This above all: To thine own self be true. How profound a statement. That famous line is of course from Shakespeare's play: Hamlet, wherein Polonius prepares his son Laertes for travel abroad with a speech and some life advice. With liberty taken here, we can apply the same line to a foundational issue of direct marketing: Know your company and be true to what your company excels in. Simple. Profound.
Armed with this simple foundational knowledge, a company is poised to identify true external opportunities that it can fulfill. Ideally, the opportunity is a narrowed niche offering which in turn becomes the fulcrum for a direct marketing campaign.
Therefore, before we mine customer, prospect and market data; before we segment and target; before identifying the unique selling proposition or developing our creative and before determining the fulfillment services or ROI conversion measures, we first must understand just what it is that our company truly excels in. Or rather more exactly, what the customer, prospect and market believes our company excels in.
Until a company understands its strengths and its weaknesses, and until it understands what it truly excels in and how that relates to the market environment, it cannot be assured of developing a direct marketing campaign that will ultimately support the growth of a profitable business.
Direct marketing succeeds in part because of its ability to provide the right offer, to the right audience, at the right time. It's highly relevant information to a highly targeted market. However, if you cannot fulfill your promises or fall short of the expectations you have created, the offers become hollow and no matter how much demand you have generated, in the end, you will fail. Therefore, it is imperative for a growth oriented business to recognize its core strengths and to build their direct marketing campaigns around those strengths.
In this white paper, we will examine the issues of a business environment and its impact on direct marketing efforts. By business environment, we mean the internal resources and external issues a company deals with in operating their business.
Internal Resources - These include the assets a company leverages to develop their products or service for their customer base. These resources might include:
Tangible:
- Physical assets including equipment, manufacturing facilities, patents held, etc.
- Intangible
- Brand Value, Goodwill within the marketplace, intellectual capital, unique relationships, etc.
External Issues - These include the opportunities and/or obstacles a company deals with in developing their products or services for their customer base.
These issues might include:
- Technology Changes - Automated triggered marketing
- Market Profile Trends - Aging population base
- Cultural Trends - An increase in home schooling
- Economic issues - Decrease in interest rates
- Legislative or Political issues - Do Not Call Registry
- Events - The Olympics
We'll look at the mistake that many businesses make by reacting to the external environment first and thus constantly adjusting their efforts or changing their direction. We'll also explore the better strategy of looking inwardly first to identify those things a company does *really well* and the better approach of being proactive by leading with their strengths in the market.
Reactive companies - also known as Adaptive. These are the companies that do not have a clear understanding of themselves and what they do really well. They adapt to changes that happen in their business environment. They adjust after the changes have occurred and play catch up to the rest of the market and constantly modify their business in the process.
Proactive companies - also known as Directive. These are the companies that have a very good understanding of themselves and what they do really well. They often have a more narrow business focus and thus have less threats or obstacles to contend with. They lead with their strength and are able to better leverage the principles of direct marketing.
We'll use a standard evaluation methodology called a SWOT analysis to look at the business environment a company operates in and we'll position the SWOT elements as internal or external environmental issues. However, we'll incorporate a distinction between the SWOT perception a company has about itself and the SWOT reality of that company as identified by its customers and the marketplace as a whole.
