Marketing: Capstone of Resilience

I am an alumnus of Yale University and Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a Professor of Leadership, Founder and President of Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute is an exceptional scholar that regularly inspires me. Recently, his article titled, ‘Firing Back,’ was published in the Time Magazine and this write-up, I believe, is very instructive in giving context to our topic, ‘Marketing: Capstone of Resilience and Greatness of Business Organisations.’

In the present challenging times, business organisations must be defined by resilience and the ability to rebound successfully (no matter the challenges). Leaders with grit and agility must confront the challenges head-on (“fight not flight”). We must prove our mettle and get back in the fray.

The “finishing touch” to on-going efforts should be “Creative and Growth Marketing.”

Those who pride themselves as “marketers” must fully take-in the fact that they are indeed on a learning curve. Marketing today must be very valuable to profitability of the business. It should promote, sell, attract, get and retain customers. The marketer must deliver on his promise and service customers satisfactorily. As a marketer, you are in the “reorder business.” Customers must keep re-ordering.

You must manage customers “organically” with robust content and ensure positive word-of-mouth spread. Today, telling clearly compelling stories of products’ values and benefits has become the most highly leveraged skill. You must have a good communication style and regularly win and maintain value-adding relationships with your unique “hooks and frames.” Grabbing, maintaining and retaining customers’ attention is today’s new form of currency. Build desire in the marketplace. People must be sold before you tell them to buy. Your marketing style must be characterised by both demand capture and demand generation.

Spend greater percentage of your time focusing on how to increase the average lifetime value of customers. Reduce customer acquisition costs and pay better attention to the fundamentals of helping your customers and delivering on your promise. Your creativity must be based on the concept of differentiation with a view to always pleasantly surprising customers with “wow” services.

How do we use this new currency of the economics of attention? It is by decoupling customers’ value chain. Use customer centric innovation to disrupt markets and grow market share. Deploy value creating activities or value capture activities. Customers must get more-than-expected benefits from using your products or services. The awareness, that the products and services are needed, must be very clear. Efficiently apply the Net Promoter Score throughout the patronage process to understand whether your costumers are happy or unhappy. They must purchase, re-purchase and never dispose of your products or services.

Always watch out for the low points in customer satisfaction; the weak links. You must maintain strong salutary links with customers because of the ever present competing options. Leverage the strong links and always ensure there is satisfaction across activities and interactions.

Make it easy for customers. Always map out and follow through the customer’s value chain. Understand reactions and pre-empt negative responses. Help them with their comparison of options from different organisations but intelligently ensure your values are the most preferred. Grow your relationship with customers by creating better value, better satisfaction and even introduce additional activities to generate excitement.

We are now in the era of growth marketing or using “Sales Battle Cards.” Sales Battle Cards are organisations’ competitive “battle” cards of facts, tactics and useful materials to win competitive deals. The battle card is a resource and tool, designed to clearly help tilt the advantage in head-to-head competition. It is also an educational tool to reinforce sales practice, improve content hub and one-stop-shop for useful data on the clear beneficial nature of offerings and support services. Always speak to stories of wins. What makes your values superior. Why your offerings are definitely beneficial to consumers.

The battle card must be concise and full of customer stories as well as real-life examples. It is visionary and grounded in reality. You share beneficial experiences and your undeniable role model behaviour patterns, in promptly responding to customers’ needs and wants.

Steve Jobs (of blessed memory) pointed out that “marketing is about values. A great brand needs caring to retain its relevance and vitality.”

Branding is a very useful tool in creative marketing. It consists of organisation’s architecture, products/services design, vision and strategy and imagination. It is a highly valuable business strategy that showcases what “makes us different.” It must be an impactful value story that resonates in the hearts and words (testimonies) of customers and potential customers. It must generate passion, creativity, experience and must engage with customers and also improve user experience. It is the promise of engagement with customers.

Organisations must also continuously track the progress of the brand. They must always ask, “are we giving customers what they really want?” Purchase intent must be pursued and promoted as well as loyalty. We must always be abreast of how positive customers are feeling about offerings and customer support services. The Net Promoter Score (NPS) metric will tell us how readily they will recommend our brand.

Let me conclude with my recommendation of the PPM model (Proximity to Profit Model). Organisations must prioritise marketing tasks in order to generate profit in these tough times. Monitor the activities, generate sales and inflows as well as promptly solve whatever difficulties teams might be facing in achieving goals.

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