Marketing is Not Sales - The Discipline of the Marketing Leader

Marketing is the function that drives growth, builds the brand, establishes the company’s positioning in the marketplace. According to Michael Gerber in his book E-Myth Mastery, Marketing attempts to answer the questions:what do we own, what do we do, how do we look, how do we act and feel and perform that differentiates our company from the competition? I would add to that, from the perspective of the customer. For the only differentiation that matters is what the customer thinks about your product or service, not what you and your employees think.

This is one of the seven disciplines Gerber describes in his book as one piece of the puzzle that makes up the enterprise. It’s not a step-by-step process, but rather a piece of the jigsaw puzzle that needs to interact with the other pieces to complete the whole. Marketing depends on the enterprise leader to set the vision, mission and values for the company. Then Marketing can take over to create a picture of what the company looks, acts and feels like and differentiates it from the competition in the mind of the customer.

The first place to start is to identify who and where your customers are. What’s the make-up of your ideal customer in terms of age, income, education, occupation, gender, marital status, family or business size, ethnicity, and location. There are many tools that will help you target your market. One of the best companies to supply this type of information is Claritas. If your company is a retail operation, you need to know how far your customers come to shop at your store – two miles, five, ten or more? With the help of tools from Claritas, you can get a wealth of information about the population that lives and works within a two, five, ten or more mile radius of your store, as well as information about the competition.

That’s just for starters. Claritas can also supply basic demographic information about your market, as well as help you segment the population into target groups that are most likely to buy your products and services. This information will help you design your marketing materials and promotional campaigns to reach these key customers. Alternatively, you can use the Customer Demographic Questionnaire that comes with Gerber’s book, and survey your customers yourself. Be sure to add where they’re located, however, to capture the zip codes in which they live and work, and whether they come from work or home when they visit your store. You’re not likely to get their address, but you do want to capture their e-mail address to keep them informed of special sales and product opportunities.

The second step is to identify who and where the competition is and what their differentiating characteristics are. Again, Claritas can help with this, but so can your sales staff. Talk to your sales people. They’ll know who they compete against every day for a sale and which are the strongest competitors. Next survey your customers to get their feedback on your competitors and how your company stacks up against them.

The Star Positioning Advantage:
With all this information in hand, look critically at your own company to determine on which of the following points you have a competitive advantage. Do the same for your competition so you know exactly who you compete against in each area. The key is to identify the one area where you are better than the competition that makes people want to do business with you, in the eyes of the customer. You can’t be dominant in all areas, but you MUST be competitive in them. That means your product or service or company ranks 2nd or 3rd in the marketplace on four out of five of the following points, and first on one: Personal Choice, Caring Service, High Quality, Total Cost, Responsiveness. I recommend bringing a cross section of your key managers together to work on this after you've gathered the market and customer data. Once you've determined your competitive positioning, you can begin to build your marketing message, materials and promotional campaigns.