Todayâs companies are innovative and focuses on waste reduction, improved lead time, maximized flexibility and upgraded quality using lean principles. But few are transferring these principles to their marketing practice.Increasing competition demands a continuous focus on minimal costs, maximum customer options, fast delivery and high-quality products and services. Lean marketing is a whole-systems approach that creates a culture of continuously improving processes. It is a system focused on and driven by customers, both internal and external. What if your marketing was based on these principles?
- Deliver what the customer really needs or wants?
- Create value and eliminate waste?
- Automate marketing flow with little interruptions?
- Balanced with a variety of tactics?
- Processes that will allow you to define and measure success on the fly?
Is your marketing team disciplined enough to market this way? How do you find out? I would start with this conversation:
- Is there a better way to market our operation?
- Is there a more efficient way to advertise, promote, and refer our products or services?
- Is there a way to provide our customer only the information they want and when they want it?
- Is our marketing educating our customer?
- Is our customer included in our marketing decisions?
- Are you doing a win/loss analysis?
- Do we have a firm handle on our buyer persona?
- Are we wasting our customerâs time?
Your marketing must meet the customerâs needs at both a specific time and be delivered with the required message. The thousands of mundane and sophisticated things that marketers do to deliver a message are generally of little interest to customers. To view value from the eyes of the customer requires needless messages to be reduced. Having identified your ideal customer is to understand all the activities required to explain the benefits of a specific product and optimize the whole marketing process from the view of the customer.
People become confused with what planning and standards are meant to be. Standards are not control mechanisms. Standards and plans are dynamic. They let you know where the problems are sooner, where to begin a search for solutions, and prevent you from making the same mistake twice.Marketing should be effective, efficient, and innovating, while focusing on understanding the customerâs needs. If we keep these thoughts in mind, we will only produce materials of value to a customer and only give the material to the customer when he needs it versus a constant barrage of information. Now ask yourself, is your marketing giving you a sustainable advantage over your competition?
Josep T. Dager
http://www.articlesbase.com/marketing-tips-articles/lean-marketing-gain-a-sustainable-advantage-over-your-competition-756698.html