Category: Advertising

No amount of marketing can sell a product no one wants
—unknown.

In my second year in the university, my Marketing instructor threw this question to the class — ”Assume you are the marketing manager for a particular product. You have done everything— segmentation, targeting, positioning, promotion, in short everything yet, your product is not selling. What do you do?”
The class gave varied and seemingly smart answers that were wrong nonetheless.

So what is the correct answer? Simple — Look at your product. A bad product cannot sell. Without a good product, no marketing, no matter how brilliant, will work. As Bill Bernbach says “The magic is in the product,” not in the marketer’s genius. Or as he put it another way, “marketing doesn’t create a product advantage. It can only convey it … No matter how skillful you are, you can’t invent a product advantage that doesn’t exist.”

Businesses make real money only on repeat sales. While good marketing can make a prospect hopeful enough to try a product, it can’t make that customer delighted enough to buy it again. Only you and your product can do that.
What this means is that it’s your mission to come up with a product/service so inherently superior that, as soon as it’s effectively explained, demonstrated, or sampled, your prospects have no conclusion to draw except “I want it!”
Create “Wow!” products like this, add great customer service, and something magical happens. Your customers become your auxiliary sales force – a large, unpaid, ever-growing army of raving fans who extol your product to others, causing your market and profits to grow far more effectively than any marketing guru can.

This is where real marketing magic is born – in the product itself.

One of my favorite things to read on how Media Houses are evolving is the New York Times: 2020 Report. It is a very vital read for anyone working in the Media today.
The report generated huge interest and comments online. With Joshua Benton, editor of the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard, calling it “one of the most remarkable documents I’ve seen” in his years running the Lab. It is a must-read for every business development and marketing personnel.

The document made me reflect on the digital strategies (or lack of it) of Nigeria media houses and, I am unhappy to say, the prognosis is not good for them. In other words, all Nigeria media houses are on a destructive trajectory. That is if they do not change course.

Darwinism And The Inevitable Death Of Nigeria Traditional Media Houses
Darwinism focuses on the evolution of species as caused by natural selection. It’s the idea that nature favors individuals of species that have certain traits which give them an advantage and helps them live better and longer in their environment/habitat. The other, less fortunate individuals have a harder time competing for resources and are therefore more likely to die off. In short, it’s the “survival of the fittest”.

Darwinism makes us understand that it’s not necessarily the strongest or the first to arrive who are most likely to survive; it’s the most adaptable who win in the end.

The same is true in business. In an era of Digital Darwinism, no business is too big to fail or too small to succeed. And in the media business, the existential threat is “adaptability to the digital age”

Below is an excerpt from an article I wrote on a similar theme four years ago Titled The Solution To The Dwindling Newspaper Circulation In Nigeria:
“……Such powerhouse newspapers as The New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune are also facing the same challenge of plummeting circulation figures. The difference is just that they are confronting the issue holistically rather than self-deceive themselves that all is well.”

What brought this social state? Mainly, the internet. Yes, the internet. Most of the newly empowered middle class have access to the internet and seriously, why should I buy a newspaper for information when the same is available on my blackberry free of charge? Moreover, the internet gives me access to different sources for the same information—all for free.

When I finished NYSC in 2005, my main source of information on job vacancies was Tuesday Guardian newspaper. And it wasn’t only me. All my freshly minted B.sc. friends consulted Tuesday guardian for employment opportunities. Fast forward five years to 2010 and what do you see? Nairaland, Naijahotjobs, NBF social website, Careers Nigeria, kerewa.com etc. These are free job listing websites where a job seeker will not only find vacancies but also tips on writing a CV, interview tips etc

If anything, the situation is graver (than it was four years ago) for Nigeria media houses:

• More of the traditional media audience has moved (and moving) online. With the proliferation of smartphones and the relatively wider reach and affordability of broadband internet access, more people (especially the young) are shifting their media consumption online
• The emergence of new and agile web-only media outfits. Three of the top five local media sites in Nigeria (Nairaland, Linda Ikeji, and Naij.com) are new digital-only outfits according to Alexa
• An exploding population of digital native

How Nigeria Media Outlets Are Currently Adapting
It is obvious that Nigeria traditional media houses are aware of some of these challenges and are taking actions to adapt to the reality:
1. They have built websites and are publishing digital versions of their content online.
2. Some more sophisticated ones have even gone ahead to build apps and toolbars which they actively promote

Unfortunately, they are tackling the issue in a wrong way and if they continue this way, their extinction will be inevitable. This is because the approach they have taken is at best cosmetic.

Strategic Approach To Digitalizing Of Nigeria Traditional Media
The first and most vital task before Nigeria traditional media houses is to evolve a digital strategy. That is the truly hard work. It starts by asking the bigger questions about your present and your future: What should you become; How must you change to achieve this goal of transformation.

For a newspaper like The Guardian, for example, The big question will be: How can The Guardian become more digital while still maintaining a print presence and, what has to change? That means aggressively questioning many of your print-based traditions and their demands on your time, and determining which can be abandoned to free up resources for digital work.

Without a strategic framework, digital success will be impossible. Actualizing this will be very difficult because it is almost certain that the only way to guarantee a long-term success is to have a paradigm shift in strategy to “digital first”. And this will have a whole lot of implications from hiring to resource allocation.

Some Salient Tips
After designing a well thought out strategy, below are some of the tactics Nigeria traditional media houses can employ to get to their publishing nirvana. Borrowing from the leaked Times Document, I will divide my recommendations into two broad parts: Audience Development and Newsroom Strengthening. The first is a core part of the newsroom team (journalists), while the other is a more broad effort that includes imperatives for business units and the newsroom alike.

Audience Development
1. Use big data to personalize – Data is king. Know as much about your audience as possible. This will aid personalization. For a start, you can start asking readers whether they would be willing to be contacted by reporters or if they are willing to share some basic information about their interest, alma mater and industry so you can send them content about those topics

On a more advanced level, you could create a section of the homepage that uses reader patterns to customize a list of content that readers missed but would most likely want to see. This means that though all readers would see the same top news stories, the other articles you show them would be customized to reflect what they haven’t seen (and would likely want to see based on the footprint they left earlier)

2. Content discovery and distribution are key– This is one area all Nigeria media houses fail woefully. In the digital age, it is not enough to have quality content, your content must be discoverable by its intended audience. This is a broad area that I cannot possibly cover in this post. But my suggestion will be that you must master two key areas (1) content promotion via social media and (2) SEO. Technical SEO hack like structured data/schema, sitemap, canonicalization etc can have a profound impact on your website discoverability

3. Motivate content engagement: There are so many ways to do this. All that is needed is creativity. For example, Linda Ikeji executed one of the most effective audience development campaigns I have seen out of Nigeria last December when she gave out one hundred thousand Naira each to ten of the most consistent commenter. The result on her blog is phenomenal

Newsroom Strengthening
1. You need new talents: You needs a broader array of digital talent, not just reporters and editors, but “technologists, user experience designers, product managers, data analysts, digital content strategists, and content creators–all working under people who have coherent goals

3. Leverage your biggest asset – content: In the digital space, content is king. The NYT document puts this best when it states “You have a huge advantage. You have a tremendous amount of high-quality content that you have a perpetual license to.”
While the focus of the newsroom may be on current events and stories, sometimes it’s important to provide context to what’s happening. And evergreen content can help do just that. So, resurfacing archival content will be great

3. Experiment more with the way you present content: You just must be willing to experiment more in terms of how you present your content: “We must push back against our perfectionist impulses. Though our journalism always needs to be polished, our other efforts can have some rough edges as we look for new ways to reach our readers”

July is here again. It is a month to review the performance of the first half of the year and, for drafting of plans to make the second half better than the previous one. You are probably considering tinkering with your marketing activities ; maybe re-allocate budget to some marketing channels that appeared to have performed better in the first half of the year than others. Or, experiment with some new marketing.

Okay, good. But you know what? you need more than that to succeed.

Well, we all know that the success of any medical treatment is dependent on the accurate diagnosis of the ailment and, as can be attested to by any good doctor, accurate diagnosis is largely dependent on the physician’s ability to ask the patient relevant and insightful questions. The patient’s answers and the findings from the follow up tests always form the basis for the doctor’s diagnosis.

Same principle applies to business. Your market success is entirely dependent on your ability to ask and get accurate answers to one important business questions. If answered with accuracy and in-depth understanding, this question can make a profound difference. So profound, it will change the fortunes of your organization.

The question is: Who are my customers today?

The implication of answering this question rightly or wrongly goes beyond what happens to your business this year alone, it determines the long-term health and relevance of your business. Answered correctly, it will accelerate your company’s ability to adapt and be relevant in the contemporary digital age.

Who Are My Customers Today?

This appears to be a simple question but, it is the most difficult question faced by marketing managers. The emphasis is on today.

To put this question in proper perspectives, let us dwell briefly about the whole essence of marketing;

The fundamental purpose of marketing is to enable organizations to plan and execute pricing, promotion, and distribution of products, services, and, ideas in order to create exchanges that satisfy both the organization and its customers.

The process of creating this exchange is what constitute the marketing function. Marketing managers attempt to stimulate the marketing process by following various decision criteria.

More specifically, they focus on getting the right goods and service:

(1) to the right people

(2) at the right place and time

(3) with the right price

(4) through the use of the right blend of of promotional techniques.

If you take a deeper look at the four mentioned marketing functions (also known as the four Ps), you will realized that they all depend on an accurate definition of who a business’s customers are.

The first one, to the right people is obvious enough. The other three, distribution channels, pricing and, promotional channels must all derive from a clear understanding of the customer.

You have probably made attempts to answer this question. You conduct periodic survey, product-preference test, focus group interview, or an advertising evaluation in a bid to gain insight into customer’s attitudes and buying behaviour. All of which might not be enough today.

What needs to change?

Tony Zambito puts it best when he said:

“The dilemma facing many CMOs is getting to know the customer and buyer of today and into the future. Knowing the customer and buyer of yesterday will no longer cut it. What needs to change is CMOs have to orient towards knowing the customer of today. As well, become adept at predicting who the customer of the future will be. Without this perspective, marketing strategy will be rooted in the past while customers and buyers continue to evolve. Significantly hampering an organization’s ability to grow.”

In other words, businesses of today and the future must adopt a new means of getting to know customers and buyers. This is the basis for designing an appropriate business/marketing strategy.

How to know your customers

So, how do you identify your customers? Incorporate these three steps into your planning:

1. Focus on the buyer of today and tomorrow:

Move beyond surveying and win/loss analysis and incorporate BUYER INSIGHT RESEARCH. This type of research is focused on today and building forecast into the future. It involves a commitment to objective and objective interviewing of current and prospective buyers.

2. Focus On Buying Scenarios, Not Solely On Buying Process

In addition to understanding the buying process of customers and buyers which helps you understand how they buy, you also need deeper insight and foresight to understand the why. This essentially means knowing the BUYERS STORIES. Knowing your BUYER STORIES helps you to move beyond the how and into the why.

3. Understand Buyers persona

Buyer personas are archetypal representations of your ideal customers that are developed based on real and fictional criteria. They encompass measurable data from demographics research and a fair amount of inferential assumption about needs, interests, motivations and personalities attributes.

There are two main functions of the persona: to provide context around the users represented by the persona and to create a sense of empathy for those users.

In the ideal world, we would be capable of understanding and being empathetic towards each and every potential customer. Since that’s impossible at the scale we work in, the idea is to group target customers together and give each group the qualities of an individual human.

So each persona you create will effectively “speak for” all users represented by it. Truly understanding your ideal customers– needs, values, challenges, etc allows you to create, market, and communicate based on how they prefer. This is one of the key elements to attracting the right customers and keeping them happy for years.

Following the recommended three steps above is sure to help you come up with the right answer to the most important business question of the day