Marketing is my love and passion.
Here are three of the most important documents any brand needs.
1. Positioning
2. Go-to-market
3. Selling strategy
However, the keys are locked. The locks are listed here.
A. Space
B. Time
C. Energy
The locks stem from my second love, physics. I shall not talk of physics in this post, for the pure sake of keeping it simple. However one shall not forget about them, as real crown jewel quality 1.2.3. only come from becoming a total devotee to A.B.C.
1. Positioning boils down to two statements, and a name. The first statement is the tagline of the brand. A wonderful example of this is Hyundai’s removed tagline “Prepare to want one.” Amazing. The second statement is the internal motto, the real engine supporting the external nature of the tagline. This second statement comes first within an organisation and is called the actual positioning statement. One such statement is “Real engineers for real performance”, this latter case being developed within my last employer for our internal needs. And now the name. The name says it all. Nomen est omen. When crafted properly a name is unassailable, it is like a diamond. It shines, it is vibrates like nothing on earth, it mesmerizes.
2. Go-to-market is usually best served by skilled media planners. Their job is to identify all constituencies a brand meets when going to market. It is much much more than a media plan though. It is a plan of processes, a blueprint of a factory. When done properly biggest brands live in the daily lives of people in a market, and they do so not only by being a box with a nice design, they touch all bases. Consituencies are diverse, just as brands are, but in most cases there are at least 6.
The first one, and the only one necessarily present if this is marketing in its purest commercial form, is the target group.
The second is the internal audience.
The third one is that of storytellers, usually referred to as journalists, but not necessarily.
The fourth one is the experts.
The fifth one is competition.
The sixth one elludes me here, as do the rest.
3. Selling strategy is the document concerned with lead management, i.e. lead generation and turning thereof into revenue streams. The result is sales, and finally profit. Holders of the selling strategy are the sales people within any organisation. Selling strategy is a subpart of Go-to-market.
That’s it. The keys are here. And so are the locks. How much love are you capable of pouring into them? How much will you sacrifice? Where does it all end?