Marketing is a Process. And it leads to higher sales.

Many technology companies identify marketers as being primarily concerned with tactical communication (e.g. “we need to change our logo”). If you think of Marketing as a process however, the sequential approach of performing thorough market research, of calculating and identifying the most profitable markets and segments and of developing a concerted plan to involve all relevant colleagues to ‘go-to-market’, is a sound business practise that is designed to reduce risk and save time. 

Many leading tech companies I deal with in Ireland seem to forgo this process, while in fact unconsciously they compress all these steps into a few days, often leading to conclusions and decisions that waste the R&D budgets (new products launched despite limited market appeal) or prevent repeatable sales (a first and only customer represented “a big market”), hence increasing the cost of sale. This can happen in hyped-up markets where the technology and its derived products can be copied fast (ever heard of Microsoft Hohm, killed off even before its proper launch? or of Google Buzz, pushed to market and promptly pulled back, only to be re-launched worldwide as Google+ ? The difference is that no NI company has a cash pile of $30 bn. and can afford such costly mistakes. So every time I try to help a company get more sales out of marketing, I follow a rigorous marketing process.

Whereas twenty years ago, I would devise five-year Marketing Plans for Telecoms companies, the increasing pace of change over the past decade forced me to narrow down to three-year, then eventually to one-year plans. You may argue, “what’s the point of spending time to prepare a document with such a limited shelf-life?” Well, writing a plan actually kicks off the Marketing process, and helps you reflect and ask where you really want to lead your business. Once the basis has been set, it’s easier, more flexible and useful to transform that plan into a rolling basis one-year document (reviewed every three to six months). That is enough to get colleagues across the company aligned on positioning, message, sales pitch, benefits and the value proposition brought to your customers.  

Norbert Sagnard

www.sagnard.biz