Overview of The End of Marketing As We Know It by Sergio Zyman
Sergio Zyman is probably best known as the guy who was responsible for the biggest flop in the history of marketing - replacing Coke with New Coke. Zyman left The Coca-Cola Company after the New Coke fiasco, returned six years later as Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, and increased the sales of Coke by fifty percent in five years, from ten billion cases per year to fifteen billion cases.
Zyman believes that marketing is about selling things, and not about image. Old school marketing fails because marketers are too full of themselves. The discipline of marketing is a science. Spending on marketing is an investment that has to more than pay for itself. Marketing is about "systematically and thoughtfully coming up with plans and taking actions that get more people to buy more of your product more often, so the company makes more money." Period.
Should software developers read Sergio Zyman's The End of Marketing As We Know It?
Too many developers look at marketing as an afterthought. The mindset is "I have a few hundred dollars, so maybe I'll do some marketing." Instead, developers have to treat marketing as an investment. Focus on results. Marketing budgets can't be arbitrary, or based upon a percentage of sales. You have to focus on how many new sales you can get, and how much it will cost to get them.
I was fascinated by Zyman's approach to seasonality. Unless you have a one hundred percent market share, you should always increase market share in traditionally low periods. "Make seasonality the other guy's problem."
Zyman believes that it's much, much easier to sell additional products to existing users than to convince new prospects to buy your products. If he were marketing software, I'd bet that he'd be sending out a regular newsletter. It would invite readers to upgrade to a more powerful version of the software that they already own, and it would point out the exciting features that can be found in his company's other applications. He'd be offering discounts on other people's software, too.
Test and revise. You don't have to win every round to win the fight.
Zyman doesn't like megabrands. He believes that you have to differentiate and target. Strangely, he believes that it's a good idea to have overlapping products that appeal to the same audience. "Somebody is going to compete with your products and try to steal your customers. If someone's going to do it, why shouldn't it be you?"
While Zyman concedes that the power of the consumer continues to rise, and that consumers know that they have choices, he believes that most consumers "have no idea how to decide." Marketing is all about helping consumers decide to buy your software. Zyman cautions, "Don't let price be the tiebreaker". Instead, educate prospects on why they should buy your software. Now.
Sergio Zyman's marketing book and mISVs
In the author's own words: "Marketing is about spending money on activities that enhance the value of your product, brand, or service and give consumers more reason to buy more of it, more often. It is an investment. It is not an expense that you have the option of cutting. If you want to grow, you have to market."
This book is a must-read for anybody who sells software to consumers. If you're selling business-to-business applications, or if you're selling services, you'll have to do a little translating of Zyman's consumer-oriented strategies.
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