The Marketing Bureau

By Brian H Meredith
From the NZBusiness"Marketing Maestro" Archive
First published May 2005

In business or planning to be?   Then you know (don’t you?) that the marketing concept is at the centre of the business universe – businesses can survive (somehow) without just about anything except a sound appreciation and implementation of the marketing concept.   Are you in good shape then?

Let’s put you to the test with four of the most fundamental marketing questions a business faces from conception and throughout every day of its existence. Can you answer these questions about your business?

•   What business are you in?

•   What are you selling?

•   Who are you selling it to?

•   Why the heck should they want to buy it anyway?

If you are one of the tiny percentage of businesspeople who can honestly claim to know the answers then well done - you are a grown up in charge of a living thing that is almost certainly thriving and serving all of it stakeholders well.

If you don’t, then you are the equivalent of a pilot of a commercial airliner who hasn’t come to grips with the fundamentals of flight – scary but true.

Here are the questions together with some tips on what they mean and how to answer them


What business are you in?

If you make pies and you answered “I’m in the pie business” then go to the bottom of the class.

Let me explain : Black & Decker are not in the drill business, they are in the hole business. Customers don’t need drills – they need holes. No need for a hole = no need for a drill.

Once you know you are in the holes business you can begin to think in terms of  delivering holes, not drills.

Drills may be the best way to deliver holes today but what about tomorrow?

What about when the laser pen device arrives that creates holes quicker, safer, more cleanly, more accurately and more cheaply than a drill, hits the market. What business is the drill maker in then?

Ponder this one. Its tough but vital.

What are you selling?

You are not selling products or services. You are selling solutions. Products or services are merely the delivery vehicles for a solution – they are inputs. You must be selling outcomes.

If you are a one solution business then the answer to this question is the same as the previous one. However, for most businesses the answer to this question is more complex.

When you get the answer to this questions sorted in your business, that answer will constitute the proposition that you are making to your customer – quickest, cheapest, most effective, best value, best service, strongest back-up/support – fail to develop an answer to this question and you are in the “me too” business and there is no sustainable future in that. If that’s you, get onto this issue quickly (and seek help if you need to) – the problem is often terminal.

Who are you selling it to?

I once had a client in the pizza delivery business. I asked him who his target market were and he answered “Well, pretty much everyone really – everyone eats pizza at some time or another”.

But not everyone eats the same kinds of pizza, or eats pizza with the same frequency or purchases using the same delivery mechanism (take away, delivery, supermarket, home made). There are a range of variables that segment pizza eaters into quite distinct categories and to treat them as one homogenous unit is to sub-optimise the potential of gaining a very detailed knowledge and understanding of who your customer/prospect really is.

Relationship is, rightly, a powerful buzz word in marketing thinking today but you can’t develop and nurture relationships with strangers of whom you know nothing.


Why the heck should they want to buy it anyway?

Another client of mine in the UK was a scientist who had developed a piece of scientific equipment that could do one thing that no other equipment could do. He had taken an established scientific principle and turned it into a precision piece of equipment that was impressive indeed. He had invested over $3 million (of someone else’s money) in this product and it was truly unique.

But when we researched the target market for whom the product had been developed we found that they, too, thought it was a pretty impressive item but, despite that, were quite clear that they had no need for it – they loved it but didn’t need it. It failed spectacularly (in fact, it never came to market)

He should have researched his market before developing the product, not after he had blown the equivalent of 3 million bucks on it. Don’t think in terms of selling what you can make – think in terms of making what you can sell.

It is vital that every business, however large or small, ensures that every single person in the business, from the CEO to the van driver, can readily articulate the answers to these questions and demonstrate a clear understanding of what the answers mean.

How else can they effectively contribute to the delivery of the solutions that you are offering to your target markets – do you have functionaries or mini-marketing directors? I know which I want in my business – I know that this is where performance breakthrough comes from.

If you don’t know the answers to these questions (and don’t revisit them frequently) then you are negligent in charge of a powerful, living thing on which you and, perhaps, many others rely.

And if you have management and/or staff who don’t know then you have a crew helping navigate your business blindly and relying on instructions from a negligent captain.

Worth thinking about?