How To Put All The Right Pieces - In The Right Order
Have You Ever Seen A TIGER With A PANDA's Head And An ALLIGATOR's Legs?
Remember those books when you were a kid with the animal parts? The ones where you could flip different parts of the page over and mix and match different heads, midsections, and legs? The object was to make the goofiest looking animal imaginable...like maybe a panda head on a tiger's body with alligator legs. Then you would call it something like a pan-tig-ator.
Now that you're older, you probably don't spend much time with those kinds of books anymore (hopefully!). But, if you're the person responsible for sales and marketing, then you still play a mix and match game all the time...even if you don't realize it. You see, each marketing activity has several specific components - and each must work perfectly with each other if you expect optimal results. If any of the components are wrong, you could end up with pan-tig-ator marketing.
Pan-tig-ator is fine for a kid's game, but it's disastrous for a business. Just because you have all the pieces (head, body, legs) in place doesn't necessarily mean you have the picture correct. Let's look at an example, and then discuss some of the different components:
A builder of closet organizers once said he had tried direct mail to find new business, but it didn't work. He figured that since he had sent a piece of mail (the head) with a coupon (the body) to a certain mailing list (the legs), that he had executed direct mail to it's fullest potential...and that despite his expert and calculated efforts, there was just no way that mail could work for his particular product. MAJOR PAN-TIG-ATOR.
Upon examination of his efforts, it became apparent his entire mail campaign was poorly executed. The mailer turned out to be a Val-Pak type mailing - and his ad was printed on the back of a boot store's ad and buried somewhere near the back. The ad was mailed to tens of thousands of homes that weren't even prospects for his organizers because the average incomes were far too low. The ad made no compelling case for the product; it basically said "Here we are. Buy it from us for no justifiable, rational reason." And the coupon might as well have been for $50,000 off since nobody could mentally quantify exactly how much "10% Off" was.
He had the right generic pieces (head, body, legs), but he had the wrong specific pieces (panda, tiger, and alligator mixed together). Or, in other words, a pan-tig-ator...that laid a huge egg!
More on this subject tomorrow.
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How To Put All The Right Pieces - In The Right Order - Adult B2B Marketing Tip
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