Our ancestors didn’t have a great variety of professions to choose from. The oldest professions were based on our basic needs. Some professions were food-linked: hunters, toolmakers and farmers. Some were shelter-linked: builders, toolmakers, and tailors. And some to our need to imagine – storytellers, artists, and musicians. All these professions required one or several skills. For instance, a tailor needed some good needlework skills. Plus the creative skills needed to design clothes. Very few skills were useful across professions. A hunter wouldn’t make a very good builder. There was one skill though which was common. And it often made the difference between success and failure. That skill was marketing. A farmer able to describe the attributes of the rice he was selling would get a better price. A tailor with better marketing skills would get more clients. To be sure, product attributes mattered then and matter now. It’s only that marketing makes people aware of those attributes. This article takes a closer look at marketing.
So, what is marketing?
The American Marketing Association puts a lot of effort to define ‘marketing’. They get together a panel of five scholars who are active researchers every 3 years. They review and modify the definition. The 2017 approved version reads as below:
Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.
All of us market ourselves to others every day. It could be implicit or explicit. Explicit: We pitch our product or service to a potential customer. Implicit: We dress formally to position ourselves and our business in a certain way. Improved sales are the ultimate result of marketing for a business. To achieve that, a lot of businesses adopt push marketing. Push your product or service to as many people as possible. And some will buy. But is that the right way?
Push or pull marketing?
Push marketing is where we push a product or service to many potential customers. A hoarding, a TV commercial or buying banner ads online is push marketing. Push it in front of as many people as possible. And then wait for the phone to ring. Its transactional.
Pull marketing is more inward looing. You spend time building your business value and skills rather than looking out for the next sale. And share that value and skills with a potential set of customers. What you share with potential customer isn’t necessarily linked to making the sale. Of course, you ensure that customers are aware of your product and its great attributes.
Which one’s better? While it varies by product type, pull marketing should be the basis of marketing effort. For all the push marketing it does, Coca-Cola, focuses on brand over product. It doesn’t sell a drink in a bottle; it sells happiness in a bottle. Coke sells consumers the experience and lifestyle associated with the brand. That pulls customers to buy a Coke. And it helps that its widely available in a unique, patented bottle. Pull marketing allows you to focus on what you do best. And make customers aware of you while your business is doing things they love. How do you do pull marketing? Say you are a real estate firm. Some of the things you can do include:
n Focusing on selling ‘experiences’ instead of ‘square feet’. Sure, many real estate players do this. Yet, it’s worth focusing on since done well, it can work wonders. Be sure that your product backs it up though.
n Generating and sharing content about key questions your buyer’s have. For e.g. how does a buyer use RERA to hold builders accountable to their promises?
n Advertising how your business is different. For e.g. Articles on the sustainable construction materials you use. These shouldn’t be sale specific. The aim is to get customers to become more aware of your business.
Do enough of this with consistency and your potential customers come to you. Sure, you’ll need to do some push marketing as well. But the basis is a strong brand which pulls consumers.
Why bother with marketing at all? Isn’t word of mouth enough?
Marketing often determines the difference in success between two talented individuals. Or two companies with equally great ideas. Thomas Edison was a prolific inventor. A lot of the conveniences we take for granted today are his inventions or based on his inventions. Although his inventions spoke for themselves, he was a great marketeer. His product launches themselves were different. His light-bulb launch almost sounds like a launch by Apple. Leonard de Graaf, the archivist at the Thomas Edison National Historic Park is quoted in an interview with Ripleys:
“The light bulb was this iconic problem. Even now, the light bulb represents having a good idea. Edison was very good at presenting his work to the media and cultivating relationships with reporters. He made for good copy, and he was accessible. I think that helped. He understood that having his work portrayed positively in the media would ultimately be good for his investors. And he was a showman. Sometimes he would claim to have solved a problem before he really did.”
Leonardo da Vinci, the most prolific and multi-faceted inventor made a CV! And the CV highlights what his potential employer was looking for. Not the many inventions he was already famous for. These are examples of how individuals actively marketed themselves and their products.
So, what should you focus your marketing on?
Getting customers to ‘know, like, trust’ you. Know, like and trust are the foundation for a sustainable buyer-seller relationship. If any one of them is missing, you will still manage to sell. Yet, as soon as there’s competition who offers any of those better than you do, sales could plummet. Your pull marketing allows your customers to become aware of you. And then as you continue to engage with potential clients they begin to like and trust you. Keep in mind though that trust doesn’t get built overnight. So, treat marketing as a continuous process rather than an event. And be genuine and authentic.
Summary
The aim of your marketing effort should be to get customers to ‘know-like-trust’ you. Treat sales as a by-product. Once the foundation of your pull marketing strategy is in place, push-marketing tactics are much more effective. Push marketing is like growing rice. The endless cycle of sowing and harvesting and then sowing again. Pull marketing is like a mango orchard. It can take years to bear fruit but once the orchard takes root, you’ll harvest fruit for years to come.
Have patience and pull-marketing will provide a sustainable path to growth. And will bear fruit for time to come. Happy marketing!
