Most successful organizations – Driven by…

Thank you Seth Godin for writing this post on his blog, Seth is a great entrepreneur and is worth following.

Most successful organizations are driven by something. Figuring that out isn’t always easy, and is often misunderstood:

MARKET DRIVEN: Lots of people claim this one, but few achieve it. Creating what the market wants. I’ll put JetBlue in this category.

MARKETING DRIVEN: Much more common. This involves creating what the marketing department wants. Like American Express.

FASHION DRIVEN: This involves changing the market to have it want what you just made. Armani, certainly, but also an art dealer at Basel.

FOUNDER DRIVEN: Idiosyncratic activity, usually by the person who’s name is on the door. I’d put Virgin in this category.

SKU DRIVEN: More titles = more success, even if it’s not true. Publishers live this model.

SUBSCRIPTION DRIVEN: How do we transform a stranger into someone who uses what we do, all the time. Intuit, certainly.

PAYCHECK DRIVEN: This is what happened to Home Depot under Bob Nardelli.

TECHNOLOGY DRIVEN: When you launch products because you can, not because they’re particularly useful. HP did this for a while.

LITIGATION DRIVEN: Lawyers with an open checkbook to bill for letters sent and actions brought. The RIAA, or any of a thousand law firms representing estates by sending out reams of mail.

COMMUNITY DRIVEN: Making decisions based on what’s best for the community you serve. Room to Read makes my list.

TROLL DRIVEN: Growth by enragement. Engage others, say annoying things that aren’t true and bask in the attention. No examples will be given, which is the best way to deal with trolls.

MONOPOLY DRIVEN: Create a system and a standard and charge increasing tolls to travel on your roads. iTunes.

EGO DRIVEN: Just be sure you spell my name right.

REVIEW DRIVEN: Don’t worry about the public. Worry about people with a pen. Broadway certainly qualifies.

IDEA DRIVEN: This includes the Segway.

PHILANTHROPICALLY DRIVEN: Paul Newman is well into giving away a few hundred million dollars so far.

Hat tip: George Meyfarth, who told me about ‘marketing driven’ in 1983. Been waiting this long to figure out the rest…

[SALES DRIVEN: In which the salesforce runs the operation. Car dealers.

ASSEMBLY LINE DRIVEN: Keep the line moving, at all costs. Detroit, alas.]

6 Marketing Tactics Worth Paying

Here’s the trouble with marketing programs: Unlike with hard assets like buildings or machinery, you may have little to show for your investment when the money’s all spent.

Marc Lore isn’t fazed by such uncertainty. A serial Web entrepreneur and father of a two-year-old, Lore founded Diapers.com back in January 2005. Last year his Montclair, N.J.-based outfit posted sales of $11 million, says Lore, thanks to rabid interest from parents looking to buy diapers, soaps, bottles and baby formula for their little ones. (Lore expects to cross the break-even mark in 2008.)

His big marketing bet: a referral program that so far has racked up $200,000 in costs, including development and rebates. Lore credits the program with attracting 40% of Diapers.com’s 200,000 unique users a month. “It was absolutely the biggest driver for [our] growth early on,” he says.

Here’s how the referral program works. Moms and dads send an e-coupon from Diapers.com with a unique code to fellow parents. When their friends cash in on the coupon, they type in the referrer’s code. From then on, every time those new customers place an order on Diapers.com, the referring mom or dad gets $1 in their Diapers.com account.

Sure, those rebates can add up. But given that each order clocks in at $85 on average, that marketing investment amounts to a mere 1% of sales.

Unlike many entrepreneurs, Lore seems to be striking a tricky balance. While keeping a lid on marketing expenses is critical, at some point you have to pay up if you want to drive sales. “Small businesses will say it’s too expensive instead of looking at marketing strategies as an investment,” says John Janstch, author of Duct Tape Marketing. Still, he says, a good marketing strategy is one thing “you can’t really cheap out on.”

With that, here are some marketing strategies that are worth the investment.

The first step most entrepreneurs overlook is defining the market–and its willingness to pay–for their product. (Indeed, such analysis is a fundamental step in any sound business plan.) Market surveys–online, direct-mail or by phone–can help, though they can cost up to $10,000. Online surveys are easiest. Zoomerang charges $599 for a year subscription to its service, which helps craft survey questions and analyze the data; Survey Monkey offers subscriptions starting at around $20 per month.

You know you need a Web site, of course, but the key is getting the most out of it. Start with a clean design that tells people precisely why they should spend their time and money with you. Then Budget a few grand for getting noticed by the big search engines like Google and Yahoo! You can buy keywords like Google’s AdWords, which help direct customers to your Web site (see “Marching Up The Search Stack”) or even hire a “search-engine-optimization” expert (see “Should You Hire A Search Engine Consultant?”).

You’ll also want to shell out for an effective e-mail campaign that will slice through the information overload and get your business noticed. Those that give customers a call to action–like Diaper.com’s referral program–will get more people onto your Web site or into your store.

E-mail marketer Constant Contact charges $15 a month to blast e-mails to up to 500 addresses; $30 will get you up to 2,500. StreamSend charges $6 per month for 500 e-mails and up to $50 per month for 50,000 e-mails. Those prices include testing presentations in different e-mail formats–such as Yahoo! mail and Google mail–and tabulating the response and bounce-back rates. Note: You have to provide the addresses, which might require an additional investment in lists of names sold by list purveyors. (For more e-mail marketing tips, check out “Artful Spam” and “E-Mail Marketers Should Look Beyond Outlook.”)

Of course, no one hits on the perfect strategy on their first try. Instead of placing all your bets on one radio advertisement or telemarketing campaign, concurrently test two or three strategies on targeted groups of customers and in limited areas. “It’s hard to convince companies to do this because they want to do everything rapidly, but then they end up wasting a lot of money,” says Wharton’s Lodish.

In the end, remember that marketing isn’t just about one tactic vs. another. It should be an ongoing effort that involves a variety of maneuvers to raise your business’ profile against your competitors. “Look at the overall system,” says Jantsch. “Look for ways to build momentum by having strategies work together. It’s like building a house–the more pillars you build, the easier the overall job is.”

Forbes

Developing a Marketing Calendar

When’s the best time to develop a marketing calendar for the year? As they say, there’s no time like the present. By Al Lautenslager
January 31, 2007

Just because we’re approaching February doesn’t mean it’s too late to plan your marketing for the year. Jay Levinson, my Guerrilla Marketing in 30 Days co-author says there are two best times to develop a marketing plan: right now and whenever your business started. Since we can’t go back in time, let’s focus on right now.

Marketing is complicated. To make effective use of its many strategies and components, you have to first plan them out, then stay organized and consistent in implementing your plan. A marketing calendar is the best way to organize your marketing activity; the calendar also serves as a working document you can revise and update throughout the plan year.

A marketing calendar doesn’t have to be fancy. I recommend a simple spreadsheet matrix. Across the top x-axis, I place column headings representing the months of the year. Down the y-axis, or the first left-hand column, I list each individual marketing initiative, event or activity I’ll use during the plan year.

For instance, if I’m going to do a press release every other month starting in February, I would put an X in the February, April, June, August, October and December columns. If I were going to issue a print newsletter once a month, each monthly column would have an X in it for that item.

How do you know which activities to include in your calendar? Brainstorm all the marketing ideas that make sense for your plan year but keep in mind that you can’t do everything. Balance your marketing workload with the other things you need to do for your business. Plan for what you can do completely, not halfway. Also plan what you feel comfortable with, emotionally and financially. Prioritize accordingly, then place your ideas in your matrix.

Using a marketing calendar allows you to do four things with your marketing:

1. It organizes, categorizes and prioritizes your marketing initiatives and activities.

2. It allows you to spot “bunches” in your marketing activity. Too many X’s close together might indicate the need to spread out your activity. It’s generally accepted, though, that there are natural bunches that occur as a result of seasonality in your business and your customers’ buying habits. Many retail operations market heavily in the third quarter, for instance, and bunch up marketing activity in anticipation for the fourth-quarter holiday season.
3. It offers a way for you to spot gaps in your marketing activity. Too much time in between the X’s in your activities leaves customers and prospects untouched. Your goal with marketing is to achieve top-of-mind awareness. Consistency is key here, as is repetition. Don’t have gaps in your marketing.
4. It allows you to more easily evaluate your marketing. At the end of the year, the quarter or any other period of time you specify, grade the individual activity and initiative items. You can use a 1 to 10 scale, with 10 being spectacular, or you can use a simple A, B or C grading system. If your particular initiative worked, grade it high. If it was moderately successful, give it a midlevel grade, and if it didn’t work, give it a low rating. Now here’s the real value of this activity: When you plan the next period’s marketing, repeat what worked or what you graded highly. Fix, modify or tweak the marketing that kind of worked or that was graded at a midlevel, and eliminate the marketing that didn’t work at all.

That’s all there really is to planning your marketing with a marketing calendar. Do what works for your business. Plan it quarterly if that’s easier for you than doing it monthly. Once you establish your marketing plan, keep it up on a regular basis, just like paying your bills. Consistent marketing wins out. Planned consistent marketing with effective implementation wins out even more. And if you didn’t start back when you launched your business, start now.

entrepreneur.com