10 Marketing Ideas

) Meet Weekly to Drive Marketing – This is from the great marketer, Regis McKenna (Intel, Apple, Genentech). When asked what it takes to drive successful marketing Regis simply said “one hour per week.” In essence, get the right team in a room for one hour each week and ask the question “how do we reach more prospects with our message?” Brainstorm and act on some idea each week and you’ll drive marketing. Regis’s other key is to identify the “influencers” in your market and nurture relationships with them. Is there a key industry association executive? Is there a potential customer that is also the member president of your key industry association? Is there an important media personality? Is there a key lead supplier that can reference you? For business-to-consumer businesses it’s why they use celebrity spokespersons.

2) Articulate Your Three Strategic Anchors –At the heart of your marketing message must be a delineation of the three reasons you truly matter to a customer yet makes you different from your competitors. For instance, McDonalds’ strategic anchors are consistency of product, fun for kids, and speed (which the new CEO is back to measuring aggressively). Two words not allowed to be strategic anchors – value or quality. In turn, something like cleanliness was an early strategic anchor for McDonalds but today, though it still matters to a customer, it doesn’t make them different – cleanliness is considered a “table stake.” It’s something you have to have just to be in the game. What’s disturbing is how many businesses are competing at the table stake level and failing to raise the stakes with a strategy that makes them different.

3) 5 P’s of Marketing: What do Starbucks and JetBlue and KrispyKreme and Apple have that you don't? How do they continue to confound critics and achieve spectacular growth, leaving behind former tried-and true brands to gasp their last? Face it, the checklist of tired 'P's marketers have used for decades to get their product noticed -Pricing, Promotion, Publicity, to name a few-aren't working anymore. There's an exceptionally important 'P' that has to be added to the list. It's Purple Cow. Cows, after you've seen one, or two, or ten, are boring. A Purple Cow, though...now that would be something. Purple Cow describes something phenomenal, something counterintuitive and exciting and flat out unbelievable. Every day, consumers come face to face with a lot of boring stuff-a lot of brown cows-but you can bet they won't forget a Purple Cow.. In Purple Cow, Seth Godin urges you to put a Purple Cow into everything you build, and everything you do, to create something truly noticeable. It's a manifesto for marketers who want to help create products that are worth marketing in the first place.

4) Every CEO should write a book -- It's the single greatest marketing tool you can create to attract customers, employees, and industry attention, besides making your children and extended family proud!!!

5) Bold "marketing events" make for big companies : Horace Hagedorn, founder of Miracle-Gro, A former adman, Hagedorn offered a $100,000 prize for a world-record tomato grown using his product. A boat-load of money in the early '50s, this bold event put Miracle-Gro on the map and led to a $350 million a year business that continues to dominate the home garden fertilizer market..

6) Marketing is everything! What the best form of marketing ...was it any particular form of advertising or promotion or was it logo or branding or something else? Marketing is everything you do. It's the brand of coffee you serve your customers; it's the music you play in reception; and it's how many rings the phone is answered on." A key marketing exercise for every business is to take a good look at every single thing that you do: every form and document you use, the presentation of your staff and premises, your phone manner, how you relate to customers...take a look at every little thing and ask yourself if it could be improved to better serve your customers' needs"

7) What's Your Story? -- This is the single most important question we must answer if we're going to drive sales in the next decade. How did Fiji water become one of the bestselling brands of bottled water in the U.S? Is it because it tastes that much better or is more nutritious? Nope. Fiji is a winner because of the story the bottle tells. What's your story? And just as important a question if you're selling business to business, running a political campaign, heading up a non-profit, or selling yourself

8) The Big Moo : Do Something or create something that make people "remark" about them so word-of-mouth advertising drives your success. create a big moo—an insight so astounding that people can't help but remark on it, like digital TV recording (TiVo) or overnight shipping (FedEx), or the world's best vacuum cleaner (Dyson)?

9) Raise prices -- Joe Papalia did it and profit went up 60% -- Joe's story under DETAILS. Of Philip Kotler's 4 P's of marketing, price is the only one that provides direct revenue, the other three (product, place, and promotion) are expenses hoping to drive revenue.



In summary, Do you want to dominate your market? Pick a handful of key people, a time each week to meet, and get your brain trust focused on how you’re going to do it. Now is the time to trump your competition by out marketing them – it just requires discipline and rhythm.