By now you’ve heard about GM’s 60-day satisfaction guarantee.  Drive one of the eligible cars for 60 days.  If you aren’t happy return it and get your money back.

More lipstick?

Probably, but they don’t have much choice until they can bring out more fuel-efficient cars.  You know, the type of cars people actually want to buy?  Which gets to the core of GM’s self-inflicted problem:

GM has too many cars people just don’t want to buy; they need to fix this; and it takes years to develop a new car.

You, however, don’t have this problem.  That is, the problem of years required to develop a new product.

Your Product is Central to Your Marketing

While this seems obvious, it isn’t.  Subaru made money in 2008.  Toyota is selling as many Priuses as it can make.  GM and Chrysler are on the edge of extinction.

The difference, class, anyone, anyone?  Subaru and Toyota have cars people want to buy.

Your Product. . .a Pig?

It’s a pig if the needs of your target market have changed and your product hasn’t.

Wait a second you say, I can’t change my product, my product’s my product.  Everything you do is your product.  How you ship, terms, quantity discounts, service, support, it’s all part of your product and all of it can be changed.  It could be as simple as changing what you say about your product.  Are you highlighting quality when you should be talking about a low annual cost of operation?  And it could be a difficult as actually changing your product.

Please, remember, a slick new ad, a cool new brochure is nothing but lipstick if people just don’t want your pig product.

Smart people invite me into their companies all the time.  They’ve done things I could never do–build a product, patent a process.  And they’re blocked by some aspect of their marketing.  In the process of pushing for a solution they often gravitate down a more complex path,  setting up more layers between where they are and discovering the core of what’s holding them back.

The marketing problems I see as a marketing consultant are simpler than you think they should be.  Simple doesn’t mean easy.  It means not complex.  If the marketing problem you’re facing seems complex, go one level below the complexity, as many times as necessary, until you can state the problem simply.  Chances are good THAT is the problem.  I can honestly say that all the marketing problems I’ve seen can be put into just a few categories.  Trust me, the nuances in each category can be real beefy!  But the problems I’ve seen break down these ways:

People don’t understand why what you sell is better.  They don’t understand early enough in the decision cycle to make a difference.

Your message sounds like everybody else’s message.

You aren’t reaching enough of the right people with your message.

You aren’t reaching enough of the right people with your message often enough.

No congruency.  A little bit of this from two years ago, a face lift over there and nothing really fits together.

You simply aren’t doing enough to break through.  Or you just stopped.

A technology company started up around a patented manufacturing process that was truly cool.  It allowed the manufacture of their product, carriers for processing silicon wafers, to custom specs in low quantities.  Instead of having to order dozens of custom carriers to get a reasonable price, they could sell you five custom-made carriers for the same per piece price you were paying for 48.  At several thousand dollars each, this was an advantage for my client and something they translated into impressive sales growth.  Until their growth slowed.

The problem I found: over time they had muddled their message, making them sound like all their competitors, all of which were far better known and funded than them.

In conversations with customers they kept saying the same thing: they bought because they could get custom-spec carriers in low quantities at standard prices.  Over time, the client had added layer upon layer to their message until the thing that made them unique became one of seven bullet points in their literature, website and sales presentations.  With the other six bullet points also available from better known, better funded competitors.

We simplified their message (custom-spec carriers in low quantities at standard prices) and, as if by magic, sales started growing again.  Simple.

This one almost doesn’t seem fair it was so simple.  A for-profit university for working adults wanted a marketing plan that would drive growth at their out-of-state campuses.  I found the campuses that did the best had either signage on their buildings visible from a major freeway and/or they were led by a business executive, not someone from the academic side.

My recommendations: move to buildings that allow signage and face a major freeway; and hire branch managers, not deans, to run the campuses.  Duh!!  Right?

They did, and had a happy ending.  If I had only bought the stock. . !

My experience after almost three decades solving marketing problems for small business: your problems and the related solutions are simpler than you think.

Simple doesn’t mean easy. It means not complex.  If the marketing problem you’re facing seems complex, go one level below the complexity, as many times as necessary, until you can state the problem simply.  Chances are good THAT is the problem.

At its best, relationship marketing delivers enough value to your audience that they keep paying attention to your message often enough that when the time comes to buy what you sell, you get a shot at the business.

At its worst, relationship marketing simply fails.  People don’t understand what you do, they don’t see value in your message, they stop seeing your message; basically, you don’t exist.

My advice?  You HAVE to practice relationship marketing today.  It’s something you should have been doing the past five years.  It’s the only way you can create enough “permission” in your target audience, assuming your target audience are prospects, not current customers, to generate enough frequency to create results.

Phew.  That’s a mouthful.

Here’s what I mean.  The more often you reach out to prospects the more likely you are to land on their desk or in their inbox at a time when they need what you sell.  The more interesting and valuable your contacts, the less “salesy” they are, the more often you can make contact.  And that is true for any form of marketing: online; offline; in the social media space; you name it.

Where this breaks down is, as Dunford reminds us, when you forget the marketing part of relationship marketing.  But, as I point out, people can also stop listening if you get too salesy.

Where is the happy medium?  In the social media space, you might engage in “the conversation” 10 or 15 times to add value for every time you mention a new product or offer.  Much better in this space: attract them to a blog post or page of useful content on your site; use a sidebar or insert on the page to make a related offer.  Example: the page gives business writing tips; the sidebar advertises your business writing seminar.  And don’t for get to make them an offer!

How about email or direct mail?  Use a four or five to one ratio of value-added content to selling content for email.  With direct mail, you can always include an “About Us” panel or section of the piece that tells what you do and makes an offer for your product or service.

1.  I would beg forgiveness from the American public for ignoring your customers and driving your company into the ground.  For the second time in the past 30 years.

2.  Clean house.  You folks had your chances.

3.  Go totally transparent.  Stream everything.  If we’ll watch people scurrying around trying not to be fired by Donald Trump or people on some stupid island, we’ll watch a company trying to regain its footing.  This is your moment, don’t hide!

4.  Ask us.  We’ll tell you what we want.  And by the way, it’s NOT a Hybrid Escalade or Tahoe.  Are you freaking kidding me?!  And then to tout this as a great example of your commitment to re-invent GM?  Pathetic.  Those people need to lose their jobs before the first factory worker loses theirs.

5.  Create a “moon shot” program to introduce a car–one car–in 18 months.  Fifty MPG hybrid or all electric, for twenty grand.  Act like your survival depends on it.  I’d write GM a $5K deposit check today for that car, sight unseen.  And no, I don’t want a $40K Volt.

So, what’s happening?  The horse-car analogy is more obvious.  As social media grows we’re transitioning from transaction-based marketing to more relationship-based marketing.  A hundred internet years ago The Cluetrain Manifesto got it right: marketing is a conversation.  And the conversation went from one-sided and event-oriented to fluid and always-on. CRM software is great for one-sided, event-oriented marketing.  With fluid and always-on marketing, not so much. 

One-sided and event-oriented marketing:  

You buy a list or input a group of people you met at a trade show and start banging away, generally by mail, with your CRM software keeping score and reminding your salespeople to make those phone calls next month.  Each “touch” was planned (letter, mailer, email, phone call, mailer, letter, etc.).  As generally practiced, most of the time the content reflected the traditional “Hey, here’s why we’re different or better, buy from us.”   At its best, the touches became more value-added (less pitches, more knowledge and advice offered).   

Fluid and always-on marketing:

You become part of a larger conversation about your slice of the world.  This extends far beyond even the most dynamic websites.  Your internet footprint is a large one.  You’re commenting on posts, creating video content, and sharing interesting articles, news and websites via a variety of vehicles, including FriendFeed, DIGG, LinkedIn, Twitter and all the rest.  It necessarily gets woven into the fabric of every day.  CRM software doesn’t have a chance!

What I find interesting is less about CRM and more about the nature of marketing.  Like all changes, it happens slower and faster than you expect.  Slower, in that traditional event-oriented marketing isn’t going away.  But it will erode.  Faster, in that those of us who are jumping into social media now will have a head start.  If you aren’t playing with social media now, you may feel it passed you by six months from now.  Mainly because it will have passed you by.

So, bottom line, jump in.  If you don’t have a Twitter, FriendFeed, LinkedIn or DIGG account, set them up and start watching.  Then start doing.  If you already have accounts, use them.

In fact, a great way to start?  DIGG this post by clicking on the second icon below this sentence.  It’ll take you about 3 minutes to set up the account.  Think how much cooler you’ll be in three minutes from now?!  Go ahead, DIGG it!

Galapagos from Darek Sepiolo on Vimeo.

Thank you Darek Sepiolo and my thanks to Prashant Kaw for finding the video so I could discover it on his interesting marketing blog.