Every now and then, I get into discussions with people selling digital marketing products and services, who complain that “they” – media buyers and other clients – just don’t “get” them. I sympathize with that. I feel their pain too. Perhaps there’s another way of looking at things.
Faced with an avalanche of digital marketing pitches, agencies and clients may just be suffering from information overload. The onus for vendors is to dig deeper for relevance. Call it “solution selling”. My take is this: we should pitch products, not platforms; projects, not possibilities.
The more the pitch describes, the less it defines. The more the pitch is about the what can be done, the farther removed it is from being actionable.
A few years ago, we rolled out a digital signage network at one of the malls in Metro Manila. We thought it was an easy sell for spots – online screens serving shopper information and advertising to a high-traffic retail establishment. But it just didn’t bring in the advertisers. Several months after, we pulled the plug on the mall project, and moved the screens to a mass transit setting, reinventing it as a medium for job postings. Then the phone started ringing, with prospective employers seeking placements the screens.
In essence, the offer remained the same – a networks of screens displaying relevant content and advertising. On hindsight though, the two installations were markedly different.
At a time when our local market was just being introduced to digital signage networks, we initially let loose a platform and naively expected clients and agencies to just pick up the ball and run with it. We should have worked with them to more closely identify marketing needs that could be addressed by our platform.
When we repositioned the network for job offerings, it became a product – one that targeted specific segments of advertisers and audiences.
Products and projects are great because they are definite. They have a use, they have limitations, they have a beginning and an end, and they have a cost. Products and projects are starting points to a conversation that has a vendor effectively saying, “this is useful to you because it will accomplish your objective of…”. If the offering is truly relevant, the conversation should naturally graduate to a negotiation, which should then lead to a transaction.
One of my favorite quotes comes from professor Philip Kotler in his book Marketing Management (9th Ed.): “A carpenter isn’t buying a drill; he is buying a hole.”
Kotler underscores the need for relevance. Before even walking into a pitch, a vendor has to already have repositioned his offering into the right tool, to bore the “hole” that the client needs.
Today’s digital marketing environment gives fresh insight to the phrase “death of a salesman.” We all have to be consultants first; salesmen, second.
“A carpenter isn’t buying a drill; he is buying a hole.”
Thursday, April 12, 2012
It’s all about relevancy, baby!
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