Your Marketing Sucks

Citation

Dupree, J.V. (2005), "Your Marketing Sucks", Journal of Consumer Marketing, Vol. 22 No. 1, pp. 46-47. https://doi.org/10.1108/07363760510576554

Most marketing managers and small business professionals are concerned about the effectiveness of their marketing efforts. Many of us make the mistake of equating effort – budget – with effectiveness. Mark Stevens offers an extreme marketing philosophy as the answer to this dilemma. Your Marketing Sucks, is basically a critique of “lazy marketing” – doing traditional, uncoordinated actions, and using the amount spent as the primary effectiveness metric. In its place, Stevens argues that marketing managers and business professionals responsible for sales and marketing need to adopt an extreme marketing perspective – to be ruthless in questioning assumptions, evaluating options, and then terminating any marketing effort that cannot be specifically and concretely measured to show results in creating wealth and value to the company.

Written to be a quick read, Stevens’ book tells the reader where he is going at the beginning of the book and in the introduction of each chapter. Providing very solid principles and practices of integrated marketing, it is written like a sales pitch rather than a book using extreme language and examples to make a point – “You're wasting marketing dollars, stop it!” This small book is formatted into nine pithy chapters plus an example of an extreme marketing plan in his conclusion. Each chapter opens with the specific problem Stevens will address, a suggested solution, and the resulting benefit. He also includes a chapter governing “rules” of extreme marketing. Your Marketing Sucks can be read through in a single seating in about two hours.

The underlying premise that “nothing happens until a sale is made,” (p. 50) so permeates the book that it may lead the reader to think he is reading a book about sales. However, the case Stevens is pressing is that marketing must sell or it is of no value. Winning awards for clever advertisements, building a prestigious company or product image, and having a larger and larger “mindshare” of the market are all worthless unless they sell more products. His “ruthless” attitude toward marketing that is ineffective (unmeasured results) is the basis of his claim to extreme marketing. If the marketing does not sell, dump it. If the salespeople do not close, release them. If advertising does not result in more product going out the door, save your money, and so on.

Stevens basically argues that effective marketing needs a clear specific value proposition or a unique selling proposition which integrates the entire marketing process He critiques “lazy” or traditional marketing, which he sees as unfocused, individual activities whose effectiveness is measure in terms of dollars spent rather than in terms of sales produced. His point is well taken but seems a little late in the game. Owing to the economic downturn over the last few years and resulting tight marketing budgets, companies have been paying closer attention to outcomes, using metrics to evaluate marketing, etc. His examples of the dot.coms that spent 50 percent or more of their advertising budgets on Super Bowl spots seem dated. Is there any marketing professional that does not agree that was stupid, an example of too much money chasing ill‐defined markets? Stevens’ argument for value proposition‐based marketing and against lazy marketing is absolutely correct, but he basically reinforces the cacophony of other books on effective marketing rather than bringing anything new to the table. The book reads a bit like a marketing piece for his firm. Perhaps that is why it seems that the book might have originally been titled Extreme Marketing or Lazy Marketing due to the continual use of these terms but was retitled Your Marketing Sucks to make the book stand out, as a strategy to emphasize Stevens’ unique selling proposition (USP), “You're wasting your marketing dollars, stop it!” [Truth in advertising moment – personally I had to get by my initial negative reaction to the title to write this review. I am just very tired of my profession continually undermining standards of civility and propriety in the effort to get their message through the thunderous din of noise in an over‐communicated and marketed society. We have abandoned creativity and ingenuity for confrontation and crudity because it is easy.]

Along with his criticism of lazy or traditional marketing he offers positive specifics for correcting the problem. In his opening chapter Stevens shows himself to be a bottom‐line marketer with his opening rule, “… Marketing is about growing your business  … ” (p. 19), and he proceeds to offer seven reasons most marketing is ineffective. As he confronts the reader with multiple examples of large companies engaging in lazy marketing, Stevens closes with his Extreme Marketing guidelines.

The second chapter brings his two big guns to bear, “Nothing happens until a sale is made”, (p. 49) and build your marketing around a clear product value proposition. The reader is walked through a very clear specific example of how two service firms, accountants and attorneys, can implement these two critical ideas. To emphasize the need to understand the centrality of making a sale, Stevens also walks through problems the insurance industry has in identifying people who are sales people, i.e. closers who get the business.

Chapters 3 and 4 challenge the reader to take risks, to begin fresh to question all assumptions about their marketing efforts, and then to take the risk to develop memorable results‐producing marketing. His insight into how infomercials are a model of integrated marketing offers the reader a simple, clear, and comprehensible example. The “blank sheet of paper” approach of Chapter 3 leads into the ability to differentiate yourself in Chapter 4 because you are no longer are following the crowd. Stevens again hammers home the importance of the unique value proposition as the basis of your marketing.

The key to effective extreme marketing is integration of your efforts the point Chapters 5 and 6 bring home. If the reader ripped Chapters 2, 5 and 6 out and carried them around, he/she would have the meat of Stevens’ perspective. The unique value proposition drives an integrated approach that creates synergy when each marketing action builds and coordinates with every other one. Every marketing dollar spent must return more than its own value while creating leverage for other marketing activities. The sum is more than its parts when they are coordinated and integrated. To build an integrated effort the marketing professional needs to avoid making one of the key four mistakes, such as creating a budget first rather than the goals first and delegating marketing efforts rather than being directly involved. In Chapter 6, using a fictitious example, Stevens then demonstrates the principles of an integrated marketing effort.

As one of the shortest chapters the reader might skim past Chapter 7 and miss an important support for extreme marketing, the practical means for implementing effective marketing, evaluation – before and during its implementation. In his critique of traditional methods of pre‐testing marketing one can forgive Stevens’ clearly‐stated reservations about focus groups; they apparently have not been kind to him. While this straightforward critique of evaluation techniques and suggested alternatives brings nothing new to the reader, it does firmly demonstrate the need to test first, then execute, while not forgetting to monitor and continually refine. Like a mission to Mars, the idea is to launch your marketing effort with a plan for and the resources to make course corrections and refinements or you will miss your landing site (customer).

Throughout the book Stevens stresses the importance of integration of marketing efforts, but in Chapter 8 he focuses on selling as he wisely reminds firms to use cross‐selling to foster their initial improvements in sales. It may seem obvious but Stevens argues that a surprising number of firms do not consider it for several reasons. I have to disagree on ethical terms with his suggestion to “identify (and hire away) [competitors’] salespeople who have relationships with customers you covet.” Having been at a Fortune 50 firm a few years ago who was raided by a competitor, I know that no one in the business community thought particularly well of the raider, and legal action was threatened, ending the practice. Does it happen? You bet. Should it happen? That is like asking should it rain on your weekend picnic; stuff happens. But should we suggest it as a viable marketing strategy? No! To be fair, Stevens does say extreme marketing means using every legal tactic to achieve your goals, and it is legal. But the legality measure of your business behavior is the lowest standard while the higher standard of conduct is the ethical standard. Second, would you trust a sales professional you were able to “buy” away from your competitor? What will he/she do to you when competitors return the favor? Finally, the possibility that the sales professional might bring proprietary account information with them is certainly significant, something that was at the crux of a major legal [and resulting PR disaster] a couple years ago between two of the world's big carmakers. While the legal issue was not settled the PR consequences were quite negative. Do you really want to risk all this?

As an effective communicator, Stevens opened telling us what he was going to tell us and he closes in Chapter 9 reviewing what he told us. His emphasis on the centrality of the value proposition, the integration of the marketing effort to maximize synergy and leverage, on thinking fresh by challenging assumptions, and on using metrics to ensure marketing results are valuable insights. Your Marketing Sucks, is an easy reading, succinct review of key principles for effective marketing.