Marketing Made Simple
My secret for producing my best work is to think more simply. In marketing, I believe that the best strategies are developed through the same four-step thought progression. Simply put: product-market uncovers a value proposition, which is embodied in a marketing message and disseminated through content-distribution fit. This simple paradigm is robust and flexible enough to generate the most sophisticated campaigns in the industry or to create a local summer camp’s next poster.
Product-Market Fit
Marketing a product or service starts with the simplest of questions: what do I sell and who buys it? The questions may seem simple, but they also might be the most difficult step in the process. If my product and market go together like lamb and tuna fish instead of spaghetti and meatballs, I’m off to a rough start. To understand how they fit and lead into the rest of the marketing I think about the product holistically and the market narrowly.
Perhaps I sell cloud storage. This means I also sell peace of mind, team collaboration, and work flexibility. A product begins even before the onboarding process and extends to every customer interaction. This is holistic product thinking, and I balance it with narrow customer thinking. What group(s) of people desire my product? Segment the market as narrowly as possible. If it’s a particular style of compression shorts, which kind of athlete am I targeting most? Youth? Professional? Basketball? American? This is where every marketer is tempted to say “all the above.” Don’t do that.
It’s fine to say that we want every athlete to wear our shorts, but that doesn’t mean that “every athlete” is the market. I like to look for a market segment that is a force multiplier, targeting tastemakers and influencers who can act as brand champions and ambassadors. I get as specific as possible about the audience. I go so far as to make up a person (or use a real person) that every piece of communication can be measured against. “How would Johnathan react to this email?” “What time does Cynthia check her email?” This real or imaginary person is a “marketing persona.”
Many fear that narrowing their market will limit their options, but I find it has the opposite effect. Focusing on a specific end user produces countless springboards for unique and captivating promotions. With a theory of product-market established, the next three steps almost fall into place.
Value Proposition
There are only three value propositions in the world: save time, save money, or help someone more fully express themself. If I’ve done my work thinking about product-market fit, the value proposition may already be evident.
Unless the product is creating a totally new market, the competitive landscape pushes me to search for unique value propositions. What does this product offer that no other can match? How does it save more time, save more money, or help someone more fully express their self? How does it do this better than all alternatives? If an answer doesn’t exist, the product or market might need to be revisited. If there are multiple answers, I try to narrow it to the most defensible and sustainable advantage.
As Jack Welch put it simply, the key question is “how are we going to win in this market?” When the value proposition can be expressed in a single sentence, I’m ready to craft the message.
Marketing Message
A value proposition appeals to the mind. A marketing message appeals to the gut. When people buy things, particularly consumer packaged goods, the decision is more emotional than calculative. A marketing message should be easily consumed by its audience, so selling benefits instead of features helps bite-size the value proposition. Red Bull doesn’t say “our beverage has the best combination of caffeine and vitamin B12.” They say “it gives you wings!” Every TV commercial, print ad, sponsorship, and piece of merchandise they make comes back to this core benefit. They built a product for socially and athletically active individuals, then they crafted their message to invoke a feeling that the target market understands.
Content-Distribution Fit
The fourth step of any marketing campaign is to package the marketing message into content which is distributed over various marketing channels.
I like to start by reminding myself about the Grand Bargain of advertising: I will entertain you, and you will pay attention to my product. Advertising is still a transaction, and our goal as advertisers should be to provide value in exchange for time and attention. That helps me frame this final piece of marketing.
Much like products and markets form a feedback loop (design, build, test, learn, design, build, test, learn … ad nauseam), content and its distribution form a circular logic. Do I start with a brilliant 30-second piece of video content, or do I start with knowing my audience streams eSports on Twitch? Wherever I begin, I quickly enter a feedback loop where I ask myself questions about how the content would port over to other mediums or what content could be built for different channels. “What would this look like if it were 10 seconds instead of 30 and I put it on Instagram?” “What if it were a full-page ad in a teen magazine instead of a YouTube pre-roll?” “What if this sponsored Snapchat story were animated instead of live-action?”
By narrowing my focus in the initial stages of the marketing process, I can let my creativity loose during this last step. I weigh each of these possible directions against the marketing persona for step 1, knowing what my value proposition and marketing message are. I can fight against the temptation to mimic competitors’ content or to run campaigns with the latest marketing stacks just to play with the platforms. Boys and toys, right?
Each of these marketing steps is the topic of countless books, blogs, and college courses — and rightfully so — but the magic is in understanding their intersection and simplicity. By pulling at the tread that runs through the entirety of a marketing strategy, I’m able to iterate over the cycle rapidly. It helps me to design experiments to test assumptions in the strategy as a whole, allowing me to avoid tweaking my email newsletter instead of seeing that the problem lies in product-market fit.
Each time I traverse the cycle, I’ll see each step more clearly. Does my target market still make sense given the data from distributing content? Did I find a new value proposition through listening on social media channels? The process doesn’t end at step 4; rather, the entire process is itself a loop. I keep coming back to it. I’ve found the paradigm useful for just about every product I’ve worked with, and I hope it helps you think about your product.
