Marketing is the Most Difficult of Puzzles - Take this Challenge and Evaluate Your Marketing Skills
Figuring out how to effectively market your products is the ultimate puzzle solver's challenge. Any puzzle can be fun and exciting if you're passionate and engaged. It can also take more time and thought if you come across a particularly difficult clue or problem. Read on and then take a puzzle thinker's challenge to see how well you apply your clue-seeking to your marketing efforts.
When it comes to solving your toughest marketing challenges it is amazing how much they resemble crossword puzzles, Sudoku, Cryptoquotes, Jumbles and even jigsaw puzzles.
If you're like me, you're eager to sink your teeth into that difficult Sunday crossword as soon as the paper arrives. You have high expectations that you will solve the puzzle in record time. The reality is, sometimes you get clues straight off the bat and other times you have to revisit the clues. Such is marketing.
Here are some marketing analogies that relate to puzzles of all kinds:
Crosswords
Marketing communications. Any crossword aficionado will find the solution to a specific clue and then diligently check and re-check their work, making sure that all of the words and letters fit accordingly. When you engage your customers and prospects do you ensure that all the words you are using, whether written or spoken, communicate the complete picture of your products' value as it relates to their needs? Do you take the time to check and verify all of the clues you are receiving from them to create a winning marketing communications strategy? Similarly, communication between every department in your organization is like the across and down of a crossword puzzle. Take the time to run those customer clues by your sales managers and your product managers. You very well may have figured out the across clue but maybe your colleagues can verify and add to the down clues. Now you have saved yourself and your company some valuable time (think competitive timing advantage) in figuring out the next step in marketing success for your products.
Sudoku
The numbers. Marketing managers are frequently stereotyped as lacking acumen with numbers - whether its budgets or lead tracking analysis. From pure personal experience in Executive marketing positions, I can tell you that 8 out of 10 marketing people want more than anything to prove their worth in numbers. Where the process dissolves is how the numbers are presented. If your company is large enough to have a marketing analyst or even a finance guy worth his ounce of salt from a business perspective - rely on them. Too often marketing managers want to present their numbers and analytics in a way that can't readily be absorbed by the management and Executive team. Even if our numbers and ROI add up it is easy to fall into extra scrutiny by shunning the accounting approach to justifying marketing spend. Numbers count most at the end of the day. And, just like in Sudoku, there is only one number combination that works.
Cryptoquotes
When the marketing clues are jumbled. Cryptoquotes are my absolute favorite! In this type of puzzle you have to reconstruct a quote or sentence from letters that are substituted by other letters. Each letter represents a different letter throughout. Try to decode the following 12 word sentence:
- DLTSCMBFK BJ MYC LTM LFN JRBCFRC GO OBFNBFK RAQCJ LFN RTCLMBFK JGAQMBGFJ.
It may look difficult to solve but you just have to know what clues to look for.
Here are a few tips.
- "E" is the most common vowel in the English language. Look for it, especially where you might expect to find it in a word.
- "S" is frequently found at the end of words. Consider what two letter words could possibly stand for - "it, "is," "or," he," "my," etc. Think about potential verb endings like "ing" on longer words. In other words, look for patterns.
I shall leave you puzzling this Cryptoquote because it is healthy for the marketing mind to use every method to figure out specific challenges and opportunities to create successful marketing strategies and plans to support a company's goals.
Jigsaw puzzles
The customer-facing marketing strategy. The jigsaw puzzle is the most apt metaphor for piecing together your company's goals and organizational impact on success. Imagine this scenario. You have worked with your product marketing and sales teams to create a vision for what you are trying to sell. As the marketer, you must graphically depict this picture (i.e. make it real and visceral for your target audience).
- Did you create the jigsaw picture with your ideal customer in mind? Have you taken the time to really understand your customer and prospect needs?
- Have you carefully analyzed whether your customer likes a 500 piece puzzle or a more challenging 5,000 piece puzzle? Think about technology applications relative to your customer's needs - are they typically a novice or a more advanced user?
- Should the jigsaw pieces be smaller or larger? For example, consider whether the customer needs high- touch and customization or is just looking for a relatively easy-to-use solution.
- How much influence on the jigsaw vision came from the down-up or top-down in your organization or was it arrived at in a linear way? Is your jigsaw puzzle a true reflection, synthesized by your marketing, on what your company really has to sell with a corporate vision and in a genuine way?
- Was the jigsaw crafted with the full vision of sales pipeline, revenue and marketing positioning to impact your company's success? In other words, do you know how and where you are going to sell your jigsaw puzzle?
I leave you with the thought that every newspaper prints the solutions to their puzzles, usually the next day. But that's a day late in a competitive marketing environment. Your competitors may have figured them all out before you did.
Here's to your success in solving your marketing puzzles!
PS. If you're still stumped on finding the solution to my Cryptoquote you can contact me and I'll give you a couple of clues or, if you like, the whole answer.
Caroline Birch is Principal at Just Think Consultants, a marketing consulting firm dedicated to working with software companies from start-up to $100mm in revenues to meet their marketing and business goals. With over 20 years of Executive and Senior level software marketing experience that spans b2b and b2c in direct, channel and two-tier distribution models, Caroline is passionate about software marketing.
Just Think Consultants provides expert consulting on marketing strategy and marketing communications plans for software companies. Visit http://www.justthinkconsultants.com to learn more about how Just Think Consultants can create new customer opportunities and revenue for your software business.
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