Smart Marketing

One of the most important targeting decisions in marketing plans

I recently had coffee with a friend of mine, Don Combs, who owns a company that supplies slush drink machines to the K-12 market. Turns out he has developed a software product that helps in the food service arena and was looking for some advice on how to market it.

As I probed deeper, I learned that he had only sporadically contacted his existing customers about this new product. I suggested he call a handful of the food service directors who were already familiar with his slush drink machines and market the new software program to them. We reasoned together that this approach, of working from your base of established customers, would do the following things:

• Generate immediate feedback on the product - These people already know Don and would be honest with him about the product.
• Provide referrals - Some of these customers may not be the exact fit for the software product, but they would happily provide Don with referrals to others who are the right people.
• Help Don hone his message and find the right key messages to communicate.

After a couple of weeks, Don has generated a bunch of appointments, and even better, leads for the software appear to be blossoming. He has honed his pitch a to concentrate more on the key selling points, and he has generated a variety of referrals. Word of mouth is also growing.

There's an important lesson here: In any marketing campaign, start with the eye of your bullseye. Those are the customers and champions for your business who know and love your company. When you start with them, they will bend over backwards to help you generate names and sales.

Unique selling proposition and positioning

Yesterday I gave a speech to the Louisville Direct Marketing Association entitled The Marketing Toolkit for Growing Businesses. During the course of it, an interesting question came up about the differences between Unique Selling Proposition and Positioning. Here's how I tried to explain it:

Unique Selling Proposition - Is a term introduced by Rosser Reeves in the early '60s. It's typically defined as a marketing strategy that focuses on a particular attribute of a product or service that's  distinctive to a brand and offers a significant benefit to the buyer.

Positioning - Is the art of fitting a product or service to market segments so that the product is meaningfully set apart from the competition.

In my mind, using a Unique Selling Proposition is a tactic that's is part of the overall strategy of positioning a product in a buyer's mind. But this field is so wide open to interpretation that I thought I'd get your opinions on this. Did I get it right? What did I miss?

Marketing consulting - Direct response advertising for Lawn-Boy

I just finished helping a client, Lawn-Boy (makers of top performing lawn mowers and snow throwers) develop a test campaign for direct response television advertising.

The spots are running in a variety of markets. If you'd like to see the spot, go to this site and click on the upper left hand window. This landing page was developed specifically for viewers of the television ad.

After you've had a chance to view the commercial and the landing page, tell me what you think...