The Greatest Conundrum for Marketing People is "Marketing"...

For some executives, it takes a while to realise that what many lay-people call marketing, is their short-hand description of “Marketing Communications”.

The conundrum of Marketing is a large proportion of business people, globally, have been so pressured, hammered and brainwashed by service providers in “marketing-communications” who do not understand the true meaning of “Marketing”.

Some Business People Don’t Know How much they Don’t Know...

It is frightening how many high-performing key executives, and long-term senior executives of significant organisations and major corporations, still think “Marketing” is advertising and selling, hype and deception, or worse, perceive “Marketing” to be “smoke and mirrors”, “fluff and PR”, and/or “all BS”.

The Greatest Conundrum for us all is ensuring that the MEANING of the word, "Marketing" isn't lost. As marketing professionals, we have to maintain the understanding of the length and breadth of the science. We should all support any efforts to do so!

Save QANTAS

Ailing Qantas needs new major shareholders who can recognize quality management strategy that will create brand equity, not destroy it.... that will build sustainable competitive advantage out of its unique resources, not undermine them.... that will build REASON, engagement and alignment of stakeholders, not conflict and destructive sentiment. 

Wise and visionary management need to appoint a completely different leadership UNLESS they are purposely pursing the demise of the flying kangaroo...

In search of the perfect Marketing Plan - How to make a Marketing Plan truly POWERFUL? G.R.A.I.S.E - http://instantblogsubscribers.com/vip/LeighCowan

How to make a Marketing Plan truly POWERFUL? G.R.A.I.S.E

Many, many marketing plans are dust collectors - they get written, put on a shelf and forgotten - basically because they do NOT help management get "the job" done.

But a GOOD marketing plan... is actually an everyday tool that makes marketing management and achieving marketing objectives a reality!

So what turns a rubbish plan into a brilliant, key focus of business activity? G.R.A.I.S.E!

Grip: It is soaked in reality (not some fluffy piece of verbose jargon) and is achievable, executable and implementable.

Relevance: It means something to every participant. It helps them understand their function and do it to the best of their ability

Action Steps: Every strategy (how are we going to achieve the objective) is broken down to an Action Plan, with indivisible, individual tactics delegated to a specific person, whose job it is to see the tactic is done to a quantifiable measure including a time-constraint.

Interdependence: Every participating department can identify how each relies on each other for the organisation to achieve the objectives.

Simplicity: It can be read and understood by every person it involves

Exposure: Don’t follow the plan and everyone in the organisation will know who has stuffed up!

So, how do you write a GREAT marketing Pan?

For 100 years academic schools of business have been chasing this allusive goal. Sadly, as academics become more academic, and less commercial, their distance for reality increases. And few are privy to the inner sanctums of the world’s most successful, and discretely quiet about sharing their methods, marketing planners.

Fortunately, launch Engineering, a consultancy that only recruits senior consultants with 25+ years of commercial experience in marketing management that MUST include an outstanding individual success AND advanced marketing qualifications, has provided the answer.

It’s a marketing plan workbook, in Excel format, that works like a guide to writing relevant and appropriate marketing plans.

Better than a marketing planning template, and worth thousands due to its real, commercial value, it is available for a hands for of dollars at Marketing Planning Workbook

ANY marketing professional will look at it and go so what… UNTIL they use it… then they’ll go this is POWERFUL stuff!

One senior marketing executive with a leading Asian Telco, said, “This is so good, I’m introducing is as compulsory in our corporation as soon as I get back to the office!”

This Marketing Planning Template Workbook has been used by government, large national and international companies, and down to small FMCG manufacturers, banks, and even SME’s. Results have spanned 20% growth to over 100% in as little as 18 months.

So if you’re a marketing professional, of any description, you’d be wise to grab this very useful marketing planning tool for the next marketing plan you write. And see just how good it really is in helping write a great marketing plan.

Or if you just need the Marketing Communications Plan, Sales, Plan, or a simple Marketing Planning Template in Word format for SME, try... http://www.launchengineering.com/marketing-plan-templates.htm

The Banks Must Be Crazy

Do you believe the recent ads for St.George? Do you believe those for NAB?

Q1: Do you believe St.George is a much better bank than the others?

Q2: Do you believe NAB has really reduced is prices below the other banks

Are either bank convincing you?

I've closed St.George accounts three times in the past 35 years - one time was when I went in with a $70,000 cheque I was ready to deposit... until I faced off with a branch manager who represented the typical arrogance of Australian Banks.

So it REALLY irks me to see these latest St.George Bank ads saying how they are 'different'.

They're owned by Westpac and their high net worth clients - the customers they actually MAKE money from, all know it.

And NAB, for years I was burdened with extraordinary fees and penalties, sometimes for anomalies I had previously come to expect for free from the Commonwealth (prior to privatisation, of course).

As a major shareholder of these banks, not that I am one, I'd be removing strategic authority from my internal marketing people - they just don't 'get it'.

Because you research says everyone thinks banks are bad and charge too much fees, and are just not nice, doesn’t mean you can change their minds by buying a chunk of advertising with outright fabrication of the contrary.

Good Marketing Strategy

A good marketing strategy would be to assess where you are deriving your profits who are the consumers that are effected by negative brand loyalty and what would they believe and accept - certainly not that B+NAB has just decided to reduce its profits to be good guys or St.George has nothing bad that its customers can recall - PLEASE!!!

A good marketing strategy would be to identify all the market segments with the market, specifically the attractive ones, and build products that truly attract custom.

A good marketing strategy would be to take their over abundant advertising budget and put is into a philanthropic effort (too many to choose from to suggest for this blog piec) and enjoy the publicity for doing something that it truly and honestly good for someone other than the bank.

Bad, weak, mindless, mundane, unintelligent marketing is spending too much on advertising when good marketing leadership is what is required.

The Banks will, at some stage, have to remember that there are 8 P's of marketing, not just Promotions and Politics.

See: http://bit.ly/MktgDef