THE INGENUE MARKETER'S GUIDE TO CERTAIN FAILURE...
OR, IT WOULD BE A LOT FASTER AND EASIER
SIMPLY TO THROW YOUR MONEY OUT THE WINDOW
by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
The other day one of my clients appeared for her weekly
meeting. After wheedling, pleading, cajoling and fighting
for well over a year, I'd gotten her to set up a
telemarketing campaign to contact hospital discharge
planners and managers of physicians' offices. One of the
telemarketers, apparently having had enough on the phone
after only three or four weeks, told the executive director
that instead of calling all these people in a 60 day
cycle... they should be called once a year and never more.
Now, despite the fact that the program was working,
producing at least one new client daily (in an industry
where a client can easily be worth several thousand
dollars), the executive director came to our meeting to ask
if I thought we should adopt her employee's idea.
God help me, but I was dumb struck.
Here's a program that works, that produces thousands of
dollars of extra income at minimum cost (no new employees
were hired and the marketing expenses only went up by a
small amount)... yet the executive director really thought
the question valid. Hence, this article.
As a long-time marketing consultant, I constantly see people
-- both profit and not-for-profit -- sabotaging their
efforts, virtually embracing failure, instead of doing what
it takes to make their marketing profitable. Here then, with
typical modesty, is a short list of what you can do --
indeed may already be doing -- to ensure the failure of your
marketing.
Ingenue Mistake #1: You Don't See How To Make What's
Successful More Successful
When you've got a marketing program that works, that is when
you've got a program that's meeting the objectives you have
for it, congratulate yourself. You've got a winner. Don't
blow it. Instead of figuring out how quickly you can wind it
down, or (even more stupidly) end it altogether: analyze it
to see how you can make it better.
Consider the illustration above. I suspect that my executive
director asked me the question about whether we could wind
down the telemarketing because she didn't really want to do
it at all. Despite the fact the program was working, she was
hoping I'd say that the program could be cut by 75% -- and
still achieve the same results.
However, instead of trying to discover how quickly she could
get out of a good thing, it would have been better if she'd
been considering ways of improving the response rate, and so
adding the frosting onto the cake of success.
Note: by the way, it didn't take too long to determine what
this "frosting" might be. It turned out that as a result of
the telemarketing campaign several hospital discharge
planners and physicians office managers made first-time
referrals. Despite the fact that there was initial
resistance to the idea, it was finally decided that the
executive director could send a warm note and, just maybe, a
fruit basket to these people as a "welcome aboard" present.
In short, that something could be done to build a
relationship with extremely valuable possibilities...
instead of doing everything possible to ignore them... while
reducing the marketing program as a whole!
Unfortunately, the truth is, most non-profit personnel don't
have a clue which of their marketing programs are working...
and which are dogs. This is because most organizations don't
bother to set up the necessary apparatus for tallying their
responses... and the dollars (or other results) which their
marketing produces. This is, of course, madness.
Your marketing can never be considered a success without a
clear indication of what happened. Only in this way can you
know what to repeat... and develop... and what to jettison.
Do you do this? Consider your last marketing gambit,
brochure, ad, community-wide mailing. Did you set up the
means for tallying your responses? Did you tell relevant
personnel what they needed to do to get the information you
needed? Did you record this information? Did you consider
both prospect responses as well as hard results generated?
Did you analyze what happened... and did you use these data
to determine the direction for future marketing? If not...
what did you expect anyway?
Ingenue Mistake #2: You Rely Too Much On Written Marketing
Communications
For years now, I've been doing an experiment with my
clients. If, for instance, I'm about to start working with a
fund-raising client, I'll say, "Which alternative would you
rather use for fund-raising: 1) face-to-face solicitations;
2) getting your board members to request money from their
friends and associates, and 3) using mail to request
donations?" So far, almost 100% of the people asked have
selected the third alternative... that is the alternative
that is furthest away from direct, personal, one-to-one
solicitation. I bet you'd select the same choice, too...
The reason? Because facing people one-to-one necessarily
creates the possibility for direct one-to-one REJECTION. It
is, however, always easier to be "rejected" because someone
doesn't answer your letter (it might, after all, have gotten
lost in the post) than to be told, "No, I'm not going to do
that, thank you very much!"
What you must keep in mind, however, is that written
communications are only a part of marketing. Rather, in
priority order of most effective to least effective, this is
how you should be arranging your marketing:
## face-to-face meetings;
## telephone meetings;
## direct response options.
In other words, say you wanted to get a grant from a
foundation (decidedly a marketing possibility). Whenever
possible, you'd be advised to do everything you could to get
a personal meeting... to have the chance to make an
interesting, well-reasoned, intense and focused presentation
about how you and the funding source could work together to
bring about the desired result. A telephone meeting would be
a less strong way of presenting your information and
building the relationship... while merely sending in a
letter and proposal would necessarily be weaker still.
I'm really saying two things here:
## When you're in marketing, you're in the rejection
business. You know you're doing well when the number of your
successes rises consistently... because you're getting more
and still more rejections. ## You should not place an over
reliance on the written word, on written marketing
communications but, instead, should do everything possible
to make them a component, but only a component, of your
overall marketing program.
Thus, say you wanted to raise an additional $20,000 for one
of your programs. If you're like most people you'd want to
raise the bulk of this, perhaps all this from direct mail,
eschewing anything that brings you closer to people, that
necessarily raises the possibility of rejection. For most
organizations this would be the wrong way of arranging
things.
Instead, you should ask yourself:
## Is there a person, or a group of people, we could
personally ask to provide this money? Who's the best person
to make the request? When's the best time to make it?
## Are there people we could call to request the money?
## What's the best, the most realistic role for direct
response marketing in raising the money we need? Have we
constructively considered just what it can do and just how
it should be used... or are we just afraid of implementing
other, more sensible alternatives?
Ingenue Mistake #3: Your Perfectionism Is Dampening Your
Marketing
I have an author friend who's been working on the last
chapter of a book for at least four years now. She's
rewritten those 30 pages at least 10 times, yet the
chapter's no closer to completion now than it was the first
time she wrote it. Three years ago I made her a bet that I'd
write three books before she finished her one chapter. (By
the way, I won.) Sadly, her situation reminds me of how too
many "marketers" sabotage their efforts.
Marketing is a very human endeavor. And like some of the
most important activities in our life it doesn't need to be
perfect to work. Think for instance of the love letters you
got in high school, the ones with erasures, misspellings and
fractured syntax. They could -- and so often did -- achieve
their objectives despite any number of such mistakes.
Remember this illustration well, because love letters are
MARKETING letters... that is they are directed to a highly
specific target market and have a specific objective which
the marketer wishes to obtain in the shortest period of
time.
Marketing letters work to the extent that:
## you know who you're talking to;
## you know what you want him/her to do... and have made it
easy for him/her to do it;
## you understand the benefits of what you're offering, and
pile them on, one after another, always leading with the
single benefit that is most important to the individual
you're speaking to;
## you incorporate a motivational offer, that is a reason
for the targeted individual to act NOW;
## you use every emphasizing device at your command to
accentuate your message, that is arrows, bold, underling,
ellipses, italic, etc., etc., etc.
Your prospects care about what you can do for them... about
the many benefits you have available. They want to know how
you can transform their lives... and what they have to do to
get the process rolling.
They aren't nearly as concerned -- in fact most aren't
concerned at all -- with:
## the color of your paper (think of how long you wasted on
this picayune problem);
## the kind of paper;
## the precise shading of your logo, and
## the kind of type you agonized over for your address.
No, your prospects and clients don't care about these
things. But you do. Because they involve your self-image and
your place in the world.
It is, however, the height of folly to think these things
get customers, that these tiny matters of minuscule
importance motivate people to come to you and enjoy your
benefits. Yet these things, despite their insignificance,
get many times the attention the crucial benefits do.
RIDICULOUS!
Ingenue Mistake #4: Once Is Never Enough
Think of your last marketing activity. You'd decided you
wanted to achieve some objective with a particular group.
Perhaps you wanted to raise some money; perhaps you were
running a continuing education program of some type and
wanted participants. Perhaps you ran an ad in a newspaper to
attract new clients.
When you sat down to draft your marketing plan for achieving
this objective (you did have a plan, didn't you, and a
specific objective), did you pencil in one "hit" of the
target market... or a sustained campaign? I bet I know...
All too often, partly because you've got lots of fires to
put out around the office, partly because your time and
money are limited, and partly because you just don't think
things through, you start a marketing sequence... but don't
finish it.
This is a mistake.
In the paper the other day there was a cartoon of a child
being yelled at by his mother to come in for dinner. Through
the first three blocks, the mother yells increasingly
loudly. Only in the fourth block, when the yell is in
massive type crowding everything else out, does the child
finally look up and say, "Now, she's getting serious. I'll
have to go in a few more minutes!"
Every child knows that asking once isn't enough. Every adult
learns how to determine the level of importance and urgency
in a child's insistently reiterated request. WHY DO YOU ACT
ANY DIFFERENT?
These days, when everybody and his brother is "marketing,"
we're besieged by marketing communications of every kind.
It's estimated that in urban areas we get hit by as many as
7,000 marketing communications a week... most of which we
ignore.
Yet, when you come to organize your marketing you forget
what you knew as a child, how you operate as a parent, and
how you live as a consumer... and so do just one anemic
marketing communication.
Marketing, you must remember, is a game of relentless
client-centered focus. You:
## target the designated market;
## craft motivating benefits, and
## HIT HOME WITH THESE BENEFITS AGAIN... AND AGAIN... AND
AGAIN!!!
... until, at last the prospect says, "Now she's getting
serious. I'll have to take action."
Ingenue Mistake #5: You Force Prospects To Read Every Word
You've Written To Get To The Meat
Inside most ingenue "marketers" is the ghost of a high
school English teacher constantly reminding you to "build to
your conclusion."
This may be suitable for an essay. But it is most assuredly
not suitable in marketing.
In marketing, you lead with your strongest point, your most
motivating benefit, the thing that's going to get your
targeted prospect to take fastest action. You don't build to
a conclusion; you take the benefit and clobber the prospect
with it, shouting, HEY, BUB, LOOK WHAT'S HERE FOR YOU!
Is this what you're doing? I doubt it. Review your
brochure... your last marketing letter... your annual report
or a fund raising proposal. I'm willing to bet a dollar (a
very serious thing for a parsimonious Scotsman like me) you
build towards a conclusion. You put things in logical order.
You provide a lot of history... and more background
information. But dear reader, what the prospect wants is
BENEFITS. And he wants them NOW.
Whatever the delights of Victorian reading parties, where
well-bred young ladies and gentlemen sat on the rocks of
Cornwall reading en grup works of serious intent through
languid afternoons, THEY HAVE NO PLACE IN MODERN MARKETING.
Know your market. Prioritize your benefits. Then drive them
home! Remember, marketing is like an ice cream cone: the
important stuff is always on the top!
Conclusion
In marketing, as in love and war, all's fair. Daily, con men
flourish in marketing; good causes fail. Why? Because one
masters marketing, concentrating on people; the other
concentrates on self, eschewing successful process. This
can't be you. What you're doing is too important, too vital,
too necessary to too many people. That's why engaging in
anything other than fruitful, client-centered marketing is
unacceptable... and must be stamped out. Which is what
everyone but the perverse ingenue wants to do.
**********************************************
Dr. Jeffrey Lant is an internationally known marketer whose
client-centered techniques consistently help millions of
people around the world. Now you can benefit from these in
resources like DEVELOPMENT TODAY: A FUND RAISING GUIDE FOR
NONPROFIT ORGANIZATIONS (278 pages, $29.95 postpaid); MONEY
MAKING MARKETING: FINDING THE PEOPLE WHO NEED WHAT YOU'RE
SELLING AND MAKING SURE THEY BUY IT (296 pages, $39.50
postpaid), and CASH COPY: HOW TO OFFER YOUR PRODUCTS AND
SERVICES SO YOUR PROSPECTS BUY THEM... NOW (480 pages,
$38.50 postpaid). Get these books and a free year of
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