Well the truth of the matter is that under the aegis of marketing, MBA programmes teach how multi-billion dollar behemoths do business to consumer marketing in order to sell a billion gazillion bottles of $1.00 Coke or similar low-priced "impulse" items. They don't even mention how to sell 6-7-figure complex solutions in the business to business arena.
Every year, these behemoths throw a few hundred million dollars of marketing budget at the marketing wall, then hope and pray that some money sticks and the initiative results in revenue. And it works.
But you may not be able to do the "few hundred million dollars" bit. If you do, then run from this website because you won't like what you read here.
This whole website is for IT companies that have more brains than marketing budget, and instead of merely adding more money to the budget, they want to use more brain to get better results.
This is why so many IT companies are obsessed with chest-beating image-marketing. This is what their Ivey League MBA marketing directors learnt in school, so this is all they know. And quite correctly, they just tip the kind of hat they have, so to say. They apply what they know. The problem is that what they know and use in Behemothland is not suitable for the kind of market I work with: Privately held, intelligently led IT companies selling complex, high-ticket solutions to sophisticated buyers.
But as Abraham Maslow was fond of saying...
"If all you have is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail."
What are the objective of image marketing widely used in Behemothland? If you say, it's to get clients, then you're mistaken.
Marketing in Behemothland is all about...
So, how do they sell their stuff? Well, using armies of salespeople roaming the land, dialling for dollars and knocking on doors.
How many times have you had your dinner interrupted by peddlers?
Nuff said.
Instead of muscle, smaller companies use their brains to market their stuff. And it seems to work better.
Once a reporter, interviewing advertising legend David Ogilvy, noted that while creative people acknowledge Ogilvy's guidelines about copy and direct response principles, they don't follow them in their ads, but waste their time, energy and their clients' money on the creative people's recommendation of flash, glitz and glamour.
Ogilvy had four words for the reporter.
"Stupid bastards, aren't they?"
Using good ol' David's words, many of your competitors are such stupid bastards wasting their marketing time, money and energy on flash, glitz and glamour, while ignoring reality. So, their ignorance can give you a chance. Are you taking it or are you joining them doing it all wrong?
I hope not.
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