Focus is Your Friend

In the middle of Q3, we’re thinking ahead to Q4. Marketing is the oracle of future performance. Do your marketing efforts align with your business goals?

Along a trail at Pipestone National Monument in southwest Minnesota, you’ll find The Oracle, a rock formation resembling a face where tribal quarriers of pipestone would leave offerings in exchange for wisdom. This sign you encounter as you approach is a reminder of how narrowing your field of vision enables you to find what you’re seeking – the same can be said for achieving marketing goals.

One of the most universal challenges we talk with business owners about is the need to choose a target – market, audience, geographic region, core message – at the exclusion of others.

Fearing a lost sale, that nagging anxiety not to miss an opportunity, business owners can spread marketing resources and dollars too thinly, trying to reach “everyone.”

The fifth law in The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing is the Law of Focus. The law pertains to owning a word in the mind of your audience. The word you want to own is the one that describes the essence of what you do best, the value you bring to customers that sets you apart from competitors.

The Law of Focus has two components: value proposition AND target audience. You can’t be the best at everything for everyone. Narrowing your focus on the most significant pain point you solve for a specific audience strengthens your message and extends the runway of your marketing budget. Like the sign at Pipestone, focus helps you find your way.

Today is a great day to take a look at where your marketing resources are committed through the rest of this year.

Are the marketing dollars you’re spending directed toward the right audience? How much effort is focused towards new vs. returning customers? Can you follow a bright line connecting your investment to anticipated revenue? What are the key performance indicators you’re tracking to define that line?

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Where a Brand is Defined And The Best Gift You Can Get from a Nats Fan this Year

The Washington Nationals won the World Series last week and all of DC is celebrating. Limited edition Nationals apparel and commemorative gear is likely to find its way under the Christmas trees of many friends and family -- including those who are not now nor have ever been Nationals fans. If you receive a gift like this from someone who is a die hard Nationals fan, you must be someone very special to them. Here's why:

A brand is defined in the minds of its customers. Customers' personal experiences with a brand create thoughts, feelings, emotions, images, memories that they store and access. And, in the overloaded minds of average consumers, all those things distill to an "essence" about a brand that's easy to remember and call forth, like an acronym for their sentiments. Brands can't control or tell customers how they should feel about a brand -- but everything about their product, from look and feel and functionality, to point of purchase and customer service, helps to create that brand essence. Two things are important to take away:

1. Brands must first understand how they are defined in the minds of their best customers. Don't guess -- ask.

2. Everyone in the company has a role to play in cultivating the most ideal brand essence in the minds of customers.

So, when a Nats fan gives you a bright red ball cap with that iconic W emblazoned in all its cursive glory, it's not a baseball cap. It's the wonderful, unbridled joy and excitement that they felt when the last pitch was thrown and the last strike was called and they were laughing and dancing, and singing "Baby Shark" and hugging those around them with overwhelming excitement. The Nats fan wants you to have that feeling, too. What a lovely gift!