NO PAIN, NO GAIN

Is The Marketing Return Worth The Risk?

            The great 1930s New York City Mayor LaGuardia used to say, "I don't make many mistakes, but when I make one, it's a beaut."

            Marketing is one of those peculiar art forms in which you don't know you've made a mistake until well after the deed is done. What seemed like a good idea at the time may turn out to be a fiasco. What worked magnificently yesterday may bomb tomorrow. That's the exciting and interesting thing about marketing -- it's loaded with risk. When it works, its rewards are abundant. Unfortunately, marketing is expensive, and when you fail, it's usually an expensive failure.

            Risk is inherent in every marketing decision, and most often, the ability to be successfully original is a function of the degree to which you're willing to take risks. Not taking risk means doing the same thing over and over again, regardless of changing circumstances or of the elements involved. It may seem safe, and may even suggest that you're knowledgeable because you can summon up the past. But it doesn't always accomplish what you'd like it to, and it certainly doesn't do much to advance the state of the art.

            Of course, if you don't take risks you don't make mistakes. But it means as well, in the competitive arena, that you don’t accomplish much, either. Sometimes you've got to assess the potential danger in risking a new marketing idea, against the potential value if the idea succeeds.

            There are some things that we know probably do or don't work. But one thing we've learned, in the three decades during which we've been able to market, is that there are very few absolutes. What didn't work yesterday may well work today, just as what did work yesterday may not work today.

            For example, there was a time when nobody believed that telemarketing would work to sell professional services. Now we know very differently, assuming that the telemarketing is done right. There was a time when the notion of direct mail to sell professional services horrified many conservative professionals. Today, even when it's done badly, it's taken for granted as an acceptable professional firm marketing tool. Consider, too, the courage of the first professionals to use the Internet as a marketing tool. Today the Internet is integral to the marketing process.

            The trick, then, is to understand what risks to take in trying new ideas, and when to take them. That won't avoid all the mistakes, but it will serve to diminish the number and degree.

The More Flagrant Mistakes

            There are three kinds of mistakes that tend to arise most often, and that tend to substantially increase risk -- those that come from not understanding the marketing process; those that come from not understanding the skills and techniques of marketing; and those that arise from just poor or misguided judgment.

            Perhaps the most expensive mistake that can be made in marketing is to not understand the process. You will make mistakes consistently if you don't know what marketing is, or why marketing a professional service is different from other kinds of marketing, or what you can and can't expect each aspect of the marketing process to accomplish, or how long the process takes to work, or what the variables are that can affect the process.

            Those mistakes that come from not understanding the techniques are just as wasteful, simply because it takes as much and more energy and money and time to do something wrong as to do it right. The techniques are the tools and devices and the way they’re used. They require training, skill, and experience.

            Mistakes of judgment are those that arise out of inexperience or ignorance or misconception. On the other hand, there are mistakes in judgment that are made in the context of even calculated risk, in which you try to guess the unknowable, and guess wrong. But if the calculated risk works, the results are terrific, which means the risk was worth taking.

            Not understanding the process can result in at least the following fatal or near-fatal mistakes:

·        Choosing the wrong marketing people

·        Misusing, and ultimately losing, truly competent or thoughtful marketing people

·        Choosing the wrong marketing program

·        Aborting or misjudging a good program before it's had time to work

·        Not understanding when and how to fine-tune a good program that's been adversely affected by changing circumstances

·        Not understanding how to use feed-back and new information to advantage

            Not understanding the techniques almost invariably produces:

·        Failure in the technique, and then blaming the failure on the technique or the program. Or expecting unrealistic results from good techniques, and then abandoning those techniques for the wrong reasons.

·        Residing in mythology rather than reality. It leads to the distortion syndrome -- publicity is free advertising and I can write a letter -- who needs a direct mail pro?

            Mistakes in judgment result in all of the above and more. But the mistake in not taking risks can frequently cause more damage than all the others put together. This kind of mistake takes the form of…

·        Not listening to the marketplace. Never mind what you want -- this is what I sell.

·        Reverting to the standard; the old way; the way you or others did it yesterday. Looking backward, rather than forward. Doing only what's been done before. Never being original.

·        Doing something only because it's worked before, for other people or in other contexts, rather than because it relates to the new objective and the new circumstance.

·        Not exploring new techniques, particularly when the reason is inconsistent with what others – particularly your competitors -- are doing. We've never cold-called or written to a prospect. Telemarketing is not dignified. We don’t understand e-commerce.

·        Losing track of the relationship of an idea to the aims of the program.

            In a highly competitive arena, which is what the professions have become, the competitive difference lies in the new, the risky, in the original. Trying something new always has inherent risk. The danger is greater, though, in not trying new ideas and new techniques. In other words, the willingness to risk.

            There's a paradox. Any program, marketing or otherwise, depends first upon its basics. There are certain basic processes that must be undertaken. Certain forms of planning. Certain tools that must be considered. There's no credit for doing the basics, but there's great penalty in not doing them, and doing them well.

            The competitive difference, then, between two firms that perform the marketing basics well is in the thoughtful and original ideas beyond the basics. The new approach to a market. The originality of the language or layout in a brochure. The message in a direct mail letter. The willingness to try a new skill or technique.

            Part of risk, too, is taste. Taste is too mercurial to define, but it's sometimes helpful to learn to project consequences, and to learn to view ideas not in your own context, but through the eyes of the beholder. The result is often to see things, not as if I think it's in good taste, others will, but quite the other way around. I don't necessarily like it for myself, but will it be accepted by, and work for, my target audience?

            If we accept the reality that mistakes are going to be made by even the best marketers, and that mistakes are not always fatal or irrevocable, how do we avoid or minimize them?

·        Learn the basics of marketing and its tools. You don't have to be proficient in every tool, or even in every aspect of marketing. But you should understand the process -- how it works, what you can and can't expect, how long it takes, and so forth.

·        Consider the knowledge and experience of marketing professionals. Learn who they are, and how to tell a good one from a bad one -- a marketer whose skills are limited to selling his or her own services versus a marketer who knows how to market your services.

·        Learn to accept the professionalism of the marketer, and to consider his or her ideas in terms of that professionalism. If you can't trust your marketer's own professionalism, then get a new marketer -- or get out of marketing altogether and abandon the field to your competitors

·        Learn to take normal business risks in marketing. Trust new ideas and new tools and new concepts, if they're formulated in the context of experience and marketing professionalism. Don't say no -- or yes, for that matter -- for the wrong reasons

            Thoughtfulness should be an element of every profession, including marketing. But at the root of success in every profession is professionalism. Just as your clients are asked to trust your professionalism, so should you learn to trust that of the marketing professional.