32 Principles of Modern Marketing part 3.

As indicated in previous editorials, it is our paramount responsibility as the industry's preeminent and pioneering publication, since 1982, to address the greatest needs of our industry.

My close contact with--and observation of--the industry has always convinced me that the greatest needs of our industry as well as many other industries is having an outstanding marketing department. As I have stated before:

To the extent that our editorial resources for this publication have expanded significantly, I truly believe that our outstanding and renowned editors are covering every possible, crucial aspect of the industry in the best possible way. Therefore, to prevent being redundant, I have decided to continue to focus on marketing, which I believe is not only the greatest need of contact/CRM centers, but also most particularly, the need of technology providing companies. Unfortunately, technology-driven companies are always focusing on building a better mousetrap only to find out that the mouse died 15 years ago!! Hopefully, someday, they will all realize that before they develop any product, they have to verify that the marketplace actually needs that product and they also have to market it because no product no matter how great, will sell itself.

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Now we again turn our attention to our continuing coverage of the Top 36 New Principles of Modern Marketing. In our last installment we left off with number 11, so this month we present numbers 12 through 16.

Rule 12 - Focus on Awareness

As indicated above, one of the greatest weaknesses of high-technology companies is the notion that "our product is good enough and people will find out about it," by osmosis I suppose!

It will never happen. Just to prove my point, I wanted to share a portion of an advertisement that was developed by McGraw-Hill 50 years ago titled, "The Man in the Chair." The man in the chair is positioned as a buyer who is providing several reasons why he cannot buy your products. Some of those reasons are as follows:

* "I don't know who you are."

* "I don't know your company."

* "I don't know your company's products."

* "I don't know your company's customers."

* "I don't know your company's record."

* "I don't know your company's reputation."

* "I don't know what your company stands for. Now--what was it that you wanted to sell me?"

Consequently, it should be crystal clear that no one will buy anything from you unless all of the above concerns are answered and the only way to do that is via integrated marketing, which we shall discuss later on in this editorial.

Rule 13 - Positioning and Differentiation

In order to better appreciate how great the role of positioning and differentiation is may I suggest that you read my editorial titled, "Every Company Wants to be a Peacock in the Land of Penguins, but Few of them Know How to Do it Right" (www.tmcnet.com/2370.1).

Having stated the above, we need to understand that today in this super competitive marketplace, if you do not give a reason to your potential buyers why they should buy your products, they simply will not choose your products over your competitor's product. In other words, you must find what makes your product unique and translate that in terms of benefits to your potential buyer and then communicate the benefits and the differentiation factor to the marketplace around the clock 24/7. In other words, positioning and differentiation are not part-time jobs. You need to do it every day, every minute, every month, every year, 24/7 to be successful.

Rule 14 - Focus on Relationship Marketing

Even if you apply all of the 36 marketing principles that will be described in these editorials, if you do not have a well natured relationship with your customers and your customer base, you may face great difficulty selling your products and services. The reason is that 75% of buying decisions are made "based on emotion." In other words, even if you have the best product in the marketplace and your competitor has a better relationship with your prospect, 75% of the time, your prospect will buy your competitor's product. Therefore, you need to do everything humanly possible and affordable to build a solid relationship and a continuous relationship with your prospects and customers. Otherwise, all bets are off.

Rule 15 - Avoid AF, Build a Functional Advertising and Marketing Campaign

I suppose you are wondering what does AF stand for. AF basically stands for "artsyfartsy" in advertising. One of the greatest mistakes made in advertising is that complete control is given to the creative people to design an advertisement that looks extremely pretty and perhaps beautiful, but it doesn't say anything and it is not functionally effective. Seasoned marketing people will tell you that there is much more to developing an effective advertisement than making it look artsy fartsy. An AF ad may win advertising awards just based on looks, but when it comes to productivity, they are practically useless unless good copy and graphic communication skills are blended with uniqueness and convincing creativity in the copy. If you would like to take your advertisement to the next level, you need to be so creative that it would become a memorable advertisement for years to come. A good example of such an ad is the above mentioned comments from the McGraw-Hill advertisement. This ad was so effective. It was true 50 years ago, and it is true today. Therefore, anyone who has anything to do with marketing and advertising must refer to this ad as the "raison d'etre" of marketing (the reason for existence in marketing).

Rule 16 - Try to Outsmart, Outthink and Outsell your Competition

Obviously, this is much easier said than done. However, if you truly are interested in dominating your marketplace, there is no shortcut to this rule.

Not only do you need to outsmart, outthink and outsell your competition, but also, you need to dominate online, print and trade show marketing. This is the most effective solution to market domination that exists today in my opinion.

With so many global competitors around today, being a copycat will not get you anywhere. So you need to outsmart your competition and be original. To truly outthink and out-market your competition, you must dominate the three areas mentioned above such as online, in print and in person at trade shows. Then, if you do all of that, you should be on your way to success provided that you have an effective sales department that can effectively bring in the orders. In other words, even if you do everything requested above and your sales department is extremely weak, nothing will sell and all marketing dollars are wasted. So there is a cause and effect relationship here. Without effective marketing, there will be no qualified sales lead generation and without qualified sales lead generation, the sales people will have nothing to sell with.

As always, I welcome your comments. Please e-mail them to me at [e-mail].

If you don't market, you don't exist. And, today, if you are not on the first page of the leading search engines, you don't exist.

There is no such thing as developing a great product and expecting it to sell itself.

Nadji Tehrani, CEO Technology Marketing Corp.