Tuesday Marketing Notes (Number 39—June 27th , 2006)
A B2B Marketing Newsletter for BMA Members
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Identifying Causes of Poor Sales Response in Your Marketing Tests and Projects (Part 1: Uncovering Causes of Poor Sales Response)
by Eric Gagnon
In the past 4 issues of Tuesday Marketing Notes, we covered methods of market testing in B2B marketing programs, using direct mail, online pay-per-click, and print display advertising for market tests, the importance of measurability, and using measurements such as cost-per-lead and lifetime value of a customer, both of which provide clearer and more accurate measurements of marketing programs than ROI and other one-shot measurements.
Now we come to the subject of failure. All of us experience it in our marketing programs, but ironically people who write about marketing rarely touch this topic. That’s a shame, because marketing programs frequently generate below-par results, so learning how to face, investigate, and improve failed or underperforming marketing programs is a critically important skill every marketing manager must know.
Underperformance is often the norm in many market testing projects, and for that matter, most marketing projects beyond the testing phase. It’s a fact of marketing life that most market tests often yield a result that is neither a runaway success nor a total failure. But what separates the true marketing professional from the cubicle dweller is the ability to identify causes of underperforming marketing programs, and to make the changes necessary to the marketing program to produce a better result on the next iteration.
Here are six guidelines for getting your head screwed on right whenever you’re faced with a failed or sub-par result on a market test, or any other marketing project . . .
1.) Face the Problem, and Don’t be Surprised You Have a Problem
Many marketers, when faced with a poor or underperforming marketing test or other marketing project, use their great powers of imagination to deny the problem.
Denial then turns to a lingering sense of malaise and disappointment in the marketing program, which then turns to despondency, then panic. This happens quite often in start-ups, where the founder’s team either stays within their own “reality distortion field,” denying the problem exists, or runs for the tall grass. If the latter occurs, then, regardless whether the fault lies with the product, the blame usually falls on marketing—and that would be you.
As a marketing or agency professional, your responsibility is to separate the market, environment, and product-related causes from the marketing-related causes, and face up to the problem. Market tests often generate problem signs and mixed results. Identifying and mitigating risk is, after all, the reason you run market tests, so facing a bad result in a test shouldn’t be a surprise to you.
Even in companies with established, successful marketing programs, no winning streak goes on forever—competitive new products are introduced, technology improves and erodes profit margins, often making products more expensive or difficult to market. What works this year might not work next year. That’s what makes marketing an exciting, stimulating career. If you wanted a career where things stayed the same all the time and you never had to adapt, would your life be better if you had gone to work for the Post Office?
2.) Many Marketing Projects End In the Grey Area Between Success and Failure, So Deal With It
Wherever you’re facing a tough marketing challenge—a market test, a new product launch in a new and untried market, or a start-up, your first attempt at any marketing effort usually generates poor or underperforming sales response. The professional adjusts to this reality when it happens, learns from it, changes the marketing plan, and puts the new and better marketing program into action—fast.
The hard fact about market testing is that market tests often generate mixed results: For example, some panels in a test mailing produce so-so sales response, and some are total failures. Every once in awhile you’ll hit a home run. After all, the reason you test is as much to find what doesn’t work as what does, to test your assumptions against your market, and then study the results to change and adapt your marketing program to this reality.
Would it have been better for you to have blown all of your marketing budget on an untested mailing program or advertising campaign? Obviously not. So this is why you test.
Running marketing projects is all about dealing with shades of grey. Your ability to execute again, faster, by revising your deliverables, your targeting, or your promotion, is what turns a marketing program around.
3.) Find What Went Right In the Test, and Make These Lessons Learned
Every market test or marketing activity yields at least one piece of information that gives you valuable insight into your market:
• A positioning approach, headline, or sales copy used in one mailing piece that pulled better than other mailing pieces used in your test;
• A price-based promotionaloffer used in an ad that pulls greater sales response than an ad that didn’t use this offer;
• Likely prospects, identified by job title or responsibility, who responded to your market test in greater numbers than other types of prospects targeted by your mailing, ad, or other marketing activity
Even though there was low sales response to your entire mailing, ad program, or other market test overall, there may be at least one sales copy approach (headline, positioning, sales copy, etc.) used in your deliverable that generated better response than others tested. This sales copy, when used in revised deliverables and combined with other lessons learned from your test, can often pull better response on your next test.
4.) Listen to the Prospects Who Did Respond
Every single prospect who responded to your ad, mailing, or other marketing project has something to tell you:
• What it was about your headline or sales copy that appealed to them, and what really motivated them contact to you;
• The prospect’s title, role, responsibilities, and functions within their company, and how the prospect thinks your product helps make their life on the job easier, more productive, less expensive, or more efficient—as opposed to how you, or your ad agency, thinks your product benefits your market;
• What product features appealed most to them and—most important, theirperception of how those features in your product can help them;
• Elements in your sales copy that were unclear, or confused prospects about your product, its benefits, or its features
The best way to get valuable market intelligence is to be a good listener. Get in touch with the prospects who responded to your ad, mailing, or other marketing project. Most important, listen for the important facts or key benefits they mention about your ad, mailing, Web offer, or other marketing project they responded to. Listen for things like the obscure, but more effective, sales benefit in your body copy that could become your headline in your next ad or mailing, or a new sales benefit that comes directly from the prospect’s on-the-job experiences with or use of products such as yours.
Other key facts your prospects mention to you, such as an omitted technical detail in your copy, or failure to mention compatibility with a popular standard or system, can also reduce sales response on a deliverable, so make sure you provide potential prospects with all of the technical details they need on your next, revised marketing deliverable.
From their own point of view, prospects will often tell you what it really takes for you to do a better job of selling your company’s products more effectively. This information can give you a new way of looking at your product, which can be translated into a better and more effective marketing deliverable on your next attempt. All you have to do is listen.
5.) Check and Re-Check Your Deliverables With “New Eyes”
While we’re on the subject of deliverables, take a good, hard look at your ad, mailing piece, Web page, brochure, or other deliverable used in the test or marketing project, and look at these deliverables once more with “new eyes,” that is, as your reader looks at them for the very first time.
Looking at your deliverables with new eyes helps you discover stronger ways to express your product’s most compelling benefit, clearer and more compelling ways of describing product features, and reveals unclear or missing copy details that, when included, clarify and add more motivation to your offer or call-to-action. This is especially important when you are re-reviewing your marketing deliverables after the test, and incorporating the feedback and results you received from active and potential prospects who saw the deliverable.
6.) Know When You Have a Problem that Can be Solved by Better Marketing, and Know When You Don’t
Many problems with poor or underperforming sales response can be solved by better marketing, through better marketing execution, better prospect targeting, or clearer and more effective presentation in ads and deliverables. However, marketers—being the egotistical types we are—fall into the trap of believing that every sales or marketing problem can be solved by more and better marketing, and this is where many marketing programs become expensive, spectacular failures. No amount or quality of marketing will help a bad product, or a product with insufficient capabilities and features that fail to offer prospects a compelling enough reason to switch from their current way of doing business, or doing their jobs.
Next week, we’ll discuss ways to troubleshoot and correct failed or underperforming marketing problems, how to identify some of the problems that can’t be solved by better marketing, and how to address these problems . . .
Comments? Questions? Send them to me at: eric@realmarkets.net
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Attention Marketing Managers:
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Think you should be spending less and getting more from your current marketing program? Tired of hearing empty “branding” promises from your ad agency that never seem to translate to actual, measurable sales results?
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Eric Gagnon (eric@realmarkets.net), is president of GAA (www.realmarkets.net), a sales and business development consulting firm, and is the author of The Marketing Manager’s Handbook, the master study guide for the Business Marketing Association’s Marketing Skills Assessment, Skill Builder, and Certification (MSA/B/C) programs.
For more information on The Marketing Manager’s Handbook, available to BMA members at a special discount, link to:
http://www.businessmarketinginstitute.com/book.html
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Test, Train, and Build Your B2B Marketing Skills for Better Sales Success: BMA Announces New Assessment, Training, and Certification for B2B Marketing Managers
For more information on the new BMA Marketing Skills Assessment, Skill Building and Certification (MSA/B/C) training and professional development program, visit http://www.businessmarketinginstitute.com
