SAVE | EMAIL | PRINT | MOST POPULAR |  RSS | | REPRINT
|
Tangible Marketing: Influencing Customer Choice
January 31, 2008
How fact-based positioning strategies can influence consumer choice
By Kevin J. Clancy and Peter C. Krieg
The media landscape may have changed dramatically since David Ogilvy, "the father of advertising," rapped the knuckles of his contemporaries for forgetting the purpose of advertising: to generate sales. But you know the saying: the more things change, the more they stay the same?
Whether it's on TV, the radio, in print, on the web, on billboards, through sponsorship or in the elevator ride up to the office, advertising today remains more about linking emotional messages, images and feelings to a brand in the hope—Ogilvy would say improbable hope—that sales will rise in the long run, as opposed to making the cash register sing in the short run.
At least once a week we read about a B2C or B2B company that wants to be known for an attitude, emotion or feeling. For instance, Reebok’s global marketing head Uli Becker explains the company’s well-publicized ties to more notorious music artists and athletes and executions of its "Run Easy" campaign as the brand's "need to be controversial." And Chevy's "Our Country, Our Truck" campaign pulls at the patriotic heart-strings of red-blooded Americans. These brands and many others across a wide spectrum of categories have adopted an intangible image-based positioning strategy.
So if everyone's doing it, it must work, right? Their gut may tell marketers "yes," but the head is smarter.
Econometric analyses reveal that the majority of marketing communications campaigns rooted in intangible positioning produce zero or negative returns on investment. In other words, they are spending more on advertising than the advertising is generating back.
Resurrecting a Relic
A marketer's gut instinct may tell him or her that tangible positionings worked better back in the '50s and '60s. Those were the years when buyers were generally more open to marketing and advertising and there were fewer brands. Intangible positionings were born out of necessity in the '90s when product differences seemed to disappear in many categories and all brands started to look the same.
But hope is not lost for tangible positionings. Some of the most powerful, category-dominating brands have tangible positionings: Disney with wholesome family entertainment; ExxonMobil with fast and friendly service; and FedEx with guaranteed next-day delivery. Marketing communications founded on a tangible positioning can yield a return on investment of 10 to 15 percent and higher—significantly higher than seen with intangible campaigns—exactly as it did in the '50s and '60s.
The Real Deal
Marketers should ask, "Should we pursue a tangible or intangible positioning strategy?" Rather, they should ask, "What positioning of all the tangible and intangible options will inspire an attractive target group?"
Here are four fact-based steps that are required to develop a compelling positioning.
1. Compile an inspired list of tangible/intangible attributes and benefits. A bank's tangible attributes might be "the most ATM locations," "convenient branch hours," and "online bill pay." Tangible benefits might be "personalized attention and treatment" and "does everything to make you feel important."
A bank's intangible attributes might be "in top 10 industry ranking of customer service," and "servicing customers for 100 years." Its intangible benefits might be "makes you feel in control of your finances" and "makes you feel important."
The list shouldn't be limited under any circumstance. You should consider even seemingly nutty ideas such as "offers donuts during branch hours on Sunday mornings" and "official bank of the Boston Celtics."
2. Conduct research among your target buyers to determine what's most motivating. Research is extremely important but don't mistake what people say is "important" for finding your motivating power. Researchers often ask respondents to rate characteristics of a product or service on a five-point scale, ranging from (1) not important at all to (5) extremely important. This is a surefire way to a marketing misfire. The reason is simple: People tend to grade the most generic, tangible, and socially acceptable characteristics—such as "has exercise equipment" for a health club, or "good taste" for a white bread—as the most important. These characteristics are rarely potential points of differentiation because everyone already offers them. Using importance scores as a guide to positioning will more often than not send marketers in the wrong direction.
Instead, use an alternative approach and ask people about desirability, not importance. "How desirable is it that a health club should attract less athletically inclined individuals?"
+4 Extremely desirable
+3 Very desirable
+2 Somewhat desirable
+1 Slightly desirable
0 Neither desirable nor undesirable
-1 Slightly undesirable
-2 Somewhat undesirable
-3 Very undesirable
-4 Extremely undesirable
A desirability scale such as the following one encourages respondents to think outside the box without biases.
3. Compare your brand with your competitors' brands, on the most motivating attributes and benefits. The best positioning opportunities are those that are highly motivating and those that give a brand advantages relative to competitors.
4. Evaluate the feasibility and profitability of different opportunities. Carefully go through the short list of positioning options that emerges from the analysis, and assess each one in these terms. "Has doctors from top medical schools" might be highly motivating, but not affordable or realistic for a hospital to implement.
Balance the Gut with the Head
Somewhere along the lines, marketers have gotten off track and stopped giving viable reasons to buy their product or service. There are many, many potential reasons to buy even in the most commoditized of B2C or B2B categories, but without a strong position, companies risk becoming just another indistinguishable drop in a sea of choices. Developing a position guided by buyers' insights—not gut instinct or intuition about what kind of strategy works best in today's marketplace—is the key to moving them toward your brand.
Kevin J. Clancy, PhD, and Peter C. Krieg are leading experts on fact-based marketing and the coauthors of Your Gut Is Still Not Smarter Than Your Head: How Disciplined, Fact-Based Marketing Can Drive Extraordinary Growth and Profits (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2007). They can be contacted at www.useyourheadnow.com.
Sales & Marketing Management Magazine
This article is brought to you by Sales & Marketing Management, the leading authority for executives in the sales and marketing field.
|
|
SAVE | EMAIL | PRINT | MOST POPULAR | RSS |
|
|
| Back to Marketing Index |
|
|
