There are big brands like Disney, Coke, Wal-Mart. Then there are small brands which is the same category you as individual real estate agents fall in.
Large or small, everyone is after the same thing. It’s called marketing harmony. It is the pinnacle that a company reaches when everything just seems to work and work well. Professional athletes call it ‘being in a zone.’ Some companies experience this stage for years, others for a very short time and the reason is simple. At one time or another, the company loses one of the vital elements to the equation of marketing harmony. The variables that make up this equation are product, transparency and loyalty.
The formula seems to work best this way:
Reaching marketing harmony is not possible when any one of these variables is missing. Here’s why:
Without Product
You would be surprised how many brands are out there and don’t have a product to sell. Really. Hugh MacLeod, author the of Gaping Void blog, is one of those. As a professional marketing blogger, he doesn’t have paid advertising on his site nor does he have a book (yet, although there are rumors that he is working on one). While it’s true that he does get paid for the occasional speech and for his business card cartoons, they still don’t represent a true product.
Without Transparency
Wal-Mart. They have a product. In fact they have thousands of them. They also have a loyal following because they are convenient to their consumer base and their prices are kept very low. The one element they lack is transparency. How confident are you that you would get an answer to your question if you emailed Wal-mart? Do you know who to go if you have a suggestion for the company and are you sure you will be met with open arms?
This is why they were ripped on in 2006 for not being eco-friendly, and for their low pay to employees. Although their response has been interesting and I believe time will show it to be effective, it has taken them a long time to act. Large companies often lack the ability to be open to consumer discussion and to create a dialogue. Instead they rely on their public relations professionals to do the talking which tends to be defined as visible walls between corporate and the consumers. The field of public relations has changed from “I will give you some information,” to “what information would you like?” Until the big guys figure this out, transparency will be difficult.
Without Loyalty
Many of the web-based discount electronic providers have the products and have created open areas in which customers can leave feedback, giving them a transparent side but they often lack the loyalty they need to make marketing harmony work.
Recently I went online to purchase a cable for my digital camera. I knew that it wouldn’t be too expensive but found that there were at least 15 companies who were offering the cable to me. I sorted that list by price and bang, found one who was willing to sell it to me for $3.26. I bought it and was surprised to see on the package that it was sent from a store in Japan. Even with shipping they were able to beat out the American stores online.
So how do they lack loyalty? I couldn’t even come close to telling you the name of that company. They never followed up with me. The experience was not memorable and our relationship was based on speed and price alone.
Each one of the above examples shows a ‘disconnect’ in reaching so-called marketing harmony. It doesn’t mean that none of them will reach it or that they haven’t been there previously. In the case of Wal-mart, Sam Walton had that transparency that his company is looking for now. But that was a time when Wal-mart was much smaller in size and they were called Walton’s 5 & 10.
There are methods for obtaining these three elements. I’ll explore that more in my upcoming book, Stand Out, Stick and Stay.
Matthew S. Gosselin is the author of My Blue Goose, Exploiting The Wow Factor In Real Estate Marketing. The book can be purchased on MyBlueGoose.com or Amazon
