Posts Tagged ‘marketing strategy’

What to do if you have a commodity product

Monday, November 16th, 2009

I was in Atlanta, Georgia (the USA gets more bizarre every time I visit) last week and heard George Foreman speak. Those of you who have gray hair like me may remember George as the two time world heavyweight boxing champion of the world. He won his second title at age 40 – impressive guy. George had a big motivating advantage over his opponent: he was flat broke.

However George has more recently made a name for himself by selling 80 million “George Foreman Grills”. The product is pretty much the same as dozens of others and is made by Salton Inc which struggled to sell the things until George came along.

By making $150 million promoting a product that he did not own and did not create, both he and Lou Salton make an important point: there are ways to differentiate a commodity product – in this case through celebrity endorsement. There are a bunch of other ways as well but for now consider this …

You can probably use the power of celebrity status to boost the marketing your product/service as well. Worth thinking about…

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Marketing Development – Part 2

Tuesday, July 21st, 2009

I had a conversation with a switched-on business accountant this morning. His partners are worried about the natural attrition of clients and the fact that they are not replacing them fast enough. He said his partners are also sitting behind their desks staring at computer screens all day.

Not surprisingly, the partners do zero Marketing Activity (e.g. gathering referrals, approaching and engaging new clients etc) each week.

The reason that the partners don’t engage in Marketing Activity is two-fold:

1. They still think of themselves as “accountants” rather than “marketers of accountancy services”

2. They have not developed a clear and compelling approach that when executed has their prospects:
a. financially salivating and being very grateful that the accountant made contact
b. eagerly requesting more information
c. wanting to know the price
d. hoping like heck that they can afford it

That’s the work of Marketing Development and once you have created a clear and compelling approach then you can re-purpose it and use it face to face, on the phone, in your brochure, on the back of your business card, in articles, editorials, advertisements, on your web site etc etc etc until you have so many clients you create a problem of supply  – which is a better quality problem than not having enough clients and sitting at your desk worrying about it.

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