Marketing

A couple of decades ago, Marketing Warfare by Al Ries and Jack Trout was one of the "must reads" of the 1980s. It described business in terms laden with enough violence and hostility to satisfy even the most barbaric blood lust. Historic battles and body counts served as the introduction to the main text. Terms like "attack," "crush", "battle", "annihilate," and "destroy" peppered every page, and the only illustration breaking the tension was a drawing of tank that appeared repeatedly throughout the book. "Make no mistake," thundered the authors. "Marketing is war!"

The authors made it all sound so labor-intensive, so complicated. However, marketing is not brain surgery, although brain surgery can certainly be marketed. I assure you, if this book had ever been made into a video game, there would have been the perfunctory committee of concerned parents working around the clock to get it pulled off the shelves.
Has marketing changed now that we're comfortably into the next millennium? The language certainly has. There is more talk of "testing" and "positioning" than "maiming" and "killing." However, I believe that for the most part, the purpose of marketing has not flickered an eyelash.

Just what is marketing? It depends on whom you ask. According to the American Marketing Association, it is "the performance of business activities that direct the flow of goods and services from producer to consumer."

In simple terms, marketing is the total effort expended to get customers to buy what you have to sell. It's what you do to make a living. The motive for all this activity is the same one that dragged Uncle Ugg out of his cave ages ago with his club over his shoulder to go in search of a bigger better wooly mammoth.

If Uncle Ugg could kill more than the kids would eat -- something I was never been able to do -- he could trade a couple of ribs for other items that he needed, or suddenly discovered that he wanted.
Maybe his brother-in-law had smacked a couple of wildcats more than the kids needed for skins. Ugg could offer his excess mammoth meat -- trimmed up and neatly presented on a clean flat rock -- for the extra skins. However, what if brother-in-law Ed had heightened the demand for wildcat skins by parading his kids past Ugg's kids a few times all dressed in their new outfits? At this point, Ugg could either add a few more ribs to the pile on the rock, or try to convince his kids that wildcat skins are a fad and by this time next season, nobody will be wearing them -- in a transparent and probably futile attempt to either force Ed to lower his cost, or Ugg's kids to lower their expectations.

Let's move forward -- at least in time -- to the contemporary fast food mega-industry where Mc-marketing and Mc-advertising reign supreme.
McDonald's was created to compete with the Mom and Pop diner or coffee shop, which usually specialized in quick breakfast and lunch service, and almost anything else that was easy and fast -- as in "fast food".

When Ray Kroc opened his first McDonald's in Des Plains, Illinois he wasn't offering anything new -- he was just offering a whole lot of the most popular items on a typical coffee shop menu: hamburgers, cheeseburgers, fries, and soda. Kroc borrowed money to expand, and billions of burgers later, the rest is history.

McDonald's is fond of attributing its success to quality and customer service, and its devotion to cleanliness. However, I say Mc-phooey. If you have either owned or rented a small child during the past twenty-five years, you know why McDonald's is a super power. They know how to get kids to force their parents to seek food and drink inside Dante's Inferno. Folks, those aren't golden arches you see. They're big yokes going right around parents' necks.

Think about it. Despite the recent efforts on McDonald's part to lure more adults inside its doors, can anyone here truly claim that he or she ever stopped at Mickey D's because you truly love the food?

"Yes, I'm exhausted and starving. I think I'll go to McDonald's, order up about 1,500 calories of stuff that will keep me from sleeping tonight, eat it off a paper napkin, and listen to sanitized rap music. Beats the heck out of prime rib any night."

No, the chances are you were urged onward by a short person who had succumbed to the siren song of a Happy Meal complete with this week's shatter resistant premium toy and some riddles printed on a paper bag.
McDonald's isn't a titan because they produce a superior hamburger. It remains on top because it has figured out how to get kids to do hard sell.

Why else would virtually every location these days be wrapped around a giant indoor playground? Not for the dining pleasure of the ones wielding the wallets. The slides are for the ones making the actual buying decisions.

So what's the difference between marketing and advertising? Again, it depends on whom you ask. I believe that advertising is one of the primary tools of marketing. Its main purpose is to help promote awareness of and an interest in a product or service. What form a particular advertising effort takes will depend on whom the ad is meant to reach, and how much is being budgeted.

So what do Uncle Ugg and Ray Kroc have to do with you? More than you might think.

As members of one community in a whole country of communities propelled by the free enterprise system, you have access to an immense variety of promotional options. You must market to stay in business, and you should probably advertise.

Simple is often sensational. It is no secret that I am an advocate of newsletters, both digital and traditional ink on paper. They are low pressure, high impact, and incredibly hardy. Recipients are less quick to slam a printed newsletter into the round file as they are an expensive, no holds barred printed piece. E-newsletters avoid the delete button almost as well. Because newsletters are perceived as informational rather than promotional, they are automatically assigned a value.

Other affordable, effective printed advertising vehicles include classified ads in professional journals and tabloids, and small local papers, especially if you offer a service. Don't ever overlook a good, local newspaper. They are enjoying a rebirth, especially as the large, syndicated papers get worse by the day and people continue to discover that the internets effectiveness for local promotion isn't one size fits all. It is a well-known fact that in small newspapers, the classified ads are read almost as thoroughly as the obituaries.

As a business grows and its past due bills change to dollar bills, there is a tendency among the powers that be to want to "upscale" advertising. Be very careful. Very slick implies expensive, and depending on what product or service you offer, this may be a liability if your customer base is price sensitive. If you are in a high dollar market, then go for it. If you cater to mainstream mid-America, proceed with caution.

After you've determined who, what, and where your market is, don't leap into advertising before you look what others are doing. Study the medium you are considering -- print, digital, broadcast, outdoor display, etc. -- and analyze what works, and what doesn't.

A final tip. Like real estate, the value of advertising is often location, location, location.

I took a visual stroll through two local magazines yesterday, and discovered two ads placed side by side occupying the top half of a right hand page. One headline read "Turn to Us For All Your Plumbing Needs."

The other said, "Prostate Trouble Can Be Cured Without Surgery."