RIP - TMA (Traditional Marketing Approach)

The Traditional Marketing Approach (TMA) is dead, at least for today's successful companies and organizations.  Yes, there are companies today that are successful, thriving and even growing.  This is occurring in spite of the so-called recession and/or slow recovery.

What is TMA?  The traditional marketing approach takes place in companies still using an operational play book from the past.  In the old play book, people in each department do their thing; management manages (or attempts to manage) people, sales people sell, operations people produce a product or service and the marketing people get the word out to bring prospects to the business so the sales people can work on them.  To make the sale, the sales people sometimes promise more than the operations people can deliver.  What the operations people deliver often fails to meet the expectations the marketing and sales people made in order to entice the prospect to buy in the first place.  This failure to meet customer expectations can be anything from subtle to total.  Total failure means the customer is unsatisfied and is probably gone for good.  The subtle failures mean the customers sort of got what they wanted but don't particularly feel warm and fuzzy about the experience.  They tend to be the ones that leave either when a recession comes along or when a competitor comes along that does much better at meeting expectations.

Let's say the failure rate, subtle and total, is 40%.  A recession comes along and 40% of the customers and business dries up.  The company may blame the recession but many times will blame the marketing department for not bringing in enough prospects.  The marketing budget is increased and a whiz-bang marketing campaign is planned and implemented.  Even if the marketing campaign is successful, 40% of the resulting new customer experiences result in total or subtle failure.  The whiz-bang marketing campaign has succeeded only in increasing the number of customers that are disgruntled with the company.

That's the traditional marketing approach; traditional business model, really and this approach is the reason so many businesses are struggling in today's recessed economy.  Yet, at the same time, there are companies in rural, depressed Southeast Kansas that are flourishing; some are even exploding with new growth.  In one form or another, they are using a new approach not only in marketing, but also in the way they provide goods and services to their customers.

In our last piece, we spoke about creating one or more reason(s) someone would want to do business with you, followed by a reason to believe and finally a marketing plan to communicate your reasons and reasons to believe to your market.  What we didn't mention was that everyone in the organization needs to be involved in creating the reason(s) someone would want to buy from you.  These reason(s) can be new products or services not available anywhere else or they can be a new way to deliver an extraordinarily positive customer experience.  One way or another, the customer experience has to be extraordinary and everyone in all departments will have to be involved to make it possible.  That's the new approach to marketing in that it is inseparable from all other aspects of the business and all managers within an organization must be on board and engaged in fulfilling the customer promises that will contribute to the reason(s) someone would want to do business with you.

The following story is summarized from Michael Gerber's book "The E Myth Manager", chapter 13 in which he describes why marketing is part of every manager's job.  He speaks of a physician, Dr. Sandy, with a very busy practice.  There are three practitioners, along with all the related support staff and departments.  Each day was filled with appointments, including several booked after 5:00 pm to accommodate those that could not leave work to go to the doctor.  By the end of each day, physicians and staff were exhausted and there were always files and other items piled up everywhere needing to be put away.

Daily, there were subtle failures of patient expectations as each patient came to their appointment only to wait 25 minutes before being escorted to an exam room by a medical aid and told to strip and put on the infamous, drafty paper gown.  One would sit, in the drafty gown, many times for more than 25 minutes until the distracted doctor finally came in and asked "How's it going?".  At this point, the patient had already told their story of "how it was going" twice; once by phone when calling for the appointment and once to the medical aid while being told to strip.  (As a side note, how many medical offices today are being operated in this way?)  Dr. Sandy developed a realization that he didn't want the practice to go on like this not only for the sake of his patients, but also for his sake and that of his staff.

Together, his people developed a new promise to the patients:  "On time, every time, exactly as promised--or we pay for it."  At first no one could imagine how in the world they could make that work, but each person in each department had to become innovative in developing ways they all could work together in order to keep the promise.  Everyone benefited from the new promise in many unexpected ways.  Patients were happy at the newly found respect for their time.  Staff members were less stressed as they developed the systems necessary to keep everything organized as they worked through each day.

The new marketing approach involves everyone in the organization using innovation to renew the competitive advantage by developing new reasons and related customer promises that would make people want to become customers.  When the reasons promises are extraordinary, customers will come even in the midst of recession.  Getting the word out--the only remaining concept from the old marketing approach--becomes much easier because passionate, excited customers will help you.  People love to tell others about extraordinary customer experiences.