The Hindu Business Line : Marketing with capital M

In a world ‘awash with choice,’ can you create customers? Yes, you can; the simple secret is to place customers at the centre of your business and make marketing everyone’s job, says Noel Capon in The Marketing Mavens ( www.landmarkonthenet.com).

We have moved from an era of scarcity of supply to an era of scarcity of demand, announces the intro. “The next innovation, the next killer competitor may come from anywhere, anytime, to take your customers – and thus your business – away from you in the virtual blink of an eye.”

The marketing’s job is to ensure that scarce customers do business with you, because “one of the central facts of business life today is that customers don’t have to do business with you.” Great companies know this fact, and are “populated at every level of the organisation with Marketing Mavens obsessed with the idea that everything a company does, from R&D to customer service, must be focussed on anticipating and meeting customer needs.” Marketing with a capital M must be a philosophy of your entire organisation, insists Capon. “Let’s face it: if you don’t have customers, you don’t have anything.” The call is not new, he says, citing from Peter Drucker’s 1954 classic, The Practice of Management: “There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer. It is the customer who determines what a business is… Marketing is so basic that it cannot be considered a separate function… it is the whole business.”

Failing to recognise the centrality of customers and marketing can trap your business in the past, cautions Capon. Your fixed assets on the balance sheet are assets only if they contribute to your goal of attracting and retaining customers, he says. In today’s fast-moving environment, with customers’ needs changing, a stark reality is that the organisation’s plant and equipment that churn out what customers wanted yesterday may turn out to be ‘strategic liabilities’… acting as “an inertial force that stops or at least slows the firm from responding to customer needs.” The book emphasises ‘execution in marketing’ by listing “five central imperatives that are the sequential building blocks of excellence, high profitability, and increasing shareholder value.”

First, pick markets that matter as did Google (Internet advertising), Netfix (DVD service by mail), and GlaxoSmithKline (entry of Paxil into the Japanese depression market). Making good market choices is not easy, the author reminds. “Opportunities that may look attractive at first glance – new products, acquisitions, product line extensions – turn into quicksand if you don’t understand what you’re getting into.” The second imperative is to select segments to dominate. Identify sources of unserved or underserved customer needs and then leverage distinctive competencies or unique resources, advises Capon. “You must pick your battles well, attacking the most attractive segments within your reach and conceding the others.” Third, design the market to create customer value and secure differential advantage. “Gillette does a great job at creating differential advantage year after year as there seems to be no limit on its ability to innovate in the way people shave.” Next, integrate to serve the customer, rather than remain a silo-ed organisation; this is “the hardest imperative to achieve if it’s not already designed into the firm and living in the culture.” Finally, measure what matters, not just what is possible.

Imperative read!

http://BookPeek.blogspot.com

D. Murali