An Inconvenient Truth.”  As narrator, Mr. Gore spoke about the harm we are doing to the environment – the inconvenient truths we would just as soon ignore, but at our peril.

There are some inconvenient truths as well about marketing, facts and realities we would prefer were not the case, but we continue to go on marketing as if they weren’t so. Let’s be honest, every marketer would love to think that their adoring public is anxiously awaiting each next word from the company, ready to gulp it down like a house pet awaiting its supper.

Like the song says, “It ain’t necessarily so!”

So here’s Inconvenient Truth #1:  “Good” numbers aren’t always good numbers.  While media plans are always based on the number of eyeballs delivered, not everything can be measured on a spreadsheet.  For example, given a dollar amount, you can reach ten thousand people between midnight and 6 am on local cable.  Or with four times that amount, you can reach a thousand people between 6 am and 10 am.  Numbers alone would dictate the former choice.  But if you consider that your overnight spots are running alongside ads for weight-loss pills, video retrospectives of Liberace, sex-enhancement products, and the two-for-one mattress special at Benny’s Bedding, all targeting people who can’t sleep at night, the context isn’t that appealing.  Also, too much exposure (thanks to cheap media) can kill an ad, just like having your favorite uncle overstay his welcome. Media buying is both a science and an art.  It’s just not as simple as 1+1=2.  Having the right media selection leveraged with strategic messaging and surprising creative, the math can be 1+1=5.

Inconvenient Truth #2: More companies save themselves into bankruptcy than spend themselves there.  The way to assure your remaining invisible to your public is to market at a level that is below the general noise level.  If you want to compete for attention and win at marketing, you have to commit to being in the game. Yes, appearing on page two in the paper with a half page ad costs money, and so does a cable schedule on premium channels at prime time.  But as Woody Allen wisely observed, 80% of success is just “showing up.”  You don’t show up with a fractional space ad hiding in the corner of the page.  And you don’t show up with free creative from the cable company or an inexpensive catalog ad that people expect and thus ignore.  Marketing is a self-fulfilling prophesy: if you believe in it , and spend to win, it will work.  And the opposite is true as well.

Inconvenient Truth #3:  Results are not an overnight occurrence.  In marketing, it’s a process of erosion.  One has to continually chip away at the indifference, the avoidance, the skepticism and the cynicism.   It may take a year or longer before results take hold.  Familiar brands like Apple, Wells Fargo Bank, New Balance athletic shoes, HoneyBaked Ham and Western Bagel did not start out as overnight sensations; why should your business be any different?  These hugely successful companies got that way because they consistently invested in their marketing.  No “start-stop-start-stop” approach but one of showing up unceasingly. It starts with the understanding that marketing is indeed an investment and not an expense.  Plus it requires this additional essential ingredient: patience.

So let’s be real, let’s be honest, and let’s accept these inconvenient truths as a wake-up call to create significant change for your business.   There’s nothing more convenient than new customers buying your products and company revenues rising.

(c) 2012 LA ads – A Marketing Agency

by Rolf Gutknecht, Agent of Change (c) 2012

The GPS is a wonderful invention for anyone who’s had to get somewhere they’ve not been before. Whether you get directions from your SmartPhone, Mapquest, Google Maps, dedicated GPS device or even the old paper map, there are only two pieces of data to plot your route: where you are now and where you want to go.  Sounds pretty simple, right?  Yet how many companies, maybe even yours, have launched into a marketing campaign without really considering these things!  Unfortunately, not having a clear picture of where you are now and where you want to go leads to not getting anywhere because one critical factor is missing: a overall marketing strategy.

Time and time again in speaking with CMO/VP/Directors of Marketing for companies large and small, they tell me that they need to execute marketing programs, but then tell me they “don’t have time to develop a full  strategy.”  I’m not kidding. It’s actually easy to understand, given all the exciting marketing tools available today, including social media, email marketing, location-based apps, etc. It’s easy to confuse these tactics with strategies. Too often I see people focused on the newest and sexiest marketing tactic du jour without any appreciation for how it fits in an overall marketing strategy. I’ve also seen entire marketing plans that consist of nothing but a series of tactics strung together one after the next without an over-arching marketing strategy.

So, what’s the difference between strategy and tactic? A strategy is the broad roadmap that defines where you are now, where you want to go and how you’ll get there – taking into account your product or service, what the competition is doing, which direction the market is heading, and what you’ll need to do and say that gives your company the competitive edge. It’s the big picture. Tactics, by contrast, are the specific tools you use to do this: Write a blog. Send out a newsletter. Develop an app. Run an ad. Be more visible at tradeshows. Etc.

It’s easy to start with the “how” but if you haven’t identified the “what”, you may find yourself spending a lot of time executing tactics that don’t take you where you want to go and in so doing, you’ll be wasting time, resources and losing out on sales-producing opportunities.

The confusion compounds when I hear some marketing folks talk about their organization’s “online marketing strategies” given all the attention to social media, online and mobile tools. You shouldn’t have an “online” or internet marketing strategy any more than an you should have an “offline” strategy. What you do need is one, single integrated strategy that looks across all delivery platforms whether online or offline, print, broadcast, or mobile. Your customers don’t have an online self and offline self and neither should you. Think holistically about all your marketing initiatives. Otherwise you’ll drive your customers and your own team crazy.

So at the end of the day, executing marketing tactics without having a well-developed integrated strategy is like leaving your roadmap tools at home and taking off on the drive without concerning if you’ve chosen the right road, highway or turnoff. You wouldn’t haphazardly set off on an important trip in your personal life so why let it happen with regard to your company’s marketing activities. You’ll never make it to the right place taking the wrong roads.