NO PAIN, NO GAIN
Is The Marketing Return Worth The Risk?
The great 1930s New York City Mayor LaGuardia
used to say, "I don't make many mistakes, but when I make one, it's a beaut."
Marketing is one
of those peculiar art forms in which you don't know you've made a mistake until well after
the deed is done. What seemed like a good idea at the time may turn out to be a fiasco.
What worked magnificently yesterday may bomb tomorrow. That's the exciting and interesting
thing about marketing -- it's loaded with risk. When it works, its rewards are abundant.
Unfortunately, marketing is expensive, and when you fail, it's usually an expensive
failure.
Risk is inherent
in every marketing decision, and most often, the ability to be successfully original is a
function of the degree to which you're willing to take risks. Not taking risk means doing
the same thing over and over again, regardless of changing circumstances or of the
elements involved. It may seem safe, and may even suggest that you're knowledgeable
because you can summon up the past. But it doesn't always accomplish what you'd like it
to, and it certainly doesn't do much to advance the state of the art.
Of course, if
you don't take risks you don't make mistakes. But it means as well, in the competitive
arena, that you don’t accomplish much, either. Sometimes you've got to assess the
potential danger in risking a new marketing idea, against the potential value if the idea
succeeds.
There are some
things that we know probably do or don't work.
But one thing we've learned, in the three decades during which we've been able to market,
is that there are very few absolutes. What didn't work yesterday may well work today, just
as what did work yesterday may not work today.
For example,
there was a time when nobody believed that telemarketing would work to sell professional
services. Now we know very differently, assuming that the telemarketing is done right.
There was a time when the notion of direct mail to sell professional services horrified
many conservative professionals. Today, even when it's done badly, it's taken for granted
as an acceptable professional firm marketing tool. Consider, too, the courage of the first
professionals to use the Internet as a marketing tool. Today the Internet is integral to
the marketing process.
The trick, then,
is to understand what risks to take in trying new ideas, and when to take them. That won't
avoid all the mistakes, but it will serve to diminish the number and degree.
There
are three kinds of mistakes that tend to arise most often, and that tend to substantially
increase risk -- those that come from not understanding the marketing process;
those that come from not understanding the skills and techniques of marketing; and
those that arise from just poor or misguided judgment.
Perhaps the most
expensive mistake that can be made in marketing is to not understand the process.
You will make mistakes consistently if you
don't know what marketing is, or why marketing a professional service is different from
other kinds of marketing, or what you can and can't expect each aspect of the marketing
process to accomplish, or how long the process takes to work, or what the variables are
that can affect the process.
Those mistakes
that come from not understanding the techniques are just as wasteful, simply
because it takes as much and more energy and money and time to do something wrong as to do
it right. The techniques are the tools and devices and the way they’re used. They
require training, skill, and experience.
Mistakes of
judgment are those that arise out of inexperience or ignorance or misconception. On
the other hand, there are mistakes in judgment that are made in the context of even calculated
risk, in which you try to guess the unknowable, and guess wrong. But if the calculated
risk works, the results are terrific, which means the risk was worth taking.
Not
understanding the process can result in at least the following fatal or near-fatal
mistakes:
· Choosing the wrong marketing people
· Misusing, and ultimately losing, truly competent or
thoughtful marketing people
· Choosing the wrong marketing program
· Aborting or misjudging a good program before it's had time
to work
· Not understanding when and how to fine-tune a good program
that's been adversely affected by changing circumstances
· Not understanding how to use feed-back and new information
to advantage
Not
understanding the techniques almost invariably produces:
· Failure in the technique, and then blaming the failure on
the technique or the program. Or expecting unrealistic results from good techniques, and
then abandoning those techniques for the wrong reasons.
· Residing in mythology rather than reality. It leads to the
distortion syndrome -- publicity is free advertising
and I can write a letter -- who needs a direct mail
pro?
Mistakes in judgment result in all of the above and more. But the mistake in not taking risks can frequently cause more damage than all the others put together. This kind of mistake takes the form of…
· Not listening to the marketplace. Never mind what you want -- this is what I sell.
· Reverting to the standard; the old way; the way you or
others did it yesterday. Looking backward, rather than forward. Doing only what's been
done before. Never being original.
· Doing something only
because it's worked before, for other people or in other contexts, rather than because it
relates to the new objective and the new circumstance.
· Not exploring new techniques, particularly when the reason
is inconsistent with what others – particularly your competitors -- are doing. We've never cold-called or written to a prospect.
Telemarketing is not dignified. We don’t understand e-commerce.
· Losing track of the relationship of an idea to the aims of
the program.
In a highly competitive arena, which is what
the professions have become, the competitive difference lies in the new, the risky, in the
original. Trying something new always has inherent risk. The danger is greater, though, in
not trying new ideas and new techniques. In other words, the willingness to risk.
There's a
paradox. Any program, marketing or otherwise, depends first upon its basics. There are
certain basic processes that must be undertaken. Certain forms of planning. Certain tools
that must be considered. There's no credit for doing the basics, but there's great penalty
in not doing them, and doing them well.
The competitive
difference, then, between two firms that perform the marketing basics well is in the
thoughtful and original ideas beyond the basics. The new approach to a market. The
originality of the language or layout in a brochure. The message in a direct mail letter.
The willingness to try a new skill or technique.
Part of risk,
too, is taste. Taste is too mercurial to define, but it's sometimes helpful to
learn to project consequences, and to learn to view ideas not in your own context, but
through the eyes of the beholder. The result is often to see things, not as if I think it's in good taste, others will, but
quite the other way around. I don't necessarily like
it for myself, but will it be accepted by, and work for, my target audience?
If we accept the
reality that mistakes are going to be made by even the best marketers, and that mistakes
are not always fatal or irrevocable, how do we avoid or minimize them?
· Learn the basics of marketing and its tools. You
don't have to be proficient in every tool, or even in every aspect of marketing. But you
should understand the process -- how it works, what you can and can't expect, how long it
takes, and so forth.
· Consider the knowledge and experience of marketing
professionals. Learn who they are, and how to tell a good one from a bad one -- a
marketer whose skills are limited to selling his or her own services versus a marketer who
knows how to market your services.
· Learn to accept the professionalism of the marketer,
and to consider his or her ideas in terms of that professionalism. If you can't trust your
marketer's own professionalism, then get a new marketer -- or get out of marketing
altogether and abandon the field to your competitors
· Learn to take normal business risks in marketing.
Trust new ideas and new tools and new concepts, if they're formulated in the context of
experience and marketing professionalism. Don't say no -- or yes, for that matter -- for
the wrong reasons
Thoughtfulness
should be an element of every profession, including marketing. But at the root of success
in every profession is professionalism. Just as your clients are asked to trust your
professionalism, so should you learn to trust that of the marketing professional.