The Ultimate Marketing Lesson
What, exactly, is marketing?
I was a panelist at a writers’ conference marketing seminar when someone tossed that question at me. I gazed at the sea of 300+ faces and my mind went utterly blank.
“Uh…marketing is all the stuff you do to help you sell your product or services,” I stammered.
Not an academy award-winning performance by any standards. And the marketing theorists would shoot me for being so simplistic. But I’m a strong believer that simpler is better, so let’s set aside the theoretical jargon and talk trash.
“All the stuff.” What does that include? Lots of stuff, as it happens. My marketing guru buddy, Jim Rubart, defines marketing three ways:
- Advertising. That’s paid publicity in the form of radio, TV, and print ads, billboards, end caps, postcards, posters, etc.
- Public Relations. PR is the free publicity you receive from, say, submitting a press release to newspapers and online distribution services and getting written up in publications.
- Marketing. Marketing includes advertising, PR, and everything else you do to move your product or services. In other words: All the stuff.
Today, let’s home in on just one marketing technique — one I believe is critical:
Focus on your customer. If you forget everything else, remember to always, always, always focus on your customer.
- What does your customer need? Want?
- What will delight your customer?
- What will surprise him or her?
If you think in terms of what’s going to make your customer happy (and not what you can get out of selling your product), the rest of the stuff tends to fall into place.
An interesting article in Christianity Today points out the importance of focusing on the customer. The article’s title introduces the customer-orientation premise:
“How to Save the Christian Bookstore (Hint: Stop making it so religious).”
What? A non-religious, religious bookstore? Do tell!
Christian bookstores that are thriving are connecting with their customers by becoming “third places”—inviting, comfortable alternatives to home and the workplace.
A bookstore in Bentonville, Arkansas, has 10 TV screens that loop skateboard and snowboard videos with Christian themes, offers free wi-fi and a coffee and smoothie bar. Not only that, the store has a “build your own board” area and sells custom skateboard parts.
Sure, the store sells Bibles, books, and music. But the owner says, “The core is the ministry—changing lives. SKIA is where you can come and be ministered to when the church is closed.”
Focus on your customer.
A California-based Christian bookstore chain caters to the 18- to 30-year-old crowd, selling alternative clothing at its retail stores, as well as wholesale and via the Internet. The stores are located in prime-time teenage hangoutville: malls.
Focus on your customer.
Where’s your marketing focus? Are you obsessed with dreaming up a great brand tagline that’s sure to “wow” your customers? Or are you most concerned with the customers themselves, and their needs?
Focus on your customer, and the other stuff will fall into place. In my next post, we’ll explore more of the “other stuff.”
Source: Crosby, Cindy, “How to Save the Christian Bookstore,” Christianity Today magazine, April 2008.
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