1 page marketing plan by Allan Dib summary

September 04, 2022

take-aways

It’s very common for small businesses never to grow past the point at which they generate just enough profit for the owner(s) to make a modest living.
Professionals have plans, and those plans are based on high-leverage activities.
By far the biggest leverage point in any business is marketing.
Marketing is the strategy you use for getting your ideal target market to know you, like you, and trust you enough to become a customer.
All the stuff you usually associate with marketing are tactics.
Strategy is the big-picture planning you do prior to the tactics.
Strategy without tactics leads to paralysis by analysis.
Tactics without strategy lead to the “bright shiny object syndrome.”
Do NOT mimic large businesses.
Direct response marketing is what you should be doing as a small business.
Direct response marketing is designed to evoke an immediate response and compel prospects to take some specific action.

Trackable, measurable, use compelling copy, includes multi-step, short-term follow-up, incorporates maintenance follow-up of unconverted leads.

Remember, it’s all about implementation. I’ll reiterate— knowing and not doing is the same as not knowing.
In my experience, I’ve found that entrepreneurs fail to implement for one of the following three reasons:
Paralysis by analysis: they keep trying to learn more or get stuck chasing the latest bright shiny object in the hope that they’ll get everything perfect the first time around.
Remember 80% out the door is better than 100% in the drawer. Successful entrepreneurs have a bias for action, implement quickly and course correct along the way.
Inability to delegate: as mentioned in Chapter 5, business is a team sport.
“My business is different”: pretty much any conceivable problem you have or are going to encounter has been solved by someone at some time.
Time is Not Money
- As entrepreneurs, we only get paid for bringing value to the market— not for time.
- Put simply entrepreneurs work in the results economy, whereas most other people work in the time and effort economy.
- The more times we create value by getting, retaining, and satisfying a customer, the more we get paid. Unfortunately, many business owners get distracted “playing business.” Playing business is when you do peripheral activities that don’t really create much value. Some examples of “playing business” include things like constantly checking email and endless, nonsense meetings that have no real point or agenda.
- Instead of playing business, you must do business. Winning in business requires you to have a relentless focus on the activities that deliver value.
Your Transition from Business Owner to Marketer
- Remember, no one knows how good your products or services are until after the sale. Before they buy, they only know how good your marketing is. Put simply, the best marketer wins every time.
- Marketing is the master skill of business. It will help you make your current business a success and, importantly, it will help make other businesses and enterprises you may be involved with in the future successful.

Act I: The “Before” Phase

You’re dealing with prospects, people who may not even know you exist. In this phase you identify a target market, craft a compelling message and deliver the message through advertising media. Goal: get your prospect to know you and respond to your message. Once they’ve indicated interest by responding, they become a lead and enter Phase II.

Selecting Your Target Market

You must be extremely focused on one niche here.
Goal of an ad is for prospects to say “Hey, that’s for me”.
Dominate one niche, then move to the next. Never do it all at once.
Use the PVP index to find the ideal target market.
Be as specific as possible.
Create an avatar for your target customer.

Crafting Your Message

One ad, one objective.
If something in the ad isn’t helping you achieve that objective, you should get rid of it (including things like the company name/logo)
Rather than try and sell directly, just get prospects to indicate interest.
Develop a unique selling proposition (USP): entire goal of USP is to answer questions about why someone should buy from you rather than from the nearest competitor.
Avoid things like “quality” and “great service”.
You know you’re marketing your business as a commodity when prospects start the conversation by asking you about price.
Two questions you must ask yourself:
- Why should they buy?
- Why should they buy from me?
The uniqueness can come from the way it’s packaged, delivered, supported, or even sold.
When you confuse them, you lose them.
Create your elevator pitch:
You know [problem]? Well, what we do is [solution]. In fact, [proof].
Purchasing is done with emotions and justified with logic after the fact.
Avoid boring, “professional” sounding copy, and use emotional, strong sales copy with compelling calls to action.
People love authenticity, personality, and opinion. Even if they don’t agree with you, they’ll respect you for being real and open.
Take advantage of this by adding a video to your website featuring you.
Address “elephants in the room” - things all your customers think about but no one wants to bring up.
Use “the enemy in common” in your copy.
Here’s my take on naming— if you need to explain the name, to me that’s an automatic fail. The title should equal the content.
Always choose clarity over cleverness.

Reaching Prospects with Advertising Media

Hire experts that specialize in whatever media you decide is right for your campaign.
You must know customer acquisition cost and lifetime value to track marketing success.
A successful marketing campaign has three elements: market, message, and media - you must hit all three for a successful campaign.
Try and own your own marketing resources: build an email list, a website, a blog, etc.
Email marketing tips: don’t spam, be human, use a commercial system, give them value, and automate.
Snail mail is a great way to complement email.
Try and have at least 5 different sources of new leads and customers, and try and make them paid media (reliable and forces your to focus on ROI).

Act III: The “After” Phase

You’re now dealing with customers. Turn your customers into raving fans by delivering a world-class experience. Then find ways of doing more business with them and increasing lifetime value. Create an environment where referrals continually come your way.

Delivering a World-Class Experience

One thing that separates extraordinary businesses from ordinary ones is that they lead tribes, tribes of raving fans— not just customers.
Here are a few of the qualities of these extraordinary businesses that become tribe leaders:
- They continually focus on wowing their customers, which turns them into raving fans
- They create and foster lifetime relationships
- They make it easy and fun to deal with them
- They create a sense of theatre around their products and services
- They have systems so that they can reliably and consistently deliver a great experience
Do anything other than stay a boring commodity - be innovative in every aspect of your business.
Become a significant voice of value to your customers.
One of the significant distinctions between successful entrepreneurs and “wantrepreneurs” is that successful entrepreneurs are predominantly content creators, whereas wantrepreneurs are predominantly content consumers. Even more than just content creators, successful entrepreneurs are often prolific content creators.
Tell your audience about all the effort that goes into delivering your product or service.
The fact is, no one cares about your logo, company name or some dubious claim about being the leader in your industry.
They want to know what your product will do for them, and your backstory is essential.
Products Make You Money, Systems Make You a Fortune
- The most valuable business systems are those which are replicable. If your business relies on a genius or superstar talent at the center of it, then it will be difficult or impossible to replicate.
- Systems allow mere mortals to run an extraordinary business.
- There are four main types of business systems you need to create, regardless of what type of business you’re in. You’re almost guaranteed to make a fortune if you can create scalable and replicable systems in these four areas of your business:
  - Marketing system: generate a consistent flow of leads into the business
  - Sales system: lead nurturing, follow-up and conversion
  - Fulfillment system: the actual thing you do in exchange for the customer’s money
  - Administration system: accounts, reception, human resources and so on; support of all the other business functions
- If you went overseas for six months when you returned, would your business be in better or worse shape than when you left it? Would you even have a business to come back to?
- One of the best tools to build business systems is checklists.
- To recap, it’s essentially a three-step process:
  - Identify all the roles in your business
  - Define what tasks each role performs
  - Create checklists for properly completing these tasks
- Now scaling becomes super easy - add people.
- Think carefully about how you want to exit - you’ll rarely make as much money running a business as you will selling one.

Increasing Customer Lifetime Value

The real profit comes from figuring out how to sell more to existing customers. Five ways to do this:
Raise prices (make sure to explain why, explain benefits or grandfather)
Upsell (if they buy the expensive primary product, add on smaller items)
Ascension (move customers to higher tier products)
Frequency (increasing the frequency at which they buy)
Some numbers you need to track:
- Leads: calculate the number of new leads that come into your business
- Conversion rate: calculate the percentage of leads you converted into paying customers.
- Average transaction value: know the average amount customers spend with you.
- Break-even point: identify the dollar amount you need to make to keep your doors open.
Key metrics to track in subscription business:
- Monthly recurring revenue
- Churn rate
- Customer lifetime value
Focus on your “Tribe” customers:
- The Tribe: this set of customers are raving fans, supporters and cheerleaders promoting your business and actively conspiring for your success.
- Fire the rest.
Another way to categorize customers is using Net Promoter Score (NPS) - positive scores are good, >+50 is excellent
- The Net Promoter Score is calculated based on responses to a single question, “How likely is it that you would recommend our company/ product/ service to a friend or colleague?”

Orchestrating and Stimulating Referrals

This brings us to one of the best strategies for getting what you want in business and, indeed, in life— ask.
Ask for referrals from customers for whom you’ve delivered a good result, and/or make it known during the sales or onboarding process you expect them to give you referrals.
Be specific in your referral requests (who you ask and what kind of referral you want to receive).
Try and find other complementary businesses your customer deals with before they deal with you and form partnerships or lead exchanges.
Giving a gift card or voucher is a great way to do this.
Building Your Brand
- Think of your business as a person. What attributes make up its personality?
- What’s its name?
- What does it wear? (i.e., design)
- How does it communicate? (i.e., positioning)
- What are its core values, and what does it stand for? (i.e., brand promise)
- Who does it associate with? (i.e., target market) Is it well-known? (i.e., brand awareness)
- When all is said and done, branding is something you do after someone has bought from you rather than something you do to induce them to buy from you.

The Law of Leadership: It’s better to be first than to be better.

The fundamental issue in marketing is creating a category you can be first in. It’s the law of leadership: It’s better to be first than better. It’s much easier to get into the mind first than to convince someone you have a better product than the one that did get there first.
Not every first is going to become successful, however. Timing is an issue — your first could be too late.
Some firsts are just bad ideas that will never go anywhere.
The law of leadership applies to any product, brand, and category.
If introducing the first brand in a new category, you should always try to select a name that can work generically.
Unfortunately, benchmarking doesn’t work. Regardless of reality, people perceive the first product in their minds as superior. Marketing is a battle of perceptions, not products.

The Law of the Category: If you can’t be first in a category, set up a new category you can be first in.

When you launch a new product, the first question to ask yourself is not “How is this new product better than the competition? “but “First, what? “In other words, what category is this new product first in?
This is counter to classic marketing thinking, which is brand oriented: How do I get people to prefer my brand? Forget the brand. Think categories. Prospects are on the defensive when it comes to brands. Everyone talks about why their brand is better. But prospects have an open mind when it comes to categories. Everyone is interested in what’s new. Few people are interested in what’s better.

The Law of the Mind: It’s better to be first in the mind than it is to be first in the marketplace.

The law of the mind follows from the law of perception. If marketing is a battle of perception, not product, then the mind takes precedence over the marketplace.
Once a mind is made up, it rarely, if ever, changes. The single most wasteful thing you can do in marketing is try to change a mind.

The reason you blast instead of worm is that people don’t like to change their minds. Once they perceive you one way, that’s it.

The Law of Perception Marketing: Marketing is not a battle of products. It’s a battle of perception.

It’s an illusion. There is no objective reality. There are no facts. There are no best products. All that exists in the marketing world are perceptions in the minds of the customer or prospect. The perception is the reality. Everything else is an illusion.
What some marketing people see as the natural laws of marketing are based on a flawed premise that the product is the hero of the marketing program and that you’ll win or lose based on the product’s merits. The natural, logical way to market a product is invariably wrong.
Only by studying how perceptions are formed in mind and focusing your marketing programs on those perceptions can you overcome your incorrect marketing instincts.
Truth is nothing more or less than one expert’s perception. And who is the expert? It’s someone who is perceived to be an expert in somebody else’s mind.
Changing a prospect’s mind is another matter. The minds of customers or prospects are tough to change. With a modicum of experience in a product category, a consumer assumes that he or she is right.
Marketing is a battle of perceptions, not products. Marketing is the process of dealing with those perceptions.
The battle is even more difficult because customers frequently make buying decisions based on second-hand perceptions. Instead of using their perceptions, they found their buying decisions on someone else’s perception of reality. This is the “everybody knows“ principle.
Marketing is not a battle of products. It’s a battle of perceptions.

The Law of Focus: The most powerful concept in marketing owns a word in the prospect’s mind.

A company can become incredibly successful if it can find a way to own a word in the prospect’s mind. Not a complicated word. Not an invented one. The simple words are best, words taken right out of the dictionary.
This is the law of focus. You “burn” your way into the mind by narrowing the focus to a single word or concept. It’s the ultimate marketing sacrifice.
In a way, the law of leadership — it’s better to be first than to be better — enables the first brand or company to own a word in the prospect’s mind. But the word the leader owns is so simple that it’s invisible.
The leader owns the word that stands for the category.
An astute leader will go one step further to solidify its position.
If you’re not a leader, your word must have a narrow focus. Even more important, however, your word has to be “available “in your category. No one else can have a lock on it.
The most effective words are simple and benefit-oriented. No matter how complicated the product is or the market’s needs, it’s always better to focus on one word or benefit rather than two or three or four.
Also, there’s the halo effect. If you firmly establish one benefit, the prospect is likely to give you a lot of other benefits, too. A “thicker“ spaghetti sauce implies quality, nourishing ingredients, value, etc. A “safer“ car implies better design and engineering.
Words come in different varieties. They can be benefit-related (cavity prevention), service-related (home delivery), audience-related (younger people), or sales-related (preferred brand).
Although we’ve been touting that words stick in the mind, nothing lasts forever. There comes a time when a company must change words. It’s not an easy task.
What won’t work in marketing is leaving your word in search of a word owned by others.
The essence of marketing is narrowing the focus. You become more potent when you reduce the scope of your operations. You can’t stand for something if you chase after everything.
You can’t narrow the focus with quality or any other idea that doesn’t have proponents for the opposite point of view.
When you develop your word to focus on, be prepared to fend off the lawyers. They want to trademark everything you publish. The trick is to get others to use your word. (To be a leader, you have to have followers.)
Once you have your word, you must go out of your way to protect it in the marketplace.

The Law of Exclusivity: Two companies cannot own the same word in the prospect’s mind.

When a competitor owns a word or position in the prospect’s mind, attempting to own the same word is futile.
Despite the disaster stories, many companies violate the exclusivity law. You can’t change people’s minds once they are made up. In fact, you often reinforce your competitor’s position by making its concept more critical.
What often leads marketers down this booby-trapped lane is that beautiful stuff called research.

The Law of the Ladder: The strategy depends on which rung you occupy on the ladder.

While being first in the prospect’s mind should be your primary marketing objective, the battle isn’t lost if you fail. There are strategies to use for No. 2 and No. 3 brands.
All products are not created equal. There’s a hierarchy in the mind that prospects use in making decisions. For each category, there is a product ladder in mind. On each rung is a brand name.
Your marketing strategy should depend on how soon you got into the mind and which rung of the ladder you occupy. The higher the better, of course.
What about your product’s ladder in the prospect’s mind? How many rungs are there on your ladder? It depends on whether your product is a high-interest or a low-interest product.
Products you use daily (cigarettes, cola, beer, toothpaste, cereal) are high-interest products with many rungs on their ladders.
Products purchased infrequently (furniture, lawnmowers, luggage) usually have few rungs on their ladders.
Products that involve a great deal of personal pride (automobiles, watches, cameras) are also high-interest products with many rungs on their ladders even though they are purchased infrequently.
There’s a relationship between market share and your position on the ladder in the prospect’s mind. You tend to have twice the brand’s market share below you and half the market share above you.
What’s the maximum number of rungs on a ladder? There seems to be a rule of seven in the prospect’s mind. Ask someone to name all the brands he or she remembers in a given category. Rarely will anyone name more than seven. And that’s for a high-interest category.
The ladder is a simple, but powerful, analogy that can help you deal with the critical issues in marketing. Before starting any marketing program, ask yourself: Where are we on the ladder in the prospect’s mind? On the top rung? On the second rung? Or maybe we’re not on the ladder at all.
Then make sure your program deals realistically with your position on the ladder. More on how to do this later.

The Law of Duality: In the long run, every market becomes a two-horse race.

Early on, a new category is a ladder of many rungs. Gradually, the ladder becomes a two-rung affair.
When you take the long view of marketing, the battle usually winds up as a titanic struggle between two major players — usually the old reliable brand and the upstart.
We repeat: The customer believes that marketing is a battle of products. This kind of thinking keeps the two brands on top: “They must be the best. They’re the leaders. “

The Law of the Opposite: If you’re shooting for second place, your strategy is determined by the leader.

If you want to establish a firm foothold on the ladder’s second rung, study the firm above you. Where is it strong? And how do you turn that strength into a weakness? You must discover the essence of the leader and then present the prospect with the opposite. (In other words, don’t try to be better, try to be different.) It’s often the upstart versus old reliable.
In other words, by positioning yourself against the leader, you take business away from all the other alternatives to No. 1.
Yet, too many potential No. 2 brands try to emulate the leader. This usually is an error. You must present yourself as the alternative.
But don’t simply knock the competition. The law of the opposite is a two-edged sword. It requires honing in on a weakness that your prospect will quickly acknowledge.
Then quickly twist the sword.
There has to be a ring of truth about the negative to be effective.
Marketing is often a battle for legitimacy. The first brand that captures the concept is often able to portray its competitors as illegitimate pretenders.

The Law of Division: Over time, a category will divide into two or more categories.

A category starts as a single entity. Computers, for example. But over time, the category breaks up into other segments. Mainframes, minicomputers, workstations, personal computers, laptops, notebooks, and pen computers.
Categories are divided, not combined.
Companies make a mistake when they try to take a well-known brand name in one category and use it in another.
The fear of what will happen to their existing brands keeps leaders from launching a different brand to cover a new category.
Timing is also essential. You can be too early to exploit a new category.
It’s better to be early than late. You can’t get into the prospect’s mind first unless you’re prepared to spend some time waiting for things to develop.

The Law of Perspective: Marketing effects occur over an extended period.

Many marketing moves exhibit the same phenomenon. The long-term effects are often the exact opposite of the short-term effects.
Does a sale increase a company’s business or decrease it? Obviously, in the short term, a sale increases business. But there’s more and more evidence to show that sales decrease business in the long term by educating customers not to buy at “regular “prices.
There is no evidence that couponing increases sales in the long run. Many companies find they need a quarterly dose of couponing to keep sales on an even keel. Once they stop couponing, sales drop off.
Unless you know what to look for, it’s hard to see the effects of line extension, especially for managers focused on their following quarterly report.

The Law of Line Extension: There’s an irresistible pressure to extend a brand’s equity.

What’s even more diabolical is that line extension is a process that takes place continuously, with almost no conscious effort on the part of the corporation.
One day, a company is tightly focused on a single product that is highly profitable. The next day the same company is spread thin over many products and is losing money.
In a narrow sense, line extension involves taking the brand name of a successful product (e.g., A-1 steak sauce) and putting it on a new product you plan to introduce (e.g., A-1 poultry sauce).
But marketing is a battle of perception, not product. In the mind, A-1 is not the brand name, but the steak sauce itself.
In the long run and the presence of serious competition, line extensions almost never work.
Invariably, the leader in any category is the brand that is not line extended.
Why does top management believe that line extension works despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary? One reason is that while line extension is a loser in the long term, it can be a winner in the short term ( chapter 11: The Law of Perspective ). An intense loyalty to the company or brand also blinds management.
More is less. The more products, the more markets, the more alliances a company makes, the less money it makes.
Less is more. If you want to be successful today, you must narrow the focus to build a position in the prospect’s mind.
For many companies, line extension is the easy way out. Launching a new brand requires money and an idea or concept. For a new brand to succeed, it should be first in a new category (chapter 1: The Law of Leadership). Or the new brand ought to be positioned as an alternative to the leader (chapter 9: The Law of the Opposite). Companies that wait until a new market has developed often find these two preempted leadership positions. So they fall back on the old reliable line extension approach. The antidote for a line extension is corporate courage, a commodity in short supply.

The Law of Sacrifice: You must give up something to get something.

The law of sacrifice is the opposite of the law of line extension. If you want to be successful today, you should give something up. There are three things to sacrifice: product line, target market, and constant change.
First, the product line. Where is it written that the more you have to sell, the more you sell?
The entire line is a luxury for a loser. If you want to be successful, you must reduce your product line, not expand it.
The business world is populated by giant, highly diversified generalists and small, narrowly focused specialists. If line extension and diversification were effective marketing strategies, you’d expect to see the generalists riding high. But they’re not. Most of them are in trouble.
The generalist is weak.
Let’s discuss the second sacrifice, the target market. Where is it written that you have to appeal to everybody?
The target is not the market. That is, the apparent target of your marketing is not the same as the people who will buy your product.
Finally, the third sacrifice: constant change. Where is it written that you must change your strategy yearly at budget review time?
If you try to follow the twists and turns of the market, you are bound to wind up off the road. The best way to maintain a consistent position is not to change it in the first place.

The Law of Attributes: There is an opposite, effective attribute for every attribute.

In Chapter 6 (The Law of Exclusivity), we made the point that you can’t own the same word or position your competitor owns. You must find your word to own. You must seek out another attribute.
It’s much better to search for an opposite attribute that will allow you to play off against the leader. The key word here is the opposite—similar won’t do.
Marketing is a battle of ideas. So to succeed, you must have an idea or attribute to focus your efforts around. Without one, you had better have a low price. A very low price.
Some say all attributes are not created equal. Some attributes are more important to customers than others. You must try and own the most critical attribute.
But the law of exclusivity points to the simple truth that once your competition successfully takes an attribute, it’s gone. You must move on to a lesser attribute and live with a smaller category share. Your job is to seize a different attribute, dramatize the value of your attribute, and thus increase your share.

The Law of Candor: When you admit a negative, the prospect will give you the positive.

It goes against corporate and human nature to admit a problem.
So it may surprise you that one of the most effective ways to get into a prospect’s mind is first to admit a negative and then twist it into a positive.
What’s going on here? Why does a dose of honesty work so well in the marketing process?
First and foremost, candour is very disarming. Every negative statement you make about yourself is instantly accepted as truth. Positive statements, on the other hand, are looked at as dubious at best, especially in an advertisement.
You have to prove a positive statement to the prospect’s satisfaction. No proof is needed for a negative statement.
If your name is terrible, you have two choices: change the name or make fun of it. The one thing you can’t do is ignore a bad name.
So why go with the obvious? Marketing is often a search for the obvious. Since you can’t change a mind once made up, your marketing efforts must be devoted to using ideas and concepts already installed in the brain.
When a company starts a message by admitting a problem, people instinctively open their minds.
One final note: The law of candour must be used carefully and skillfully. First, your “negative “must be widely perceived as negative. It has to trigger an instant agreement with your prospect’s mind. If the negative doesn’t register quickly, your prospect will be confused and wonder, “What’s this all about?”
Next, you have to shift quickly to the positive. The purpose of candour isn’t to apologize. The purpose of candour is to set up a benefit that will convince your prospect.
This law only proves the old maxim: Honesty is the best policy.

The Law of Singularity: Only one move will produce substantial results in each situation.

Many marketing people see success as the total of beautifully executed small efforts.
History teaches that the only thing that works in marketing is the single, bold stroke. Furthermore, in any given situation, only one move will produce substantial results.
So it is in marketing. Most often, there is only one place where a competitor is vulnerable. And that place should be the focus of the entire invading force.
Marketing managers must know what’s happening in the marketplace to find that singular idea or concept. They must be down at the front in the mud of the battle. They have to know what’s working and what isn’t. They have to be involved.
It’s hard to find that single move if you’re not involved around headquarters.

The Law of Unpredictability: You can’t predict the future unless you write your competitors ’ plans.

Implicit in most marketing plans is an assumption about the future. Yet marketing plans based on what will happen are usually wrong.
Failure to forecast competitive reactions is a significant reason for marketing failures.
Most companies live from quarterly reports to quarterly reports. That’s a recipe for problems. Companies that live by the numbers, die by the numbers.
Good short-term planning is coming up with that angle or word that differentiates your product or company. Then you set up a coherent long-term marketing direction that builds a program to maximize that idea or angle. It’s not a long-term plan, it’s a long-term direction.
So what can you do? How can you best cope with unpredictability? While you can’t predict the future, you can get a handle on trends, which is a way to take advantage of change.
The danger in working with trends is extrapolation. Many companies jump to conclusions about how far a trend will go.
Equally as bad as extrapolating a trend is the common practice of assuming the future will be a replay of the present. When you assume nothing will change, you predict the future, just as when you assume something will change. Remember Peter’s Law: The unexpected always happens.
While tracking trends can be valuable in dealing with the unpredictable future, market research can be more of a problem than a help. Research does best at measuring the past. New ideas and concepts are almost impossible to measure. No one has a frame of reference.
One way to cope with an unpredictable world is to build enormous flexibility into your organization. As change comes sweeping through your category, you have to be willing to change and change quickly if you are to survive in the long term.
One final note worth mentioning: There’s a difference between “predicting “the future and “taking a chance “on the future.
No one can predict the future with any degree of certainty. Nor should marketing plans try to.

The Law of Success: Success often leads to arrogance, and arrogance to failure.

Ego is the enemy of successful marketing.
Objectivity is what’s needed.
When people become successful, they tend to become less objective. They often substitute their judgment for what the market wants.
Actually, it’s the opposite. The name didn’t make the brand famous ( although a lousy name might keep the brand from becoming famous ). The brand got famous because you made the right marketing moves. In other words, your steps are aligned with the fundamental marketing laws. You got into the mind first. You narrowed the focus. You preempted a powerful attribute.
Actually, ego is helpful. It can be an influential driving force in building a business. What hurts is injecting your ego into the marketing process. Brilliant marketers have the ability to think like a prospect thinks. They put themselves in the shoes of their customers. They don’t impose their view of the world on the situation.
The bigger the company, the more likely the chief executive has lost touch with the front lines. This might be the single most important factor limiting the growth of a corporation.
If you’re a busy CEO, how do you gather objective information on what is happening? How do you get around the propensity of middle management to tell you what they think you want to hear?
How do you get the bad news as well as the good?
One possibility is to go “in disguise “or unannounced. This is especially useful at the distributor or retailer level. This is analogous to the king who dresses up as a commoner and mingles with his subjects. Reason: to get honest opinions of what’s happening.
Marketing is too important to be turned over to an underling. If you delegate anything, you should delegate the chairmanship of the next fund-raising drive.
The next thing to cut back on is the meetings.
Small companies are mentally closer to the front than big companies. That might be one reason they grew more rapidly in the last decade. The law of success hasn’t tainted them.

The Law of Failure: Failure is to be expected and accepted.

Too many companies try to fix things rather than drop things. “Let’s reorganize to save the situation “is their way of life.
Admitting a mistake and not doing anything about it is terrible for your career. A better strategy is to recognize failure early and cut your losses.
One way to defuse the personal agenda is to bring it out in the open.
While the 3M system works, in theory, the ideal environment would allow managers to judge a concept on its merits, not on whom it would benefit.
If a company will operate in an ideal way, it will take teamwork, esprit de corps, and a self-sacrificing leader.

The Law of Hype: The situation is often the opposite of the way it appears in the press.

When things are going well, a company doesn’t need the hype. When you need the hype, it usually means you’re in trouble.
The only revolutions you can predict are the ones that have already started.
Forget the front page. If you’re looking for clues to the future, look in the back of the paper for those innocuous little stories.
But, for the most part, the hype is hype. Real revolutions don’t arrive at high noon with marching bands and coverage on the 6:00 P.M. news. Real revolutions arrive unannounced in the middle of the night and sneak up on you.

The Law of Acceleration: Successful programs are not built on fads, they’re built on trends.

A fad is a wave in the ocean, and a trend is the tide. A fad gets a lot of hype, and a trend gets very little.

Like a wave, a fad is visible but goes up and down in a big hurry. Like the tide, a trend is almost invisible but very powerful over the long term.

A fad is a short-term phenomenon that might be profitable, but a fad doesn’t last long enough to do a company much good.
When the fad disappears, a company often goes into a deep financial shock.
Here’s the paradox. If you were faced with a rapidly rising business, with all the characteristics of a fad, the best thing you could do would be to dampen the fad. By dampening the fad, you stretch it out, and it becomes more like a trend.
Forget fads. And when they appear, try to dampen them. One way to maintain a long-term demand for your product is never totally to satisfy the demand.
But the best, most profitable thing to ride in marketing is a long-term trend.

The Law of Resources: An idea won’t get off the ground without adequate funding.

If you have a good idea and you’ve picked up this book with the thought that all you need is a little marketing help, this chapter will throw cold water on that thought.
Even the best idea in the world won’t go far without the money to get it off the ground. Inventors, entrepreneurs, and assorted idea generators seem to think their good ideas need professional marketing help.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Marketing is a game fought in the mind of the prospect. You need money to get into your mind. And you need money to stay in your mind once you get there.
You’ll get further with a mediocre idea and a million dollars than a great idea alone.
Ideas without money are worthless. Well … not quite. But you must use your idea to find the money, not the marketing help. The marketing can come later.
Remember: An idea without money is worthless. Be prepared to give away a lot for the funding.
In marketing, the rich often get richer because they have the resources to drive their ideas into the mind. Their problem is separating the good ideas from the bad ones, and avoiding spending money on too many products and too many programs (chapter 5: The Law of Focus).
Unlike a consumer product, a technical or business product has to raise less marketing money because the prospect list is shorter and media is less expensive. But there is still a need for adequate funding for a technical product to pay for brochures, sales presentations, trade shows, and advertising.
Here is the bottom line. First, get the idea, then get the money to exploit it.
We’ve talked about smaller companies and their fund-raising strategies. What about a rich company? How should it approach the law of resources? The answer is simple: Spend enough.
The more successful marketers front-load their investment. In other words, they take no profit for two or three years as they plow all earnings back into marketing.
Money makes the marketing world go round. To succeed today, you’ll have to find the money you need to spin those marketing wheels.

Quotes

“2 The Law of the Category: If you can’t be first in a category, set up a new category you can be first in.”

“Everyone is interested in what’s new. Few people are interested in what’s better.”

“The single most wasteful thing you can do in marketing is try to change a mind.”

“In the long run and in the presence of serious competition, line extensions almost never work.”

“Less is more. If you want to be successful today, you have to narrow the focus in order to build a position in the prospect’s mind.”

“15 The Law of Candor: When you admit a negative, the prospect will give you the positive.”

“History teaches that the only thing that works in marketing is the single, bold stroke. Furthermore, in any given situation there is only one move that will produce substantial results.”

“20 The Law of Hype: The situation is often the opposite of the way it appears in the press.”