Marketing MasterChef: Are you mixing the right ingredients?

Posted by: dgmmarketing

How well do your marketing ingredients work together? Do you understand the impact they have on each other?

I'd consider myself a relatively decent cook. I can pull together a number of dishes and cover entrées, mains and dessert. I quickly realised the key to successful cooking is how your ingredients work, or in some instances, don't work together. The pleasure of getting it right far outweighs the taste of getting it only slightly wrong.

Let me explain - Can you name the two special ingredients in Worcestershire sauce?

As a hint, here are the main ingredients: Malt vinegar, spirit vinegar, sugar, salt, onions, garlic, cloves, shallots, spice, molasses, flavouring... Any ideas?

In cooking, unless you understand the contribution of all your ingredients you won't get the flavour you're looking for; in marketing, unless you understand the impact of all elements of your activity, you won't truly understand the overall benefit.

We tend to see ad hoc mixing and matching, wrong combinations of ingredients thrown together without much thought of their relationship. We want fine dining but we end up with a dog's breakfast. Then we wonder why it doesn't taste so good.

As marketers, we should not be asking who gets the money - Broadcaster A or Network B - but how and why. How do I invest my budget to ensure maximum return and impact from each channel by understanding how each affects the other. Then and only then will we start to realise the overall marketing ROI.

If we look at the marketing channels in a different light, that is by their key attributes, we can see them as Drive, Reinforce and Capture.

For example (but by no means definitive): TV, radio and even online banner ads are all examples of Drive channels that help build brand awareness.

Radio, outdoor, online search and comparison websites can act to Reinforce your marketing messages. Search in particular aids consumers in research which in turn affirms their decision making process. People don’t accidentally stumble across comparison sites, such as chooseit.com.au, they actively seek them out to assist in their purchasing decisions.

Capture channels are those that convert a consumer into a buyer – direct mail, call centres, coupons, in-store, pay-per-click search and most definitely SEO.

So what does all this mean?

Everything has its place, you just need to understand how and why. In isolation, how effective is TV really? Radio alone won’t bring home the bacon. Search might give you an initial boost in ROI but without the Drive channels encouraging people to search you’ll go out of business cost effectively.

There are no short-cuts. Consumers have evolved in the way they interact with media and brands. It is far more complex than ever before. Are you conducting your own research regarding consumer interaction? More importantly have you noticed a shift in how you are acquiring customers over the past two, five or 10 years and are you keeping pace with this evolution?

Where are your customers going online? And what are they doing to decide whether you are right for them – how are you Reinforcing their decisions?

One thing we know for certain, this is a work in progress but one where there is a need to make up lost ground. It makes business sense. If almost a century ago, marketers were questioning whether 50% of their advertising budgets were wasted, what would that figure be today?

Collaboration is key. Remove silo mentalities and ensure the right stakeholders are around the table and aligned in objective, don’t keep key suppliers at arm’s length.
Understand your Drive, Reinforce and Capture channels – and use search as an effective measuring tool for everything about your brand. Put an effective tracking system in place and test, learn and optimise. Oh, and more importantly, don’t forget your anchovies and tamarind (Worcestershire sauce).

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Marketing MasterChef: Are you mixing the right ingredients?

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