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Ring in the New Year with 10 Things to Improve Marketing Performance

Kevin Clancy and Peter Krieg offer prescription to relieve marketing performance anxiety in 2008

January 7, 2008 (Waltham, MA)—The start of a new year is always a good time to reflect on the past and think about the future. But if you’ve been in marketing for any length of time, this first-of-the-year taking stock could quickly put you in a gloomy mood. The tenure of top marketers remains depressingly low; marketers are under the gun to improve marketing performance; and the effectiveness of marketing is disappointing and getting worse.

According to Kevin Clancy and Peter Krieg of Copernicus Marketing Consulting, it really isn’t all that surprising that seasoned marketers may be looking ahead to 2008 full of the same anxiety and dread they had at the start of last year when programs aren’t working, brands are suffering, and CEOs are taking notice of the failures?  Instead of popping an alka-seltzer, the authors of Your Gut Is Still Not Smarter Than Your Head: How Disciplined, Fact-Based Marketing Can Drive Extraordinary Growth and Profits have an alternative prescription to relieve marketing performance anxiety in 2008.

Here are the top ten things Clancy and Krieg say marketers can do in the new year to dramatically help themselves, their brands, and marketing performance.

#10—Find Out Which Non-Traditional Media Should Become A Tradition

#9—Stop Hating the Sales Guys

#8—Don’t Get Hooked On a Feeling
Marketers will miss significant opportunities to breakthrough if they eliminate tangible brand positioning possibilities from consideration out of hand. 

#7—Lose the Fear of Numbers
Use a check-list of basic requirements for unimpeachable data and thoughtful, relevant, business-oriented analysis and embrace the research, data, information, and insights that can enable you to better respond, adapt, sell, and deliver their stuff. 

#6—Treat Implementation as a Priority Not an After-Thought
Poor implementation of a strategy is as much responsible—if not more so—for poor marketing performance as questionable strategy. 

#5—Stop Promoting Your Brands to Death and Start Building Them
In spite of all the millions—billions if you think about it globally—companies spend each year on “branding” efforts, far more brands are being transformed into commodities than commodities into brands

#4—Chant the Mantra, “100% Customer Satisfaction Is Unprofitable”  
Don’t get caught up in the 100% figure to improve marketing performance—spend your money where it matters most that gets you the most back in terms of the bottom-line.

#3—Start Buying Media by Hearts and Minds, Not Numbers
In 2008, marketers need to get serious about tracking ad response by level of engagement to establish exactly what the added investment that will likely be required to secure ad time in a highly engaging program, magazine, radio show, website, billboard, etc., will return to them. 

#2—Walk a Mile In Your Customers’ Shoes
Ask companies whether they are customer-centric and 97% of them will say, “Absolutely yes!  Everything we do revolves around our customer.”  In practice, however, it’s a rare case. Get to know what makes your customers tick, what problems they have, and let insights about them drive your decisions.

#1—Market to Those That Love You...or at Least Think You’re Pretty Swell
If you can’t get to anything else in 2008, make the time to find a profitable target. 

As parting shots, Clancy and Krieg tell marketers to decide that 2008 WILL be the year you turn the prevailing conventional wisdom that you lead a function of secondary importance on its ear. Take the time to focus on your most profitable customers and prospects, address their biggest problems and most stirring motivations and execute this strategy in bold, audacious integrated marketing programs that changes career paths, brand trajectories, and maybe even your entire company.

Click here to view the complete release: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2008/1/prweb628071.htm

For more information, contact:
Ami Bowen
(781) 392-2513 or ami.bowen@copernicusmarketing.com

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