Marketing Wisdom

It matters what you offer.

Was meeting with a client the other day – a start-up. Very young but with many clients throughout the United States.

This company is getting ready to hit it big and they are concerned – once they get the next three clients, they will be recognized as a nationwide company and a force to be recognized with. What this means to them, they THINK, is that everyone (their competitors who are already huge and well-established) will copy them and steal all of their clients.

Here’s why I disagreed by using the following analogy:

There are hundreds of Analyst companies throughout the world, right? Jupiter? Gartner? etc. From firms that are thousands of analysts to firms that are just one.

Just one? Yes, just one.

Why? How? Because they specialize. They focus on a niche market. They become so knowledgeable about a single product line that a large analyst firm can’t come close to having the breadth of knowledge that the single individual has.

This is the same as my client. They will have knowledge and focus that their large competitors can’t come close to having, now or even in the far distant future.

The DANGER is to themselves, where they may start believing that they are so large that they no longer have to be so concerned, worried, or detailed oriented towards their clients – that is where they will lose their client base and go out of business.

As long as they keep focused on what they currently offer and keep offering that, they will last far into the next decade before they will have to start worrying about competition and hopefully, by then, they will be onto the next field of expertise.

Have a wonderful client that is experiencing one of those difficult times that every start-up has, change.

Start-ups have many different times in their brief lives. They start and then collapse, they start and limp along and then collapse, they start and limp and then succeed, they start and become hugely successful.

There are also other “ways” that a start-up can go. I want to speak about the one that my client is going through right now. It is the one where they start, and they focus, and then focus again, and then focus again, and then become successful.

It reminds me of Thomas Edison – he didn’t make the lightbulb on the first try, he kept trying and trying and then succeeded.

This same company, each time it “refocused”, also changed its management team. It did NOT change it sales or product team, just it’s CEO. This allowed lessons learned to be kept but also allowed the “captain who was sailing the ship to change course and head in the correct direction”. Or, in their case, to refocus on a more direct approach to their potential clients.

I have written about this many times before. A start-up MUST change its management team numerous times as it grows from being young and immature to full grown and mature. An entrepreneur – who usually starts the company, rarely has the means, the patience, or the knowledge to turn a start-up into a global billion dollar company (yes, there are exceptions).

All I’m trying to point out and say here is this: FOCUS. Always focus. Look at your market, are you focused enough on them?

My client, because of its changing of focus, is becoming more and more successful – which is GOOD!!!

To you – it could be changing focus from the world, to APAC, to Taiwan. Or, it could be from using Gold, to Silver, to Aluminum. Or, it could be from using a blond, to using a brunette, to using a redhead.

Focus is research being put to practice.

By now, you know BP’s brand is crushed with the oil leak. Arizona Iced Tea has lost strong brand confidence because of Arizona’s government. What else?

For those of you who have been following me for the past few years:

1) Crisis documents had to have been finished and ready to go out (how can you NOT have crisis communications ready if you aren’t BP?).
2) Your spokespeople have already been determined and are ready to respond, within 24 hours, of any disaster (Arizona Ice Tea took four days to respond that they are NOT in Arizona, but in New York – way to long).
3) You already have spokespeople in place (or on their way), within 24 hours, to the local media as well as national media locations (i.e. here, in the U.S., it would be an individual in New York, one in Washington D.C., and one on the Gulf Coast (wherever all the media is stationed to report on the spill, in case of BP).

BP still has a chance to slow/stop the damage (yes, it is severely damaged) – they need to get out front and stop hanging in the shadows (remember my posts on the poisoned dog food? I still hear people asking about that).

Arizona finally has started putting spokespeople on the air saying that they are not from Arizona so please don’t punish us.

It all comes down to marketing fundamentals (like baseball or football). You don’t practice and update the fundamentals, you will lose the game.

Good luck!! (Again!!)