Marketing Innovation | When economic uncertainty is the norm, how will you get the word out?
The range of opinions about our economic future is so utterly diverse, only one conclusion is accurate: Uncertainty is the new normal.
Given this reality, what decisions should you make about how to introduce a new product or service into this vague and inexact market landscape? Is this a time to be cautious with your marketing investments? Or is it the time to shout from every possible rooftop?
Let's start by decoupling marketing from market conditions. In other words, let's argue that the marketing you do in support of your new product or service is completely independent of market conditions.
There is a simple, market-agnostic equation I use to describe how important marketing is to the success of a product or service:
Innovation = Invention x Marketing
To be blunt: Anyone who thinks they can innovate without engaging in marketing is literally zeroing out every penny invested in creating the product or service itself. Regardless of market conditions, a product or service will only succeed if you invest time, energy, passion, strategy and (you knew this was coming) money in actually creating a market for the product or service you've created with similar investments.
Now, I'll contradict myself by saying that the answers around marketing support for your new product or service should be completely linked to market conditions — now more than ever. Let's call this the Warren Buffet approach to market uncertainty. When markets get crazy and investors are filled with paralyzing uncertainty, the Oracle of Omaha swoops in for the kill, often making billions of dollars in the process.
Buffet's uncertainty-is-the-friend-of-the- buyer philosophy should be applied directly to your task of launching your new product or service. How? Uncertainty breeds caution, penny pinching and paralysis in most business executives. And while I am not for a moment advocating ignorant acts of impulsive bravado, I am indeed saying that an uncertain economy presents very real opportunities for executives who are willing to bravely and strategically invest in turn-up-the-volume marketing while others retrench and go dark. Once again, it's a pretty simple calculus: When the rest of the world gets quiet, your voice automatically sounds louder, and you get an even better return on your marketing investment than you would in a noisy market of safety and certainty.
Finding The Expertise
As marketing and strategy expert and Forrester Research analyst David Cooperstein says, "The competitive challenge companies face today is driven by new issues that transcend classic distribution, brand and product challenges." Cooperstein's comment takes us right back to our innovation equation. If you're going to be competitive, you are going to have to possess, acquire, or partner to make sure you have the core expertise required to relentlessly drive your marketing efforts.
The question of whether to engage in marketing in an uncertain economy is answered by a resounding "yes." What, then, of how to execute successful marketing? Should this be an internal effort or should you partner with an outside agency?
This is resolved by examining two crucial assets, without which your product or service will end up shortchanged: that is, poorly communicated and underrepresented in the market. These two asset dimensions are skill and time, and if you bring both to the job of marketing, you will indeed create a market and transform your product or service into a genuine business success.
Do your company's core competencies include marketing? Does someone inside your company have the time carved out to create, execute and manage the success for the kind of professional marketing program your product or service deserves and needs? If so (and please answer yourself honestly), then go for it.
If, on the other hand, you think your product or service would be better served in skill, time or both by an outside specialist, then I highly recommend engaging a professional marketing agency.
If you intend to do the job right, your marketing investments will be very similar whether you do the work internally or you outsource to a well-selected agency. Either way, if you and your team do the marketing job right, you'll be a true innovator who creates markets by giving your product or service the marketing it deserves.
Steve Schuster is CEO and founder of Rainier Communications in Westborough. He can be reached at steve@rainierco.com.
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