marketing martini glass

Sep 10 2010

How to ‘Be the Olive’ in the Marketing Martini Glass

Three letters can make you the Olive in the Marketing Martini Glass: R. O. I. Return On Investment.

Olives, when dropped into a Martini Glass, do one thing – they sink. To the bottom. Of the glass. They won’t spill out of the glass, because of the way the glass is set up.

[They’re also vital to a good Martini, but we digress.]

Before we go on, here’s another look at the Marketing Martini Glass.

We offered up this maxim before – that you’re not competing with other companies in your space, but you are competing for resources AT YOUR TARGET COMPANY.

True, that. And the easiest way to do this is through calculating ROI. HR: does it have a Return on Investment? How about the CFO? Furniture: can you quantify how much you’re getting back as a company from having killer office chairs?

Meanwhile, if you remember the CRM example from Wednesday’s post and apply an ROI calculation, it could look something like this:

TOTAL CRM INVESTMENT: $50,000.

SALES INCREASE AS A RESULT OF TAKING ONE WIDGET CLIENT AND SELLING THEM MORE PRODUCT: $200,000.

ROI: 300%

Next, explain to the prospect that they should do the same calculation with their HR and Finance departments. Heck, even Web Analytics can be quantified this way. HR and Finance may be out of jobs soon.

The best way to “Be the Olive” is to actually avoid marketing your stuff and, back to our earlier examples, figure out what the heck the client needs. And figure out a way to give it to them.

HR and Finance might actually be out of jobs soon if you figure out the best possible way to help the company with those functions through a software solution, or an outsourced service, or a value-added, headcount-subtracted pain point you can solve for them.

Then you’ve got something you can quantify. You have shown Return on Investment.

You have learned how to Be the Olive.

[We hope you enjoyed all four parts to this series. You may disagree with some of what we talked about, and that’s okay. But the important thing to realize is not that things are changing but HOW MUCH THEY ARE CHANGING. Change your thinking accordingly and you’ll go far.]

Sep 09 2010

The B2C Marketing Martini Glass

We’ve said since we started this series that it’s not a funnel anymore – it’s a Marketing Martini Glass. And you need to be one of the products at the bottom.

There’s some stuff you have to buy as a consumer. Food. Shelter. Clothing.

In fact, if you remove those basic three, you can STILL develop the Marketing Martini Glass that makes sense, as you’ll see in this diagram:

Martini Glass for B2C Marketers — Another Area 224 Production

Now, you may suggest that this is a cop out. Of course the iPhone will be at at or near the bottom of the Martini Glass – it’s something the consumer cannot live without.

But why is it below things like the utility bills? The phone bill?

This brings us back to Empathy Marketing. In this example, you could argue that the iPhone and its ilk moved to the bottom of the martini glass because they focused on a product that was so useful it marketed itself. Unlike the necessities, which are “low involvement” products, the iPhone is, by nature, a high involvement product. It’s a phone, it’s a communications device, it’s an organizer, it’s a social tool. It’s a toy.

It’s at the bottom of the Marketing Martini Glass because, well, you don’t think you can live without it. Even if you can.

[We’ll bring this full circle in tomorrow’s post…where we talk about becoming the olive.]

Sep 07 2010

Is the New Marketing Funnel Actually a Martini Glass?

This is Part 1 of a 4-Part Series.

Remember the marketing funnel? The one that showed how you should market to all sorts of prospects and move them down the funnel to an eventual hole, where they bought stuff from you thanks to your stellar marketing efforts?

It’s now a Martini Glass.

Here’s how to drink up.

First, take a look at the diagram. This might be the greatest piece of work in Area 224’s illustrious history.

It’s also loosely based on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Maslow had the most basic needs at the bottom of the pyramid – the basic stuff like “Food” and “Shelter.” “Love” was also in there, too. At the top, if you’re lucky, you get to be “Self-Actualized.”

What we did with this Marketing Martini Glass was turned the whole process around. It’s not about YOU getting your CUSTOMERS to be aware of your marketing messages. (Empathy FTW!)

It’s about YOU being aware of your CUSTOMERS’ NEEDS.

For instance, let’s insert an industry – any industry – and assume that you are a B2B marketer. The next diagram walks you through what makes it to the bottom of the martini glass – and what has the chance of spilling over the top.

The brilliance here comes with actually realizing that you are not competing with the other companies in your space for time in the Martini Glass. You are competing with other items AT THE TARGET COMPANY – other things that make up their Martini Glass.

You’re not going to bump their HR suite out.

You might be able to make their marketing more effective.

You absolutely can talk them out of something superfluous – something at the top of their glass, something that might spill out.

marketing martini glass

This is Part 1 of a 4-Part Series.

[More on this in our next post…come back tomorrow…]