Selling the Invisible: a field Guide to Modern Marketing \(Biz Books to Go\) pdfdrive com

Don’t just think better.Think different.
The First Rule of Marketing Planning
Unless warned otherwise, the people responsible for marketing a service almost
always will take up where they left off the last time they thought about
marketing.
Everyone will assume that the company is in the right business, basically
organized in the right way, and staffed as it should be staffed, give or take a few
thorns in everyone’s side.
And everyone’s focus for marketing for the year immediately will turn to
“How do we sell this?”
Instead, everyone should start at ground zero. They should ask, “Is this viable
anymore? Is this what the world wants?”
Have we added capabilities or skills that suggest that we should enlarge our
scope, to serve new markets? Should we develop or acquire related skills and
capabilities? Or should we narrow our scope, and leverage these specialized
skills and services we are developing to prospects looking for those specialties?
Whatever questions you ask, you should consistently follow the first rule of
marketing planning:
Always start at zero.
The Possible Service
Want a good model for marketing your service in the nineties? Study the
evolution of the automobile industry.
The first car met only some minimum standards because that is what products
and services do in stage one of any industry. In stage one, meeting acceptable
minimum standard s is the driving force: Get a basic, acceptably reliable
product. Buyers accept this minimal product—the first car, the first VCR, and
the first fast-food restaurant—because they desire the unique benefits it offers.
Buyers will accept with that good some bad—typically, the fact that bugs aren’t

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out and the price is high. In the auto industry’s first stage, we had any color so
long as it was black and a product that got you there—and nothing more. Stage
one in an industry, then, is product-driven. Stage one companies offer their
clients the accepted product.
In stage two, competitors enter. Differentiation of this core product becomes
vital. Enter the marketers. They listen and make the refinements the customers
ask for: more colors, an ashtray so that drivers can smoke, and later an AM/FM
radio. Answering customer needs is the driving force during stage two of an
industry. Stage two is market-driven. Stage two companies offer their clients the
desired product.
Few companies enter stage three. These companies are in the pantheon of the
marketing gods—the Disneys, Federal Expresses, and Lexuses. Disney entered
this stage when it created amusement parks that went beyond what customers
said they needed—or could have imagined. Stage three is the phase that several
car manufacturers entered when they created heated car seats, stereo consoles
that slant toward the driver instead of facing the middle, and compact car trunks
more spacious than those on many luxury cars. In this stage, clients’
expectations and expressed needs no longer drive the market. Surveys asking
“How could we improve?” no longer produce useful data; the customers have
run out of ideas.
To differentiate itself clearly from the many competitors who are meeting its
clients’ expressed needs, the stage three company must make a leap; it must
surprise the customer. Surprising the customer is the driving force in stage three
of an industry. Stage three, as a result, is imagination-driven, and a company in
this stage offers the possible service.
Most services are treading water somewhere in the middle of stage two.
Many of those firms—particularly many professional services—are still
straddling stage one and two. Every service company must look at stage three;
that is where glory, fame, and market share lie.