Theory

If you are going to win, whether you are launching a new product, entering a new market or re-positioning your company, you must commit to the best strategy you can devise and implement it until you have achieved a commanding position in your market and the minds of your customers. That’s why our services are organized around creating strategic differentiation in order to establish unique positioning, and the planning and execution of integrated marketing programs in order to drive demand.*

Marketing is one of the two most important activities in your company. Unless you successfully communicate to your customers the value of your particular innovation or service, your company will fail. But marketing is more than simple communication. It’s about designing the most attractive, most acceptable complete product. It’s about creating the best possible strategy to reach, inform, educate, and inspire your target market. It’s about defining succinct messages that differentiate you from the competition and resonate with your target audience. It’s about creating a memorable brand that represents who you are and with whom you are communicating. And it’s about executing a series of leveraged, integrated tactics that return the greatest amount of interest from your target customers. Only when you have done all these things well will you be able to consider the possibility of achieving real success in your chosen market.

Strategic differentiation is the identification and creation of all the elements that will succinctly encapsulate and accurately project your offering and set you apart from the competition.

We use the term “strategic differentiation” to define all those marketing activities that are not part of tactical marketing execution. They include: marketing planning, value identification, positioning, messaging, and branding – in fact, all those tasks that define the direction and your approach to winning in the marketplace. Obviously, working on these strategic marketing tasks takes place before executing the resulting tactics. As a marketing agency, we can assist with many of these strategic differentiation tasks.

Integrated marketing execution is the precise, measured development and implementation of the marketing strategy using integrated marketing tactics to cause the desired effect on the target audience.

Strategic differentiation is important, but execution of precise, integrated marketing tactics allow you to communicate successfully with the target audience. These marketing activities include items such as: product launch programs, lead generation campaigns, seminars and events, internet marketing programs, advertising, and the preparation of packaging, supporting collateral, web sites and on-line materials. Of course, none of these elements stands alone. The greatest impact is achieved when an integrated marketing program contains a variety of tactics. As an experienced marketing agency used to implementing a wide range of marketing tactics, we can identify and execute the exact programs to suit your needs.

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*Our thinking often matches that of Peter F. Drucker and William H. Davidow. Drucker, in The Essential Drucker, reckoned that the two primary functions in a company were marketing and innovation. Davidow (who was responsible for Intel’s 3086 launch strategy many years ago, which more or less set the standard for technology product launches) said, in his book Marketing High Technology: “The fundamental truth of marketing comes down to this: If you are going to win the battle in the marketplace, you had better commit to the best strategy you can devise and implement it successfully. The market has no patience for sentiment. It rewards rational decisions executed with precision and conviction. Companies that succeed follow what might be called the strategic principle of marketing: Marketing must invent complete products and drive them to commanding positions in defensible market segments.”