Know your product
Know your customer
It's that simple right...?
So why are so many people making the same mistake over and over again and failing to either know their product or know their customer or if they do they just can't seem to match the two together. Need proof..?
Take a look out there on the web 2.0 horizon and you'll see almost every Tom, Dick and Sally trying to sell their next big thing, the pre launch of some never to be missed, once in a lifetime opportunity or the same online marketing system with the same tired, old script to the same tired bunch of sad and sorry networkers. Come on guys, give me a break and try something different.
If you're marketing a product realise what you have and who wants to buy it, then target that profile of person and make your product precious so they'll come banging down your door to get it. If you're selling lots of different products then maybe they don't all suit the same person, so you might need to look around just a little..
Make your own mind up. .. but before you do I guess I should tell you about an old guy I knew back in the 80's called Frank Ramsbottom (his friends referred to him Rams-Arse in a brotherly kind of way, the way they do in this part of the world).
Frank worked as a printer in a factory in the town and had done so for the last thirty five years, five days a week Monday through to Friday at twelve hours a day and had missed less than a handful of days in all those years. Once, when his daughter was born and the second time when his wife had been taken ill and he had been forced to learn how to cook, clean and iron in the space of three days. Quite an achievement for a man back in those days. (Okay, okay..so maybe we still struggle from time to time).
Frank could teach you anything you wanted to know about printing, he was a tried and tested expert, been there, done that. If you were new, they put you to work with Frank. If you were old, you sent people to work with Frank. It was that simple...
But Frank's passion was a small wooden kiosk huddled beside the main stand at the local soccer ground where he spent his Saturday afternoons. It was no bigger than a garden shed with a currugated tin roof that made a sound like a badly tuned steel drum when the rain fell on it in Winter. Even so, Frank had made it his home since the sixties, painting the walls in the team colours and sticking pictures up of his favourite players over the seasons.
It was unique and Frank had made it that way.
So if you really want to understand product marketing you need to understand what Frank Ramsbottom knew about pies...
In 1984 the club had it's most successful season for almost twenty years. They reached the last eight of the FA Cup, sold a couple of young players into the top flight to raise some much needed cash and when the last game of the campaign arrived they needed a draw to secure promotion to the second division for the first time in the clubs history.
In preparation for the new season in the second division, the club decided to appoint a new marketing manager by the name of Roger Rodriguez if I remember right, who rumour had it had helped Chicago Sting and a couple of other US Indoor League clubs mount a massive media campaign and create a huge and fairly wealthy following of supporters at the height of the indoor league's brief exposure to American sporting life.
Roger arrived at the ground a week or so before the final game of the season and quickly put his stamp on the place; changing the colours of the turnstile gates to match the club strip, installing a new state of the art music system that could be heard right around the stadium for the whole ninety minutes and agreeing a three year contract with a local seafood supplier who agreed to supply the club with pre-packaged prawn sandwiches to replace the traditional offering of meat and potato pies sold by Frank Ramsbottom from the small, wooden kiosk at the side of the main stand throughout the game.
Frank made his point as you would expect a man of his years to do, explaining to Roger that his customers liked pies 'I don't think they'll do prawn sandwiches' Frank stated.
But like a lot of marketing experts, Roger went in his own direction and decided not to listen to the man at the coal face.
When the final game of the season arrived, a crowd of almost 12,000 people descended on the ground, packing themselves in like cattle and singing an array of celebratory chants for the first forty five minutes of the game as the home team took an early lead in the game and looked right on track to secure promotion come the second forty five. When the players and referee left the field for their usual break mid way through the game the crowd descended on Frank's kiosk, queuing ten deep in the cold and shouting, singing and cursing the way soccer supporters tend to do when they're huddled together. Things seemed fine at first, there were a couple of grumbles and a few minor comments and complaints but most of the people handing over the cash took the pre packed prawn sandwiches and said very little.
As the players took to the field for the second half of the game a mighty roar reverberated around the stadium. Things were looking good and the club semmed on track for a lucrative future in the elite second division...
Ten minutes from the end of the game the opposition scored an equalising goal and the crowd went a little quieter. Things began to feel just a little tense.
As the final few minutes ticked away the opposition threw everything they had into the game and the ball seemed stuck in the home teams half of the pitch.
Finally, with only seconds remaining, the opposition scored a winning goal and the referee signalled the end of the game. The club had lost its chance of promotion.
The crowd turned towards the main stand where the club's board of directors, management and newly appointed Marketing Manager Roger Rodriguez were seated and as one began to shout their annoyance, hurling abuse as the players left the pitch with their heads down and the teams coaching staff quickly followed down the narrow tunnel into the main stand. Then suddenly, from nowhere, a pre packed prawn sandwich was thrown across the stand hitting Roger in the face and knocking him back into his narrow wooden seat. More sandwiches followed, some still wrapped in plastic, other's without and some half eaten and wet with saliva.
In minutes the main stand and the area where the directors were seated looked like an East coast shipyard with seafood scattered everywhere you looked and covering anyone that happened to be in the way.
After twenty minutes or so the police were called in to rescue the directors from the main stand and a few minutes later Roger Rodriguez was escorted from the ground and taken to the nearby hospital for treatment to a head injury. He was never seen at the ground again.
When asked for a statement by the police later that evening, Frank Ramsbottom said simply 'But They Like Pies..'
So, if you're using social media to build your business and have a following to work with take a lesson from Frank Ramsbottom. If you're customers like pies don't try to sell them prawn sandwiches.
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