Three observations, one method: Don’t fight a marketing war without strategy

On January 15, the first lecture of the new year of China Youth Entrepreneurship Course - Making Marketing Easier, invited Zhou Chen, the strategic director of Ogilvy Public Relations, to share how to not fight a marketing war without a strategy.

Before reading, please think about:

• How important is it to set a strategy?
• Does positioning require a methodology?
• Why is it said that only the right one is professional?
• How are genes, goals, and resources closely integrated?

The following content is based on the speech (full text 2695 words, time 4 minutes):

Today I will share with you how to not fight a marketing battle without a strategy. In the past two years, there were no CMOs, and being called a marketing director or VP was already a great achievement. Now many companies have CMOs, chief marketing officers, and the status of marketing is becoming increasingly important.

The gift I bring is three observations and suggestions, a method.

The three points are strategy, expertise and implementation .

1. Strategy

Let’s look at strategy first. This is a term from the West Point Military Academy:

Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory.

Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.

There is a similar saying in Chinese, "Without strategy, there is no strategy to rely on; without plan, there is no plan to implement." I prefer the English explanation, which means that if you go to war, your strategy is OK, but without tactics, deployment of troops, and an untrained army, the road to success will be a long one. But if you only have tactics but no strategy, no matter how fancy or grand your actions are, they are nothing more than a kind of noise before failure.

Therefore, it is not alarmist to use this sentence to emphasize the importance of strategy.

In fact, all brands are on different paths of development. Some clients come to Ogilvy to do positioning. Any large company will have words about corporate culture, spirit, and philosophy on its official website. There are also many strategic consulting companies that sell such spirit, philosophy, and so-called corporate positioning.

Fill-in-the-blank questions are not difficult to do. Everyone knows positioning, but knowing it does not mean that you really understand it. A small start-up company should not blindly pursue a complete set of cultural logic. Instead, it should first find out what it has, where it is located, and what its use is.

To give a few classic examples, all big companies were once small companies.

BP: It is called British Petroleum in English. The change of its logo many years ago is a very important classic case in the marketing industry. Green represents energy. The British oil industry was once considered a heavy industry with an image of being backward, outdated and polluting. In fact, it does not only deal in oil, but also researches and expands a lot of new energy and future industries. So when it changed its LOGO and positioning, it said, Beyond Petroleum. It is not just oil. Beyond tells everyone that it is still a leader in the energy industry, and at the same time it is pushing the industry towards new energy. The positioning at this time is not the same as BP's early positioning.

Starbucks: The third space between home and office. The current LOGO has removed the English. It is no longer a coffee or catering provider. It hopes to give consumers the idea that Starbucks could be a place to sit and chat with people. This is the concept of its strategic positioning, and it is embedded in every detail. For example, Starbucks stores do not use strong contrasting colors to convey a warm and comfortable feeling.

IBM: It is not best known for its technology. Its strongest points are strategy and consulting services, whether it is selling a giant solution to a city or selling it to a company. Huawei has engaged IBM to provide strategic consulting for ten years and is still following up on the implementation of the strategy. It is based on solving customer problems rather than selling products. So, its entire positioning is to help customers solve all business problems.

Google : Its founding code of conduct, “Do not be evil,” has influenced Google’s brand positioning as a company. Google uses cultural and spiritual concepts to explain its brand positioning.

GE: GE's products are very vague to ordinary consumers. Its engines are related to Industry 4.0, but no one is quite clear about what they do specifically. Its positioning in the past two years has been to start the future with dreams and convey the impression of human innovation and development. This positioning is more like standing at a higher level and is related to the great ideal of human development. This is also what GE can do when it develops to a certain stage.

Looking at your own startup, how do you position it? After talking about the importance of strategy, I am still confused. The examples I gave did not include startups. The following suggestions will be of some practical help.

2. Professional

Many companies like to recruit talents with certain professional abilities. In my opinion, whether you are starting a business or not, you should never mention professionalism. The word professional is relative, which means being in a certain industry or job segmentation stage. For example , Ogilvy had more than 200 people serving its client IBM at its peak, involved in various small segments of the company.

In a sense, everyone is like a screw in an organization, easily replaced but indispensable, and controlling this matter depends on mechanisms and strategies. This is why it is not practical to recruit talents from large companies in startups.

Let’s change the word, only appropriate ones are professional.

In fact, if we return to the essence of marketing, it is to help sales, not sales itself.

The way to measure KPI is to see whether it helps sales, if so, it can be called qualified or professional. I highly admire a saying from our company’s CEO: We Sell or Nothing, which means we sell nothing.

3. Implementation

What is appropriate? The first three points are all empty talk, but the last three points are some solid stuff - genes, goals and resources . I define it as the three major elements that startups must grasp when implementing their marketing strategies and practices. Only when these three points are done well can it be called appropriate and effective.

First, look at the genes.

The founding teams of Meitu and Camera360 have different genes. Both products are excellent in taking photos and video, but the two different genes have completely different approaches. The strategic positioning must be coordinated with the genes. If Camera360 does marketing in the same way as Meitu, it will never change the actual situation in the market.

It also depends on the marketing goals.

For example, your boss tells you that you should thank old customers at the end of the year because new products will be launched next year and old customers can bring in new customers. Assuming you have some money on hand, you can take old customers to Jiuhua Mountain Resort to soak in the hot springs for a day, and then hold a thank-you party; you can also turn the money into two barrels of oil, and then add two hot spring tickets and express them to your old customers. Choose the first one or the second one?

The key is to see what the ultimate goal of the thank-you party is. As I said just now, the company will launch a new product next year, which will make it easier to convert old customers. Let’s take a look at a certain financial management company. It was originally an online P2P company, but now it does personal wealth management, and the financial products it sells are relatively expensive. In the traditional way of selling this kind of products, on-site sales account for a large proportion, and this part of the business can only be done through face-to-face negotiations. The purpose is to create more sales opportunities. There is a prerequisite, which is that sales can only be conducted face to face. Therefore, you can charter a car to go to Jiuhua Villa outside the city for a day, or you can charter a hotel in the city for face-to-face talks.

When many friends get the assignment, the first thing they consider is whether old customers are comfortable, whether the transportation is convenient, and whether the process is rigorous. Is it important? Also important. But with limited resources, you may have a priority, but this is not the ultimate goal of doing this.

Finally, look at the resources.

In the early stages of a startup, resources are different and the ways of marketing will be different. For example, Funshine Sales and SalesEasy are both very good SAAS companies.

The investors of Funshine Sales have very strong media resources and are good at telling stories. It’s not that the product is bad, but marketing is a very important thing. Therefore, in the early days, he had very good exposure in the investment circle and the media circle, and at the same time he seized small and micro enterprises by selling real estate in the fields. In the past two years, he has begun to focus on developing the professionalism of the products, and sales and technical personnel will make corresponding adjustments. This is the pace of doing business.

Shi Yanze, the boss of SalesEasy, is the former general manager of SAP China's Business User Department. He said that my products are actually much more professional than those of competitors, but investors refuse to invest in him. This shows that he is confused about marketing. Should marketing be exaggerated or should it be realistic? My point is that lying is definitely not allowed. This is the moral bottom line. Under certain expectations, psychological warfare is something that marketing should grasp. He actually wants to connect with those traditional large customers and then extend downwards, instead of targeting its users in a 2B and 2C way like Funshine Sales.

From the perspective of products, technology, and marketing, in the end these two companies ended up in the same place.

It is recommended that all your strategies should start from your genes and be implemented around goals and resources. Do things worth the money you have. You can use your own methods to conduct a small-scale survey to help you see the general direction, rather than making a particularly precise and detailed model.

To sum up, don't fight a marketing war without a strategy. The suggestions are: first, strategy comes first, but the strategy must be carefully thought out; second, don't be fixed by the positioning methodology. No one can understand positioning better than your company's CEO. Don't be obsessed with expertise. Only those who are suitable are professionals; third, take genes as the starting point and implement around goals and resources.

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This article was compiled and published by @Yousuf (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!