The Map for Marketing Noise
I understand how Mike was passionate about his business goal as soon as he resigned from his employment but none did. His family were still unsettled by the audacious decision to quit a job with such security that before they could say much he was busy with his next plan which even became more audacious to comprehend. Mike had studied bio-chemistry for his degree and had accepted employment from a major bio-tech firm in London. He had only worked a year in a job with the promise of career growth when he left it all together with its promises and he was asked what he was up to when he came up with this idea of e-library to serve as an interactive electronic medium for students and professionals to exchange subject matter ideas and prepare their essays with information supplied through exchanged or revealed essay materials. He felt the idea was quite novel and therefore viable for profitability both on the side of users and for his investment returns. His family remained sceptical, and his dad had called an IT professional to seek opinion. The IT professional concluded while this might be a good idea, it was however not as novel as Mike might have thought. He mentioned different applications and online storage systems that could be utilised for same purpose.
Mike met with me over the issue and he had become scared of the risk of competition diminishing the viability of his business innovation. He was now been punched sideways between engaging recruiter to get back to his job as a bio-chemist or try his hands on this business with courage. I decided to guild him on making his own decision without compelling him to do. First of all, I called his attention to tell me his envisaged service users and he emphasised students and professionals with essay contributions. I then asked the percentage of those of his envisaged users were utilising the earlier mentioned systems and we gathered it would be less than 10 percent. Then he went forward to say he wanted a dominating percentage of those users to consume his product.
The issue with Mike could be differentiated to two challenges which were, building the system and the second was its acceptability by envisaged users. Of the first challenge, you could build a system that would suffer the same fate as the earlier system that were not recognised by the mass population of those it could benefit- remember google was not the first search engine but the first search engine failed, and the second challenge was how do you create the awareness for its usage or market consumption? I reckon the answer is in marketing and how do we make marketing campaigns effective for a product/ service. The key points below summarise it.
- Endure to prepare a unique service that your marketing message could centre around. Such message should not be devoid of guaranteed quality and novel service like Mike's system which was to be socially interactive and brainstorming. This makes marketing effectiveness durable.
- Marketing endeavour where possible is best initiated prior but near the launch of product but in a niche market where it's function and benefit are demonstrated and quality validated by their proof of it's use from user once ready. It makes the further process of marketing cost effective and offers credibility.
- Marketing should then diffuse out of niche market but via the channel(s) the users are familiar with save awareness would fail its purpose in marketing.
- Every marketing strategy must convey the message withing 1 minute if it's through video platform and this is rare among such campaigns. Of Print, visual representation must command attention.
- Marketing effect should be measured, and marketing revisited as needed.
The above points tilt Jason Folds Group towards an innovation and improvement goal that conveys best marketing result with an outfit that enlist passionate content marketing and copywrite gurus in the office.
'Yemi Daramola
Managing Consultant.
Jason Folds Group
