Brand busters: common pitfalls marketers can easily avoid.

At a winter seed meeting some time ago I learned a couple of important lessons about marketing--lessons no less common and costly today than they were the day I learned them some 20 years ago.

That day, I found myself seated next to a fairly large grain producer named Gene. He and the other farmers in the room were working on an exercise designed to demonstrate the added profit a grower would get by switching to my client's hot new hybrid. But it was me who would learn the most from that day's exercise.

A worksheet lay in front of us. On it, each farmer was asked to fill in the yield of his best hybrid from the previous year. A district manager then got up and showed an impressive set of performance data--university trials, on-farm demos, and third party cooperator run test plots. As expected, the results showed a significant yield advantage for the new hybrid compared to the best of the best.

But at that point, the DM did something unexpected. He asked everyone to pencil in the amount of yield increase they felt would be fair to expect on their farm. "Whatever you think is reasonable is OK," he told us.

Gene finished, put down his pencil and began to speak. He told me how he first cut the yield advantage for the new hybrid by two-thirds. "That sounds like a number I'd believe," he explained. "And when I ran the numbers, that new hybrid beat my best from last year on a profit basis--even after I discounted most of the yield bump," he chuckled.

Gene went on to tell me how he liked the exercise because it let him use his own figures from his own farm. "Very credible," he concluded.

Then it was my turn to speak: "So you'll be planting the new hybrid, right?"

"Oh, I don't think so," he replied calmly, shoving the worksheet aside. "I'm sticking with that good hybrid I planted last year."

Dumbstruck, I blurted out, "But Gene, those are your numbers ... how come you don't believe them?"

"Oh, I don't have any quarrels with the figures. They seem right, far as I can tell." Then came the kicker: "You need to understand something. There's more to this business than just the numbers."

ONE FARMER, TWO LESSONS

Many of you may be shocked by Gene's decision. I know I was--at least at first.

But that day, Gene took pity on a young marketing guy. In the remaining minutes, he told me about his background (Ag Econ major) and went on to explain factors that went into his crop decisions--many of which I had never considered. Things like harvest timing and the landlord's opinion, letting his son try his hand at hybrid selection--and lots of others.

Only later, when I pondered what Gene had told me, did I see the error of my ways. In reflection, it occurred to me that most people--whether in their jobs or their personal lives--rarely make decisions for purely economic reasons. Oh sure, economics nearly always play a part in any spending decision we make. But in most cases, other factors carry a lot more weight.

And that's how I discovered a couple of very important marketing lessons. The first lesson was a flat-out mistake: talking "needs" instead of "wants." The second came in the form of a faulty assumption: believing we must sell products on the basis of economics.

MISTAKES ... IN EVERY FIELD

Over the next 20 years or so, I would witness a variety of other simple marketing mistakes--mistakes I saw damage companies, careers and brands. Furthermore, I recognized these mistakes being made not just in ag marketing, but in every industry I worked in: human medicine, industrial chemicals, financial services, medical devices and others--in big companies and small companies alike.

Through the years, as I encountered foul-ups, I tried to catalog and classify them. After some analysis, I recognized seven particularly damaging errors seemed to be repeated with disturbing frequency.

I decided to call these mistakes "Brand Busters" because of the damage they do to a company's most valuable asset: its brand.

Let me now tell you a little more about the two Brand Busters I just mentioned--with the hope that I can help you avoid them. To learn about other mistakes, I refer you to my new book: "Brand Busters: 7 Common Mistakes Marketers Make--Lessons from the world of technical and scientific products." (Paramount Market Publishing, 2008)

"NEEDS" INSTEAD OF "WANTS" From board rooms to cubicle farms, everybody talks needs. You've heard the comments. From the division director: "We've got to deliver what the market needs." The marketing manager: "This product truly meets the buyer's needs." The head of R&D: "We looked at what the market needs, and this new generation development aims directly at meeting those needs."

But what if they don't want what they need?

We all need to watch our diet and exercise regularly. But is that what we want to do? Folks, people don't often do what they need to do. But they always do what they want to do. Same goes for the way people buy stuff. Surprised? Take a look at the graphic about want versus need in car purchases.

Do people buy what they "need"?

A study of new car purchases shows want or desire was the biggest motivator in purchase decisions. (Center for Media Research, 2005) (See Figure 1.)

Does the market really need anything?

If your product is delivering what the market needs, how come you're not selling more? And just who exactly is judging what the market needs, anyway? "Need" is not only overused, it's dangerous.

Yes, dangerous. Dangerous because it's thrown around haphazardly. Dangerous because it's so wrongheaded and it seems so innocuous. Dangerous because of what it represents: marketers out of touch with how and why their customers buy. Dangerous because it represents the height of arrogance. It conveys: "I know best what you need--according to me." And dangerous because it's so terribly overused as a marketing concept.

Don't believe me? Just for fun, type meet your needs into your search engine and see how many hits you get. Google gave me 111 million. I hope one of them isn't yours.

One of my former clients recently relayed a bit of sage advice he received as a sales trainee while riding with an "old pro." The veteran's advice: "Selling is easy. Figuring out what the customer wants is the hard part!"

Figuring out what the customer wants--that's what the very best brand managers spend much of their time thinking about.

BELIEVING YOU MUST SELL YOUR PRODUCT ON AN ECONOMIC BASIS

Here's an inside secret. Despite protests to the contrary, lots of people in your market don't really care about money. They care about things like how they feel about their job or getting work done in less time. Or discovering the next big thing in their industry or taking a vacation.

The money they save, or the return on investment (ROI), isn't often what trips their trigger. In fact, unless it's a very small business, the money isn't even theirs. It's the company's money. But the pain or problem your product might happen to alleviate is theirs completely. So, the economic hoop they make sellers jump through is just an exercise so they can show the boss they weren't being stupid with the company's money. Granted, for the owner of a small, independent family-run farm, the money is indeed all his or hers. But given consolidation, this market continues to diminish.

But don't take my word for it. Audiences in all sorts of markets for technical and scientific products will admit they don't make decisions on an economic basis. Purdue University's "Commercial Producer Survey" revealed the number-one goal of large-scale producers was not to reduce cost or even to make more money: it was to have more free time. Yet the majority of marketing "arguments" I see focus on economics. Hmmmmmm.

Let's face it; no one's marketing products (and no one's buying products) with the expectation of damaging their ROI. Every marketer knows how to make their ROI look good. Buyers know this. And so, they're uniformly skeptical of ROI claims. Blowing off the marketer's ROI claims has become second nature to them.

Some other factor--ease of use, dependability, process improvement, etc.--will trump ROI and actually lead to a sale. So if you're stopping the marketing message at ROI, you've ground to a halt before you've even gotten started.

Don't be confused. Am I telling you not to have an economic worksheet for customers--or a cost savings calculator feature on your web site? No. Am I telling you to clear the economic hurdle and then get back to the pain? You bet I am. That's the marketing high ground where you can differentiate the brand and win the business. Seriously, how distinctive is your brand when it's reduced to a few numbers on a spreadsheet? Not very.

Believing you must sell your product on an economic basis is a mistake you can easily avoid.

A FINAL THOUGHT

We've only scratched the surface on identifying and rooting out common marketing mistakes. To learn about all seven mistakes, you can order a copy of "Brand Busters," at www.agrimarketing.com.

by Chris Wirthwein, President, 5MetaCom

Chris Wirthwein is CEO of 5MetaCom, an advertising and marketing firm in Carmel IN, that specializes in scientific and technical products. E-mail: cwirthwein@5metacom.com. Fig. 1. Other 33% Desire or want 36% Mechanical problems 8% New Driver 4% Transportation 11% Financing 5% Affordable 3% Note: Table made from pie chart.