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The Great Ideas Letter Forum
Getting rid of product and marketing dualism...
Posted By: Dien Rice In Response To: Thank you Michael & Dien... (Michael S. Winicki)
Date: Monday, 13 December 2004, at 10:55 p.m.
> As I've said previously to both of you the
> print publication of yours is truly
> outstanding.Thanks Michael! I'm glad that you enjoy it! :)
> Honestly, I think we've become "over
> enthralled" with marketing as a whole.
> And while that's my business the fact is
> without a solid business idea... an idea
> that has the ability to generate a profit...
> you're pretty much sunk no matter how well
> you market it.> Hey, Gary Halbert never made a dime until he
> found the right idea to market.> We marketers like to think we're the
> "end all" when it comes to
> creating sales. But as copywriter
> extraordinary Eugene Swartz said, we can't
> create demand for our products, we can only
> make the market know that we have them.> I see too many people out there trying to
> turn a buck with an idea that is tragically
> flawed.I agree with you completely...
I recently started reading the book "Relentless: The Japanese Way of Marketing" by Johny K. Johansson and Ikujiro Nonaka. I started reading it because I was interested in the concept of "kaizen" - or the Japanese business method of "continuous improvement". However, although I've only started reading the book, I realize there are more differences to the Japanese approach to business than I had thought...
One interesting thing the authors say in their introduction is that they talk about "dualisms" in the "Western" approach to business, which are rejected in the Japanese approach. They say the Japanese approach
- Gets rid of the dualism between making and selling
- Gets rid of the dualism betwen engineers and marketers
- Gets rid of the dualism between professionals and amateurs (since "professionals" are often defined by what they don't do, whereas "amateurs" will do everything and anything)
Anyway, the first in particular is related to your point. They are saying that "making" and "selling" are really just two parts of a single process. Or, to put it another way, the product and the marketing are part of the single process to make a profit through happy customers.
I agree with this approach. Products and marketing are part of a single process... Therefore, marketing should go into product design - that is, products should be made so they are what people want.
I think "traditionally" in business, product design and marketing WERE considered separate functions. However, successful businesses don't keep these functions separate anymore - usually, some kind of market research goes into designing any successful product. I think this is part of what this is getting at...
Also, you can't successfully market a product nobody wants! And similarly, even if you have a product everyone wants, without good marketing, it still may not succeed. So the two, I think, always go hand-in-hand... Each should influence the other.
I've only just started reading this book on Japanese business and marketing - but it is an interesting topic. I had no idea how different Western and Japanese business and marketing could be. I think everyone would benefit by learning about all different "angles" on the topic! I believe each has its own strengths and weaknesses...
> And personally I would like to see more
> posts made from the angle of "product
> creation" rather than a marketing
> angle. But I expect that will never happen
> because holding out hope that we can market
> anything to a profitable success, seems to
> be the marketer's way.Yes, I know what you mean! I used to have this view - that a really good marketer could market anything to success. I don't believe it any more. After all, all the top marketers have (and still have) marketing failures!
I think this also relates to a similiar trend I've noticed with serial entrepreneurs... One thing they tend to do is they all work hard to reduce their financial risk! I think the reason why is because they know that they're going to have failures... By limiting their risk, or the amount they could lose if they do have a failure - they can quickly bounce back and try something else.
We have all heard tales of the successful businessperson who puts everything on the line to succeed - their house, their car, their marriage. It sure makes a great story. But most successful serial entrepreneurs don't seem to do this - they figure out ways to keep their risks low, so that if a venture doesn't succeed, it's not too big a deal. They just move on to the next thing.
I recently wrote a short article about this for Ankesh Kothari's blog (you can see it here - http://www.biztactics.com/blog/2004/11/conquering-business-risks.php ). There, I mentioned how Richard Branson had used negotiation as a way of reducing his risk when he started Virgin Atlantic Airlines. Another technique, which you can see on a lot of Don Alm's posts on the Seeds of Wisdom forum http://www.sowpub.com/cgi-bin/forum/webbbs_config.pl , is to sell using a "mock up". You don't need to create a lot of copies of the product, until you've made the sale! Selling your own printed info-products on eBay is similar - you don't need to create the product until it's already sold, which greatly reduces your financial risk.
I just spoke to a guy a couple days ago who has 500 unsold copies of a self-published book he co-authored sitting in his garage (written for a small niche market). And his co-author has another 500 copies sitting in his garage (his wife threatens to throw them out)! Clearly, they took the "high financial risk" way to creating and selling their book, by writing and printing the books before they knew they could sell them! I may try to help him sell them for a cut of the profits - which is a low financial-risk path for me, since they've already taken the main risk by writing and printing the book.
There are other techniques to reduce your risks too... Probably the most common one is simply to keep your costs down as much as possible - that helps to limit your risks as well. But if you're a bit more creative, you can achieve more, without increasing the risks...
Thanks for your post Michael!
Best wishes,
Dien
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