Google ZMOT book is underwhelming

Just read ZMOT, Google's new cult book on marketing and confess to being a little underwhelmed. 

The book is well presented but the big finding is that since most people now research online for information and opinion about a product or service before making a purchase, marketers had better be net savvy. 

In other words, be found online when your prospects are looking. Be SEO savvy. Be ready to engage when they want conversation. Sell softly softly. Because this is the zero moment of truth. This is when your prospects are forming an opinion on you way way before they actually transact (which we are told is the first moment of truth). 

All good advice. But um -- in this day and age when we don't even watch a movie (let alone buy a car) without first checking online, this is news?

How relevant is Philip Kotler in IT services marketing?

Don’t get me wrong. I think Philip Kotler’s Marketing Management (the world's most widely used graduate level textbook in marketing, according to Wikipedia) is a must-read. It is superbly written, and I found the South Asian edition (13th edition, 2009) particularly interesting since it has a wealth of examples and case studies from India and the sub-continent.

But after more than 20 years in technology, media, and marketing, I get the feeling that Kotler’s view of marketing is divorced from the reality on the ground –- at least in the limited context of the Indian IT industry.

Kotler believes that marketing has a strategic and a tactical component. The strategic part involves choosing the value (segment, target, positioning), and the tactical part involves providing the value (product, price, placement) and communicating the value (promotion).

In their paper titled, 'What CEO’s Need to Know and Do About Marketing,' Leader to Leader Journal, No.42, Fall 2006, Kotler and Westman summarize this view as follows:

                           R --> STP --> MM --> I --> C

“All good marketing starts with research (R). No one should enter a new market or launch a new product without solid research findings. The findings will help the company segment (S) the market, target (T) the segment(s) it wants to serve, and position (P) its offerings to that segment(s). The company will then flesh out the marketing mix (MM), namely the four Ps of product, price, place, and promotion. Then the marketing plan has to be implemented (I). To monitor the implementation, the company uses various controls (C) such as revenue, market share, margins, and so on.”

Now that sounds just wonderful in theory. But that is NOT what happens in practice in IT marketing in India. Not by any stretch of imagination.

In practice, IT marketing in India has very limited involvement with product, price, and placement. It's focused largely on positioning and promotion.

There are a couple of reasons for this. One, promotion is in itself a full-time day job. Most CMOs I know (and they are all in the technology space) are up to their necks in activities related to branding, positioning, marketing communication, direct marketing, events, media and analyst relations, investor relations, and employee communication.

Two, marketing is quite frankly ill-equipped to assess the wants and needs of the market to make meaningful contributions to product and price. How many marketing managers in technology companies can honestly claim to have enough of the pulse of the customer to suggest design or refinement of products and services? Honestly? Indeed, how many CMOs in Indian technology companies even see the end customer on a regular basis to make such assessments?

In most cases, marketing’s contribution to product development is limited to the feedback it receives from influencers such as analysts and media. In some cases, these inputs are significant. For example, when I managed my then employer’s solution rankings with analyst firms such as Gartner, Forrester, and IDC, we usually had detailed and insightful feedback from the analysts. This we duly passed on to the developers and solution designers. But that was about it. Marketing had no say in ensuring that this feedback was incorporated in the product, and we certainly had no say in the product’s pricing. In most cases, the insights we gathered would end up as little more than inputs to the positioning exercise for branding and communication.

My experience is not unique. In the IT industry in India, marketing is largely limited to the promotion P, with some market research thrown in for positioning.

Personally, I think it is impossible for any CMO to satisfy Kotler’s definition of marketing.

But -- and this is where the problem starts --Kotler’s view is widely known and respected. This has two negative fall outs.

One, marketers are getting an inferiority complex about their role. A recent IBM survey of CMOs found that while most CMOs acknowledge that much of their job is largely about promotion, many of them were defensive about it and wished they could expand their role to impact the other three Ps.

They shouldn't be. Promoting the company story and engaging with widely different stakeholders -- buyers, influencers, investors, and employees -- is a full-time job that involves managing a wide range of internal and external stakeholders, agencies, and sensitivities.

Two, many CEOs have been exposed to the Kotler view of marketing, and this causes them to judge CMOs and marketing departments by this unrealistic yardstick. That sets impossible expectations, and the resulting frustration is one of the reasons why CMOs last for less than two years in most organizations.

There are couple of points that I need to clarify. One, my experience is with the IT and BPO industry in India. This is a B2B marketing environment where the marketing function operates out of India and the customers are mostly abroad. So marketing does not have the kind of connect with end customers that a company serving customers in its own geography has.

Two, B2C marketers are often a little closer to customers than B2B marketers and their experiences can be significantly different.

Given the above, I’d love to hear from B2B technology marketers on whether the Kotler view of marketing is a help or a hindrance in their work.

PS. None of the above is intended to be disrespectful of Kotler. I think his book is a fantastic read. It’s just that I don’t believe all of it is relevant in the context of B2B technology marketing in India.

Marketing primer for IT-BPO CEOs

Many IT services CEO's do not 'get' marketing. Many marketing professionals too are confused about their role since marketing in the IT services industry is very different from the theory of the 4Ps they learned in college. 

In theory, marketing should be involved in all the four Ps -- product, price, placement, and promotion. In IT-BPO companies however, marketing has little or no influence on product, price, and placement since they are managed by other groups such as corporate planning and solution design. Marketing is thus primarily concerned with researching the market, branding, positioning, and communicating the company story to widely different audiences -- customers, analysts, media, investors, and employees. 

See this Slideshare presentation for a quick reality check and primer.

How to write a CEO speech

I’ve been writing CEO speeches for over 10 years now. I started out writing speeches for CEOs of the companies I’d worked and now I write speeches for CEOs as a consultant. 

The big difference is that as an employee you generally know the CEO’s personal style and mannerisms. When you write as a consultant, you have to form an impression of a person after just a couple of phone calls and some email. That makes it just a little bit harder to write something that is just right for the speaker.   

The rules of speech writing haven’t changed from the ages. You can pick your favorite rhetorician but I like the Quintilian approach because stripped of its Latin nomenclature, it is pretty straightforward:

• Invention is the process that leads to developing the argument.
• Arrangement is used to order the facts for maximum effect.
• Style determine the presentation.
• Memory is used to keep all elements in play in order, and
• Delivery is concerned with presenting the speech in a gracious and effective manner.

A speechwriter then, is like a journalist or a lawyer. We research facts, muster arguments and order them optimally to inform and persuade. And all good speechwriters will use the classical devices of logos, pathos and ethos to persuade the audience. 

That is the theory. Applying it to life is what makes it all interesting. How do you work in words and phrases that complement the speaker? What devices work best for this individual? Dare you use irony or banter? Can your speaker carry off what you have planned for him? Will she or he inform, engage and persuade or will the speech fall of its own weight because you attempted to do too much with it? These are the questions that preoccupy us and make a speech worth writing. 

Can't afford a full-time marketing head? Outsource one.

Here’s something that happens to a lot of midsized technology companies. The personal contacts of the founders and the sales team are no longer enough to grow the business. To scale up, the company needs a structured marketing program to build a brand and generate inquiries on an ongoing basis. 

There are two immediate problems. The first one is that most midsized technology companies have no idea of what such a marketing program costs. Even a basic program involving a minimum advertising, sponsorship, influencer marketing initiatives and trade shows and events quickly ratchets up the marketing spend and can cost upwards of $250,000. 

For a company that had till then relied on the reach of the CEO and the heroics of individual salespeople to generate business, this figure comes as a rude shock and the initial reaction is one of disbelief.

The second problem is that it needs an experienced professional to manage such a program. You need insight into buyer, media, analyst, employee and investor behavior, experience in managing agency relationships, an understanding of the product and the market, and the ability to manage in-house staff and work across organizational silos. Such an experienced professional is expensive to hire and difficult to retain -- most marketing pros like to work with big brands and big budgets.

Consider outsourcing

Most companies already outsource some of their marketing -- advertising, PR, content  creation, website maintenance, and event management are all activities that are commonly outsourced either wholly or partly. This is outsourcing to fill a skill set gap. But for midsized companies, outsourcing can also solve their second major problem -- that of not being able to attract and retain the right senior talent.

A full time senior marketing hire in India costs upwards of $100,000. Outsourcing the CMO can slash this cost without affecting the quality of the work.

That’s because marketing in midsized companies proceeds in spurts. There are periods of intense activity followed by lulls. An experienced professional is needed to set up a team, define goals, allocate budgets, standardize branding, set up a collateral creation program, firm up advertising and sponsorships, initiate engagements with media, analyst and deal consultants, streamline investor and employee communication, manage events participation and support a lead generation program. 

It takes about a year or more to get such a program up and running. But it takes a whole lot longer for the rest of the company to scale up its sales and delivery capabilities to match up to the enhanced brand promise. During this period, marketing slows down to a holding pattern and the senior marketing hire either gets bored and leaves or becomes an overhead. 

Having an outsourced CMO enables the company to hire the right expertise for the job at lower than full time cost. 

And to pay for it only till needed.

Marketing insights from dance

We recently watched dance performances at the Chowdiah Hall in Malleswaram organized by the Sangeet Natak Akademi -- Mohiniattam by Sreedevi Unni; Odissi by Ileana Citaristi; Bharatanatyam by Geeta Chandran; and Manipuri by artistes from the Jawaharlal Nehru Manipuri Dance Academy, Imphal.

The performances were stunning. The dancers are all highly acclaimed, the accompanists were superb and the sound and lighting was spot on.

As I watched the magic unfold over three unhurried hours, I was struck by how the dancers took their time to develop their stories and how we in the audience willingly let them lead us step by step, act by act to where they chose to take us -- sometimes into mythology and at other times into contemporary issues. There was no way the process could be hurried.

I think there is a lesson in that for marketing. Whenever I get called by small and medium company CEOs to create marketing programs, one common thread in the conversations is the insistent request to turn marketing into a fast food item -- standardized, cheap and quick.

I struggle against this kind of thinking. I tell them that brand building in a hurry and marketing on a shoe string are just urban legends -- treat them with disdain.

They rarely believe me of course. They've heard too many war stories of great marketing victories at near-zero cost. And often the parsimony goes beyond money and even extends into effort. You want to create white papers, I’m asked disbelievingly. Who reads a 10-page white paper anyway? Friend, this is the world of Twitter, TV sound bites, elevator speeches and social media. People want their information short and they want it snappy.

Not really. Not if you are selling anything more involved than a burger. People still willingly and gladly read big books, watch long movies, see multi-hour dance programs – and read white papers by the bucketful.

But yes, people are now exposed to very high standards of content and delivery and so you absolutely need to tell your story better. And because your story competes with everyone else’s, you must not only create your story well, you must also deliver it brilliantly. Just as the Sangeet Natak Akademi created a perfect setting for last evening’s dance, marketing needs to create relevant settings for different messages.

Unfortunately, creating and telling a story well involves using high quality talent to create the story and using the right stage to tell the story – and both cost time, money and effort.

Think about it. What is marketing’s job? Marketing’s job is to communicate the company’s value proposition to prospects at various stages of the marketing funnel from awareness through consideration and preference. And if your company derives significant revenue from existing customers, marketing will also be involved in loyalty and up-selling initiatives after the initial sale.

What are marketing’s tools of trade? Since different prospects are at different stages of the marketing funnel, marketing needs to create and deliver messages using a variety of tactics from advertising and PR to websites, collateral, events, sponsorships, user groups and so on.

Some of these tactics cost less money than others – for example, social media is free, advertising is not. You can exchange business cards at a trade show for the price of an entry fee but exhibiting there costs a whole lot more. Heck, even content is not free. You can use that rookie in marcom to write your brochure and white paper but if your competitor’s collateral was created by a professional then you are blown out of the water even before knowing what hit you.

Point is, marketing costs money. You need talent to create exciting and relevant messages and good talent is never free. You need a way to reach those messages to your customers, media, analysts, investors and employees and not all the ways of reaching them are free. Oh by all means use websites and blogs and PR and the rest of the free stuff but know that you will still need to pay for advertising, events, travel, sponsorships and so on.

The big guys know this of course. That is why the IBMs of the world may scale back on marketing budgets but never ever stop the funding. That’s one more thing startups with big dreams can learn from the big boys.

How to set up effective marketing collateral creation

A lot of marketing collateral creation programs fail because the content owners -- usually middle to senior level folks -- do not give the time of day to the relatively junior marcom resources who must create and produce the stuff.

I’ve created and managed marketing collateral for several years and I can tell you what worked for me in every case.

We worked with the CEO or someone very senior to make marketing collateral part of the KRAs of the content owners and identified managers in each line of business who were then made responsible for the follow up and clearing of content in that line of business. A presale resource is normally a good fit for this. This sets up a meaningful channel for content flow.

For the actual interviews and writing, you need people who can work like journalists -- the ability to interview the content owners and convert that raw information into a tightly written narrative is critical.

Neither of these two steps is easy. The first requires CEO buy-in and championship. The second requires superior interviewing and writing ability.