Marketing re-focus
Having been a practitioner of aftermarket marketing for more than 30 years, I used to say I've seen it all. But a few years ago I quit saying that because evolving market drivers, such as technology, began making a liar of me. I also came to the realization that the majority of the marketing being done in the aftermarket was not keeping up with these new drivers.
As is often the case, I got into a philosophical discussion with a client the other day about marketing in the 21st century. The discussion started over a cursory review of his company’s marketing programs in the last year. He was verbally checking off which programs were successful and therefore could be repeated or continued in the New Year.
I listened to him run through what seemed like more programs than any one company would need, making comments like, “That was a good one, we’ll run that again.” He must have been halfway through his 2010 marketing planning when I just had to stop him to ask, “Wait, how do you know that was a successful program?”
He replied, “Are you kidding, we gave away over 5,000 iPods. Last year we were only able to give away about half that number.”
That momentarily rendered me speechless. Giving away 5,000 iPods might define success for Steve Jobs, but if you make or distribute auto parts, I don’t think it is much of a metric.
So here we are in the second decade of the new millennium, and most of our industry’s marketing is still rooted in the past, bringing me back to the necessity of zero-based marketing.
Most of you probably are familiar with “zero-based budgeting” — a method of budgeting in which all expenses must be justified for each new period. The practice requires starting from a “zero base” and analyzing an organization for its needs and costs. Budgets are then built by what is needed for the upcoming period, regardless of previous allocations.
Zero-based marketing works the same way. Too often there is excessive focus on “what worked last year,” especially when the truth is, it didn’t. For example, “loader programs” where jobbers or installers must buy an assortment of products to qualify for a premium rarely “stay sold.” That is, the assortment is purchased and the overstock is returned. Yet year after year suppliers persist in engaging in these sorts of promotions.
Zero-based marketing is, as the name implies, the starting point for aftermarket marketing in the evolving marketplace. But it is only a starting point for what I have come to call Next Generation Marketing. As I said earlier, there are evolving market drivers, such as business technology, vehicle technology and exponential proliferation of inventory that are causing us to radically rethink how we market our products. I stand by the statement that the majority of the marketing being done in the aftermarket is not keeping up with these new drivers.
So what then are the tenets of Next Generation Marketing? We will examine those in my coming installments.
