SETTING THE
RIGHT DIRECTION
Where Are You Headed?
The answer to that question is critical in launching any marketing program.
The wrong direction can cost you wasted time, wasted money and wasted
efforts. Besides that, you’ll get nowhere in today’s competitive market.
Setting The Direction.
Trout & Partners is all about setting the right direction for a program.
What should be the right differentiating strategy? How should it be
verbalized? How should it be brought to life? What things have to be
changed? The proper answers to those questions can save you a lot of money
in such things as promotion, advertising and other activities headed off in
the wrong direction. A direction that will produce little success.
Building Perceptions.
Positioning is a body of work that figures out how to best position your
company, product or services in the minds of your customers and prospects.
It is best defined as: How you differentiate yourself in the mind. This is a
process that we have pioneered and written about for many years. It’s also a
process that is not understood by large management consultants. It is what
we do.
Strategy Is All About Differentiation
For what seems like several lifetimes, we’ve been preaching the importance
of being different. And if you don’t find a way to be unique, you had better
have a low price. In Positioning it was about how you differentiate yourself
in the mind of your prospect. In Marketing Warfare it was about how to use a
differentiating idea to defend, attack, flank or become a guerrilla. In The
22 Immutable Laws of Marketing it was how to use a differentiating idea to
build a brand. In The Power of Simplicity it was explaining that strategy
was all about differentiation. Differentiate or Die layed out the many ways
to do it. Big Brands, Big Trouble cataloged the lessons learned by companies
who failed to differentiate themselves. It’s at the heart of everything
we’ve done for almost thirty years.
The Four-Step Process
To find that difference and to set that direction, we have a simple process
that all our partners follow.
1.Competitive Context
Every program starts with competition and what is happening in the
marketplace. In this phase we look at research, study trends and develop a
sense of the market. Who is doing what to whom? Who owns what idea? We
determine what strategy is available to pursue.
2. The Positioning concept.
Here we determine what differentiating idea can be used to separate a
company or product from its competitors. What kind of benefit can be offered
to a customer and prospect? How can this concept best be verbalized? We
verbalize it.
3. Supporting credentials.
You cannot just make a claim about being different. You must be able to
prove that you are unique or different or find a way to support your point
of difference. Without these credentials, you will only have an empty claim
and not a real point of difference. We evaluate your credentials.
4. Communicating Your Difference.
You must build a communications program behind your idea. A useful analogy
is to view your differentiating idea as a nail that you are going to drive
into the mind. The program to do this would be the hammer to drive this nail
into the minds of your customer and prospects. Every aspect of your
communication should contain this differentiating idea. We also develop ways
to drive the idea through the business to build your point of difference. We
develop the outlines of this kind of program so that it is ready for
implementation.
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