Marketing isn’t complicated…or at least it shouldn’t be. Focusing on the fundamentals is a great place to start. Legendary professional football coach, Vince Lombardi, started off the 1961 season with a training camp session by stating to his players, “Gentlemen, this is a football.” Many of the top mind in businesses and sports echo the same sentiments. So why not apply this to your marketing strategy?
“Winners don’t just learn the fundamentals, they master them. You have to monitor your fundamentals constantly because the only thing that changes will be your attention to them” – Michael Jordan
The marketing industry is riddled with shiny objects and spur of the moment trends. Each new innovation leads to a gold rush type of enthusiasm. However, understanding your value proposition and your target market will lead to greater success and will prevent you from wasting time and resources on unnecessary investments. A fancy new website will not help you acquire new customers if your customers do not visit your site. A new logo is meaningless if your business isn’t listed on Google. A social media marketing campaign is a waste of time and money if your customers do not research your products or services on social media.
The acronym KISS stands for Keep It Simple Stupid. You can spend a lot of money and incur technical debt if you do not understand your target customer and your value proposition. Start with a strong digital foundation and then build out new capabilities based on customer feedback. Incremental investments and chasing shiny objects without a long-term strategy will lead to technical debt and poor customer experiences.
The fundamentals of marketing are:
- Segment your customers
- Understand your value proposition for each segment
- Target them specifically by understanding the customer journey
Oftentimes business leaders will say that every customer is their target customer. That is great in theory but let’s take a different approach to that question. If you had to spend $100 on attracting a new customer, which one segment would you target and why? You wouldn’t spend $100 on a customer that will likely spend $50 at your store. But you would prefer to target your marketing efforts on customers that will spend $150.
The Golden Rule of Marketing: Customer Lifetime Value > Customer Acquisition Costs
Focus on the basics, build a strong digital foundation, and invest in additional resources based on customer feedback.