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RESOURCES
A Few GENERATOR Suggestions:
· A simple product is often perceived as better.
To be seen as 'simple', a product must first be
seen as 'complete'.
· Products are perceived in the context of similar
products against a background of the buyers' experiences.
Purchasing choices are based on who controls that context
- seller, buyer, or competition. Good marketing creates
favorable context.
· To generate successful ideas, collaboration must
provide support for individual imagination. Groups don't
have ideas, people do.
· More spending doesn't make marketing better - it's not how much you spend, it's what you say. Further, a good marketing plan should be powered by a reasonable
marketing budget ("about 5% of Gross Margin") -
see below.
"What Is A Reasonable Marketing Budget?"
Greg E. Stine, a highly respected marketer and CEO of Polaris,
Inc., wrote a great article about this (read
it on his company's website). He determined the figure
was "about 5% of Gross Margin". [Gross Margin
= Revenue - Cost of Sales]
A very short excerpt (I highly recommend reading the entire
article):
"This makes sense… because companies with high
margins [like software companies] need more marketing (as
a percentage of total revenue) to push their unique products
and services successfully into the market, which requires
powerful branding. They also have a business model able
to provide the marketing budget. Companies with low margins
typically are selling near-commodity products and services
and there is less of a need (as a percentage of total revenue)
for marketing or honestly, differentiation.
"If you want to increase your margins, and thus your
profits, you may want to increase your marketing budget."
Recommended reading: "The
Wizard of Ads" by Roy H. Williams
On testing and message:
Alex Hiam, founder of INSIGHTS
for Marketing (and author of Marketing for Dummies and
The Portable MBA in Marketing), says. "For most companies
money is tight, and there are plenty of so-called marketing
experts out there pushing canned, unfocused, or poorly executed
ideas. Test all new marketing ideas and methods on a small
scale, with less than 1 percent of your gross revenues,
and scale them up only when you find a formula that works.
"It's not the numbers that differentiate a great marketing
plan, by the way," Hiam adds. "It's the honesty
and strength of the core message. Do you have something
important to offer, and do you explain it well, to the right
people, and make that message easy for them to find?"
And a good idea without a home:
Best Buy Presentation Box (Profile)
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"It isn't that they can't see the solution;
it is that they can't see the problem."
G.K. Chesterton
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