THE MECHANICS OF MARKETING
Bear with me while I start with a sports analogy.

You go to a pro or coach because you have a specific problem. You slice your tee shot, or can't get the right spin on your second serve, or can't hit for power the other way. . . or whatever it might be.

But good coaches don't help you with that problem right away, do they? Instead they put you on the court, or the driving range, or in the batting cage, and they watch you. They know that the problem almost always rests not with any specific thing you're trying to accomplish. The problem almost always rests with your fundamentals.

With your mechanics.

And they tell you the same thing--no matter what the sport:

Before you can accomplish anything, you have to get your mechanics fixed. Get your mechanics down, and everything else will follow naturally.

This is how we want you to approach your marketing efforts. There's no point in trying to accomplish any specific marketing goal--customer retention, positioning, new market development. . . or anything else--without first correcting your mechanics.

Marketing mechanics are contained within a simple phrase.

Customer Focus.

If you develop the mechanics of customer focus, everything else will follow. It can't help but follow.

FIXING YOUR MARKETING MECHANICS
Companies most often come to us to solve a specific problem, or accomplish a specific goal like those I just mentioned above. But we don't roll up our sleeves and say "OK, let's develop customer loyalty!" First, we look and listen, to see how solid their mechanics are. There are lots of indicators, like:

And once we see the flaws in the mechanics, we know how to approach the engagement.

This is at the heart of what all marketing consultants worth their salt do, and what your own marketing organization must do.

CORRECTING YOUR MARKETING SWING
The process of developing good marketing mechanics adheres to the sports analogy like super glue to fingertips.

A little theory, a lot of habit breaking, and tons of practice.

A LITTLE THEORY
In sports, theory focuses on biomechanics. In marketing it focuses on perspective.

The old saying that people buy 3/4 inch holes not 3/4 inch drill bits is still one of the fundamental truths of marketing. I've said it before, and I'll repeat it here: the marketplace doesn't care about you, or your products, or your services. The marketplace cares about itself--its needs, its problems, its success. Almost all problems with your marketing mechanics can be traced to this. You are going to be naturally drawn to talk about your product when you market that product. It's instinctive--it seems logical. But it is wrong.

A LOT OF HABIT BREAKING
Product focus, like a looping swing or positioning your hands behind the club, is a habit. A habit you've reinforced through endless repetition. But you have to break yourself of that habit. One way to do that is to appoint someone to be the watchdog--to be acting coach. At every meeting, in every discussion, as you review every draft of every piece of marketing material you produce, these watchdogs should sit there and be on the alert for product focus. Every time they spot it they should call out "product!" Pretty obnoxious. But so is the coach that calls out every time "downward angle" on second serves. Breaking habits is no fun.

But neither is ineffective marketing.

TONS OF PRACTICE
Sports coaches try to develop "muscle memory" in their clients. They make you do things over and over and over again until the proper mechanics are executed without thinking. You have to develop "marketing memory" in just the same way. You have to practice--again and again until that marketing memory is developed. It's not easy. We spend a lot of time--and frustrate a lot of clients in the process--taking the work they do and saying, "no, it's still not right--look here, this entire part of your strategy or this whole datasheet is nothing but product. Do it again." And again. And again.

And eventually they do it without thinking.

Focusing on customer creates the foundation for successful marketing, well before you even begin to think about what product you want to build--before you turn to the 4 Ps or any other product-focused issues. And once you have those mechanics in place, once you've got your thinking rightly focused, everything that follows--from strategic pricing to tactical promotion--will fall naturally in place. Nail fundamentals, and results will follow.

Then you'll be able to relax a little--and finally fix that lousy golf swing of yours.

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