The Accidental Marketer : Power Tools for People Who Find Themselves in Marketing Roles

**A practical guide for inexperienced marketers who have to develop a marketing strategy**With technology being built into products of all kinds, many businesses are hiring scientists, engineers, and designers to fulfill strategic marketing and product management roles. __The Accidental Marketer__ is a practical guide for employees who are now responsible for developing strategy. These marketers will be able to immediately and successfully apply the ten tools featured in the book to create powerful strategies that increase sales and profits for any product in any industry. * Explains how great marketers uncover insights about customers that competitors miss and use new insights to create a range of strategic options for their marketing plans * Shows how the best marketers execute their strategies through developing innovative branding and communication plans and value propositions __The Accidental Marketer__ allows any inexperienced marketer to step into a new role and develop an effective strategy. The Accidental Marketer: Power Tools for People Who Find Themselves in Marketing Roles 7 Copyright 8 Contents 11 Preface 15 Are You an Accidental Marketer? 15 What about Experienced Marketers? 16 How This Book Can Help Accidental Marketers 16 Why This Book Is Even More Applicable to Business-to-Business Accidental Marketers 17 How to Use This Book 18 Have Fun and Enjoy Yourself—You Just Might Find You Have a Passion for Marketing 19 Acknowledgments 21 Chapter 1: Who Moved My . . . Customer? The Simple Concept behind Dell’s Success in the PC Market 23 A Tool to Detect Shifts in Decision-Making Power before Your Competitors Do 23 The Roots of an Industry Revolution 24 The Big Guys Get Blinded by the Customer Status Quo 25 You Can Assess Changing Influence Now—or Risk Losing to a Competitor Who Does 26 Dell Capitalizes on a Power Shift 28 Dell Tests the Retail Channel but Pulls Back 28 Dell’s Preparation Meets a Huge Opportunity: Beyond Nerds and Scientists 29 Dell.com Completes the David versus Goliath Story 30 The Simple Secret to Dell’s Marketing Success 30 Chapter 2: The Fountain from Which Great Marketing Flows: How Holiday Inn Express Inspired Price-Conscious Travelers to Pay More and Other Stories of Insight 37 Turning Data into Insight Requires Skill and Persistence 37 Does the Commonly Accepted Benefits (CAB)-bage Trap Exist in Your Industry? 39 Spoken Needs, Latent Wants, Psychosocial Values, and Other Confusing Concepts Simplified 40 Attributes Can Be Helpful, Sort Of . . . 42 Benefits Sought and the “Help Me to . . .” Insight Technique 43 Customer Values Are Often Unspoken and Can Explain Strange Customer Behaviors 44 Inquire Broadly When Searching for Values in a Business-to-Business-to-Consumer Situation 45 Climbing the Ladder with Skin Cream 45 One Good Insight Strategy after Another: The History of Listerine 47 Finding the Insight in a Leisurely Trip to the Bookstore 49 Holiday Inn Express “Ladders Up” and Finds the Unspoken Motivation for Being a Cheapskate 51 Chapter 3: Are You Making Lukewarm Tea?: How a Medical Diagnostics Marketer Blew Up Its “Average” Product and Got a Positive Result 59 Capitalizing on Differences in Customer Needs Is a Big Opportunity 59 Segmentation Is Not Merely a Consumer Marketing Concept 60 A Pregnancy Test Yields Unwelcome News for a Group of B2B Marketing Experts 61 Needs-Based Segmentation Is about Much More Than Just Finding Niches 62 The Lukewarm Tea Syndrome 63 Segmentation Dimensions: Time to Pause and Reflect 63 The Eureka Moment: Finding Customer-Defined, Insightful, Actionable, Practical, Why-Based Segments 64 Using Occam’s Razor to Select the Best Approach to Segmentation 65 Getting Segmentation Right Makes Treating Different Customers Differently Much Easier 66 Radically Different Offerings—without Changing the Core Product 67 A Positive Result with Both Segments: Quidel’s Customers Vote with Their Pocketbooks 68 Great Needs-Based Segmentation Immediately Raises the Effectiveness of Marketers—and Salespeople 68 Why This Concept Works Better in B2B Situations Than It Does in the Consumer Marketing World 69 Columbia University Professor Larry Selden Has the Financial Proof of Segmentation’s Power 69 Not Only Should You Involve the Sales Force In the Initiative but You Risk Expensive Failure if You Don’t 70 Chapter 4: What Business Are You Really In?: How Southwest Fooled Other Airlines into Thinking They Were the Competition 79 Most Companies Are Too Flippant When Defining Their Competitive Environment 79 LUV-ers, Not Fighters 80 At First, a Good Old-Fashioned, Texas-Sized Barroom Brawl 81 Southwest Could Have Made the Same Fatal Market Definition Decisions That People Express Made 82 A Tale of Two “For the People” Airlines—One Doesn’t End Well 83 The Story of People Express Shows the Dangers of a Too-Simplistic Market Definition 84 How to Define Your Market More Broadly, Like GE Does 85 How to Use Customer-Centric Competitor Identification for Creative Market Definitions 86 Direct Competitors Can Hurt You, but Indirect Competitors Can Kill You 87 Indirects Can Stay Hidden from View Unless You Talk to Customers 87 Southwest’s Broad, Creative, and Intelligent Market Definition Secret 88 Like Sun Tzu’s Quote, Southwest Lures Competitors to Fight a War They Can’t Win 89 Chapter 5: Who Do You Love? How Enterprise Picked Up the Number 1 Market Share in Rental Cars 95 How to Eliminate Distraction and Stay Focused on Playing Where You Can Win Big 95 The Accidental Rental Car Company 96 The Key to Long-Term Success: Flexibility in the Early Days, Discipline as You Invest for Growth 98 Enterprise Moved beyond Market Segmentation to Customer Segmentation 99 The Home Market Segment Had a More Desirable Rental Car Risk Profile 101 The Discovery of a Powerful, Hidden Stakeholder Locks Enterprise’s Focus into Place 101 Enterprise’s Targeting Creates Massive Barriers to Entry to the Home Market Segment 103 “We’ll Pick You Up” Worked Because No Competitor Could Economically Match It 104 Targeting Enables a Legendary Customer Service Strategy 105 Enterprise Today 105 Chapter 6: What Were They Smoking? How Using an Ability to Win Analysis Could Have Saved Volkswagen Millions 115 A Tale of Two Car Companies 115 A Competitor’s Aggressive Move May Have Sparked the Phaeton Concept 117 Lexus Was also Sparked by a Chairman’s Challenge—But the Similarities End There 118 A Surprising Strategy for Lexus in Its Home Market of Japan 119 Phaeton Engineers Continue Tending to “the List”; Lexus Immerses Its Team in the Market 120 Phaeton Engineers Deliver an Interesting Car, but Is It in “Good Taste”? 120 Lexus Engineers Get It Mostly Right 121 Perception Is Reality 122 Lexus Proves It “Gets It” duringa Recall 123 “Leave Your BMW at Home; We’ll Take My Lexus. . .” 124 “The People’s Car” as a Luxury Brand? 125 Customer Perception Is Reality 127 Chapter 7: The Magnetic Effect of Focus: Apple Demonstrates How Aiming at a Tight Target Leads to Massive Profits 137 Focus to Grow 137 Looking for Growth in All of the Wrong Places 139 What?! 140 The Magnetic Mind-Set 141 A Tale of Three Communications Companies 142 Iridium Gets It Right—The Second Time Around 143 BlackBerry Loses a Powerful, Lucrative Position 144 Apple Magnetically Attracts BlackBerry’s Customers—Without Really Trying 146 WWJD? (What Would Jobs Do?) 148 The Magnetic Effect of Focus 149 Chapter 8: Viva la Differentiation: Three Differentiation Strategies, Including How Nike Convinced Us That Sneakers Are a Fashion Item 153 Our Own Company’s Search for Differentiation 153 Innovate to Differentiate: Three Strategies That Emanate from Your Ability to Win Analysis 154 Strategy 1: Similar Tactics 155 Strategy 2: Changing the Focus 159 Strategy 3: Changing the Rules 164 Chapter 9: A Positioning Statement Is a Terrible Thing to Waste: Understanding How the Mind Works to Powerfully Position Your Product 177 You Often Have to Reject Your Initial Choice of a Positioning Strategy 177 Positioning Definitions 178 It’s Never Good When You Let a Competitor Position You 179 The Real Purpose of Positioning 180 Why You Must Understand a Little Bit about the Brain 180 The Three Principles of Positioning to Get Your Client’s Mind into Alpha 181 Principle 1: Importance—The Most Straightforward Positioning Strategy 181 Principle 2: Uniqueness—Navigating the Parking Lot That Is Your Customer’s Mind 182 Principle 3: Believability—The Rational Mind Takes Over 186 Repositioning: The Solution to Difficult Positioning Problems 187 Repositioning Approaches 188 Putting It All Together 190 Chapter 10: Reinventing a Commodity: How Starbucks Is Able to Fetch $2.75 for an 8-Ounce Latte 195 Working on the 4 Ps Comes at the End of the Strategic Marketing Process 195 As You Create Your Value Proposition: Avoid the Lukewarm Tea Syndrome! 196 The Value Proposition Idea Catcher 197 The First P: Redesigning Your Product Offer Using the Bull’s-eye 198 The Second P—Place—Strategy Is Largely Driven by Your Influence Map 202 The Third P—Promotion—Communicates Your Positioning to Your Target Market and High-Priority Stakeholders 203 The Fourth P—Price—Is a Function of Your Ability to Win and Your Pricing Goals 205 The Final Story of the Book: Starbucks Balances the Price Value Equation to Reinvent a Commodity 211 Before—and After—Starbucks, Most Convenience Store Coffee Costs about a Buck 212 Closing Remarks 219 Bringing Art into Your Disciplined, Tools-Driven Approach 219 Orchestrating Your Company’s Strategy 220 Additional Resources for Accidental Marketers 220 Thank You and Best Wishes on Your Marketing Journey! 221 Resources 223 Index 233 "A practical guide for inexperienced marketers who have to develop a marketing strategy. With technology being built into products of all kinds, many businesses are hiring scientists, engineers, and designers to fulfill strategic marketing and product management roles. The Accidental Marketer is a practical guide for employees who are now responsible for developing strategy. These marketers will be able to immediately and successfully apply the ten tools featured in the book to create powerful strategies that increase sales and profits for any product in any industry. Explains how great marketers uncover insights about customers that competitors miss and use new insights to create a range of strategic options for their marketing plans Shows how the best marketers execute their strategies through developing innovative branding and communication plans and value propositions The Accidental Marketer allows any inexperienced marketer to step into a new role and develop an effective strategy"-- from publisher's web site