Favorite Tools: Breakthrough Marketing Plans

Favorite Tools: Breakthrough Marketing Plans
While I have little patience for business books, I frequently refer to Breakthrough Marketing Plans, by Kellogg Professor Tim Calkins, and I often suggest that my clients purchase a copy (or two). Both Tim and I spent 10 years at Kraft Foods in brand management, and Tim’s book essentially teaches the Kraft methodology that we learned there for...

Defining Your Target

Defining Your Target
A lot of the companies we meet have not clearly defined their target customer. Some make the mistake of trying to appeal to everyone in the hopes of not leaving any potential revenue on the table. Other companies have a general sense of their target, but have never taken the time as a team to sit down, define, and gain consensus on the common...

Maximizing Your Brand’s Word of Mouth Potential

Maximizing Your Brand’s Word of Mouth Potential
A few months ago, we went to hear Professor Jonah Berger talk about his book, Contagious. The book is a useful primer on how to make your product/service more likely to receive word of mouth (WOM) advocacy from your customers. Having spent time consulting for Procter & Gamble’s groundbreaking WOM group, Vocalpoint, we know the importance of...

Defining Your Competitive Set

At the core of every positioning statement is the reason a product/service/brand is different and better than its competitors. Because of this, how you choose to define your competitive set is a critical piece of developing a compelling positioning statement. Here’s a quick 3-minute video of how to strategically approach defining your own...

Cage Match: Positioning v. Elevator Pitch

Cage Match: Positioning v. Elevator Pitch
A while back, we taught a workshop for the Accelerator participants at the University of Chicago’s Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship about positioning statements and marketing plans. In the attached video segment, you can see how we helped the entrepreneurs differentiate between positioning and an elevator pitch, and to understand when and...

Time to Add a Marketing Strategy Resource to Your Team?

Time to Add a Marketing Strategy Resource to Your Team?
I recently had lunch with Ankur Gopal, an entrepreneur who whose B2B technology company, Interapt, is growing rapidly. It was exciting to hear about what he’s been learning as his business grows, and when our discussion turned to marketing, he asked me two great questions: 1. TIMING: How will he know when it’s the right time in his...

Be Everything to Everybody

Be Everything to Everybody
One of the most memorable Saturday Night Live skits from my childhood was the commercial for the made up product Shimmer featuring Gilda Radnor and Dan Akroyd. Perhaps I can even trace my marketing beginnings to that long ago parody – it certainly stuck in my memory! The premise of the commercial was that NEW Shimmer could be used as both a...

Positioning Process Overview

Last month I was preparing to conduct a positioning workshop for a client. The CFO sent me an email that said: “Is it possible to give me an example of what a positioning statement looks like? I think I understand the concept, but not sure how it looks or will be used…” It occurred to me that my response to him could be useful for...

More Powerful Elevator Pitches

I perfected my elevator pitch 6 1/2 years ago when I started my company. The marketing expert in me was proud that it is succinct, descriptive, and tied directly to my positioning. Last week communications expert Mark Wiskup poked it full of holes. OUCH. In front of a group of 20 potential customers and referrers. Double OUCH. But he was right....

How To Avoid 4 Common Start-up Marketing Mistakes

I have been working with a lot of dynamic, young companies lately as an advisor, mentor and consultant. It’s a lot of fun, and not surprisingly, I see many of the same initial marketing mistakes made over and over. While none of them are fatal, they are pretty easy to avoid in the first place if you just know what to look for: 1. Telling...