Every marketing company has the answer. But, solutions to marketing problems aren’t simple 2+2=4 answers.
Solutions to marketing problems can be like learning acting—Sanford Meisner, one of the greatest acting teachers of the 20th century, would sometimes expel students from his class, not because they were bad actors and didn’t have a chance in the field, but because he knew he wasn’t the right teacher for them.
Solutions to marketing problems can be like purchasing a suit—there’s a world of difference between the look of a suit worn right off the rack and one tailored to and individual’s specifications. Great solutions to marketing problems involve a combination of finding an approach that can be sold into your company and at the same time adapting whatever approach is used to the needs of the organization.
Yet, most companies do neither. Almost every company I’ve worked with has binders of studies from different firms that are cookie-cutter in approach, often with clever “custom-tailored” names that describe different demographic groups that they never implement. I often wonder how much time was wasted in naming the groups rather than solving the problems that they were hired to solve, like why customers choose them over their competitors and what they can do to amplify the relationship. And on top of that, these marketing firms think their solution will work for every company.
Finding an approach that works
So, what qualities make a marketing approach successful and, more importantly, useable?
First, establish a foundation you can build a unique house on for your customers instead of already-finished houses where the only options are different floors, windows, and doors. You need an approach, a belief system, to solving marketing problems without having a preconceived notion about what the answer should be or what form it should take.
Second, understand the organization’s world. Is your approach something that the client’s organization can actually use? Sometimes, the nature of an organization and its beliefs, right or wrong, about how an organization should work may preclude your type of solution. Don’t be afraid to tell them no.
Third, given the organization’s approach, what possible forms can your solution take? You need to provide the results in a box the organization is comfortable playing in.
Finally, never be satisfied. I remember a series of science articles that built up a case for the mechanism behind the union of a sperm and an egg. Paper after paper built up “proof” for the mechanism, which assumed two specific chemicals were on one of the compounds. Everything seemed sure, until one group of scientists ran the compound through a mass spectrometer, a device that assists in determining the composition of the compound, and discovered that neither of the chemicals was present.
Most marketers would have been content to stop at the first study that seemed to prove the point. Few would have made it into the second or third study. I doubt any would have made it as far as the scientists did.
Leaving room for doubt
Marketers would do well to model themselves after scientists and listen to one of the greatest mind of the 20th century, the Nobel-prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman:
The scientist has a lot of experience with ignorance and doubt and uncertainty, and this experience is of very great importance, I think. When a scientist doesn’t know the answer to a problem, he is ignorant. When he has a hunch as to what the result is, he is uncertain. And when he is pretty darned sure of what the result is going to be, he is in some doubt. We have found it of paramount importance that in order to progress we must recognize the ignorance and leave room for doubt. Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty—some most unsure, some nearly sure, none absolutely certain.
All four criteria for developing effective marketing solutions could really be reduced to this: never be sure that one answer is the only answer, or even the right one; don’t be afraid to doubt yourself; don’t be afraid to move away from the tried and “true”; and never lose your curiosity.
The ultimate goals of business should never change. But business doesn’t operate in a bubble and the solutions will need to change over time. Finding a solid foundation that works inside your organization will give you a place to start from that, with ingenuity and hard work, will always assist in leading you where you need to go.
Remain curious: don’t settle for the answer of today. Settle for the search of tomorrow’s solution. Let your foundation be your guide, without letting it determine your destination.