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Business Strategy Advice for Women Business Owners from NAWBO - Marketing Magic

Is It Sales or Is It Marketing?

In its simplest form, marketing is about understanding your customer's needs, defining how you can meet those needs, and establishing market position. That is not the same, however, as selling. So the first step in developing your marketing strategy is to distinguish it from your sales strategy. Too often, in their rush to bring an idea to market, entrepreneurs make the mistake of confusing sales with marketing, says Linda Darragh, professor of entrepreneurship at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. "Sales are tactical, while marketing is strategic," she explains. "People often jump right over marketing. They want to get on the street and start selling, but if they do without first devising a marketing strategy, they'll just be wasting money."

Marketing helps you shape your sales pitch, but it's not the actual pitch, agrees Cathy Imburgia, president and founder of Creative Communications, a Claymont, Delaware-based marketing communications firm. "Marketing is understanding who to contact and what message needs to be put in their hands," she says. "Marketing is the analysis of what and who your sales are going to be."

The market research you conducted in the early stages of your business planning helped you define your target customer, but what you need to do now, Darragh says, is "get in their brain. You need to understand how your target customer buys and how they think. If you really understand your customers' buying habits, then you'll know what kinds of advertising and messaging you need to do."

But buying habits and customer hot points are not always so obvious, Imburgia says. She cites as an example a marketing campaign she recently developed for the state of Delaware. The goal was to decrease first-time drunk-driving offenses among blue-collar young men. In the past, DUI campaigns focused on billboard advertisements, but with little success. Imburgia and her team knew they needed something new and powerful that would resonate with their target demographic. They analyzed market research, then tried to put themselves in the shoes of these working, middle-class men. "You need to know your audience's hot buttons and what's going to get them to react," she explains. "When you're a startup, you have to take it to that next level of thinking, because you can't afford to throw money to the wind."

Eventually Imburgia came up with the idea of partnering with employers and emphasizing the financial consequences of driving drunk. In Delaware, a first-time DUI conviction can cost the offender about $4,000 in fines and legal fees, and loss of a driver's license for three months. The new campaign details the fines and missed days from work associated with a DUI, and points out that with no license, the offender will have to find alternate transportation to work. The tagline for this now highly successful campaign became "DUI: When a drink costs more than you think."

By zeroing in on bottom-line ramifications, Imburgia and her team shifted the focus from the DUI itself to the affected individual. Similarly, as you begin to craft your own marketing message, it's essential you not forget the customer. That may seem obvious, but up to this point your priority has been promoting your product and, in some cases, yourself. "The customer is looking for solutions, and too many times we just throw something at them without thinking of, 'here's a solution for you,'" Darragh says. "That means now you need to start being solution-focused instead of just thinking, 'This is the greatest thing since sliced bread.'"

For insight into your customer's mindset, you need to bore into your market research and, if necessary, conduct additional focus groups, surveys, online polls--"whatever you can do to get in their face," Darragh says. She also suggests seeking help from a nearby university or college. "Every single business school has market research and marketing classes that are eager to take on real-life projects," she says. "You can always find a group of students willing to help you conduct market research or develop a marketing plan."

And as soon as you have your first customers, view them as a living research project. Learn as much as you can about their needs and how you can better serve them. Says Imburgia: "Your existing customers are your greatest allies.

It's All About Image

Now that you've got a handle on your customers' needs, it's time to launch your marketing campaign, right? Not quite, says Suzanne Pease, 2003-04 NAWBO president and founder and president of Morganville, New Jersey-based Ampersand Graphics. If you remember the basic tenets of marketing, an important one is establishing market position. You do that, Pease says, through branding. "I define brand as a promise of consistency," she says. "It says who you are, who you want to be, and whom you hope to serve. Until you define your brand, it's very hard to write marketing information that will promote your product or service."

For example, Pease notes, if you walk into a McDonald's, you have a very clear idea of what to expect. The brand stands for a certain quality of food within a certain price range. If, however, you walk into a McDonald's and are offered a steak, you'll probably feel disconcerted and even a little betrayed. Imburgia agrees. "Brand is a promise," she says, "a promise of what the end-user can expect."

Thus, when it came time for Pease to brand her own company, she focused on customer service, and subsequently chose the ampersand symbol for her logo. "It means I'll do this and this and this. It means I'll do whatever it takes to meet a deadline and deliver a high-quality product," she says. "But it's more than a logo. If I say that my brand stands for a promise of delivery, I better make sure that I return phone calls right away and make sure my company lives by its branding."

Just as Pease's corporate identity (her logo and company name) reflects her brand, your own marketing materials--logo, business cards, advertisements, website, and so on--should support your newly defined brand. "Branding is the base for all your marketing efforts," Pease says. "Where you advertise, how you advertise, how much white space you leave on the page, the colors, logos, and fonts you choose--all of these can either reinforce or distract from the brand."

As you ponder how your marketing can reflect your brand, think creatively but strategically. Understand, for example, that your logo is just one representation of your brand--but one that's very identifiable. "I think one of the major mistakes that people make is getting a logo or name for their company that people have no clue what it means," Darragh says. "If it's so off-the-wall that no one can identify what you do, that's not going to help you."

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