My pick: The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by Al Ries and Jack Trout
Approximate read time: 5 minutes
Approximate read time: 5 minutes
Here Are 13 Immutable Laws of Marketing in Five Minutes
Companies spend a lot of money to be a part of people’s lives. It’s expensive to attract and educate customers, and to make a good impression. Sometimes the effect of our careful planning and spending isn’t what we had hoped for, the impression we make is not the one we wanted, or the return on our investment is poor. Maybe our careful planning wasn’t that careful after all. Sometimes we just do it all wrong.
We connect to our customers through marketing- it’s how we form a relationship, and relationships take work. We have to know our customers before we can hope to sell to them, we have to get inside their heads. We have to be liked. Serial dating and one-night stands will only leave us cold and alone, and out of business.
As marketers, we influence and measure people’s perceptions. To influence them, we have to think like them. Perceptions define our reality, they’re quick to form and rarely change. If there is an objective reality, concerning you, does it matter (The Law of Perception)? This is the reality of marketing. Marketing is a battle of perception, not product (The Law of the Mind). We focus on minds first, because the mind defines the marketplace. Knowing how perceptions are formed is far more valuable than relying on our own instincts.
It’s easy to find failures in marketing, and that says something. Some of the brightest minds in marketing made some of the biggest blunders in the history of business (Remember New Coke?). Even with decades of failures to learn from, the laws of marketing are still being violated. Not only do we have to understand the principles of marketing, we have to align all of our programs with marketing- if not, we wake mistakes. Marketing is, after all, what a company is in business to do.
With that in mind, here are a few reminders about what to do, and what not to do in marketing. These are the laws that work, the principles of marketing that have always served their users well…
The Law of Leadership
We can’t all be the leader. If we’re not the first in a category, it’s harder to convince someone we’re better, even if we are. The leading brand is usually the most important brand in a prospect’s mind, and the leading brand is usually the first. If you’re the first, always try to select a name that can work generically. Look at Kleenex, Q-tip, and Xerox. Make your brand in the category synonymous with the category itself.
The Law of Candor
The leader is the leader, so you need to change it up if you’re not. Who are you? Hit a retreat, meditate on that shit. You do you. When you’re real it shows, and people will pick up on it. Those that dig it will follow you. Those are your customers. Love them. If you have a lot in common with a competitor, burn some incense and be proud of them, but for your sales, know you- know your best attributes, and capitalize on them. There are people that will love you for what you are. If you mess up, if you’re not number one, if there’s something about you that is perceived as weird- whatever, own it. Be the ugly kid in school. Be the idiot. People will appreciate you, because you’re authentic.
The Laws of Category, Focus, Opposite, & Success
So what if you can’t be the first in a category? Find a new one, be first there (The Law of Category). Forget the brand, concentrate on category. Coca-Cola wasn’t in the soft drink business in the early days, it was in the refreshment business- it was first in refreshment (The Law of Focus). Find what you’re new at in the market- you don’t have to be better, you do have to be different (The Law of Opposite). That means getting involved- talking to customers, and investigating. Make that part of your strategy. Don’t allow yourself to disconnect from the people paying for your lights to stay on. Brilliant marketers get in the mind of the prospect. They don’t impose their reality on the situation with some kind of ego trip. If you know the mind of the consumer better than the competition does, think of the advantages you’ve got. Do what it takes to understand the mind of the consumer. Small companies know this, don’t get big and forget it (The Law of Success). If you’re big and doing it, knock it off.
The Law of The Ladder
Whether consumers buy your brand or not, they know where your brand lies relative to others. We must know where we are relative to the competition and adjust our strategies accordingly. Where the competition is strong, find the weakness and hit it hard, damnit. Can you attack yourself with a new idea? Are you actively looking for one with an unpredictable future in mind? Your competition is. They’re fortifying their defenses and probing yours.
The Laws of Unpredictability & Sacrifice
Strategies are long term. Don’t pull the quarterly shit and change up your strategy to look good. If you want to think short-term, think differentiation, then maximize on that. Trends and marketing research tell you the past, they don’t inform you of the future. No one knows what’s coming. A nascent business must be focused and flexible (The Law of Unpredictability). The importance of this somehow gets lost as the company gets bigger. Narrowing focus means making a decision about what we stand for. We become stronger for it, rather than weakening our integrity by dividing our focus on several things at once (The Law of Sacrifice). That’s distraction. Case in point: line extension…
The Law of Line Extension
Companies want SO bad to extend a line. You’re doing so well, good for you- don’t dilute your brand and decrease sales by coming out with new products and using your same name, it’ll confuse the hell out of customers. This is one of the most abused laws, companies just can’t help themselves. The history of this one is written in terms of failures, not successes. Remember where you were when you were young? All that focus? Do that, and don’t stop doing. I’m excellent at making cocktails, but I have no business making perfumes because I know how a cocktail should taste, even if it is a perfume called “Blood and Sand” (which would be a bitchin’ name for a perfume, and yes, it’s a cocktail). Sometimes it takes guts to focus only on what you’re good at.
The Law of Failure
It always takes guts to know when to exit. If you’ve done your job, you know who your customers are and what they want, you know how to speak to them. You also know the data means more for your business than your own intuition. A bad product, no matter how good the marketing, won’t survive. It’s difficult to admit failure and cut your losses, it’s a blow to the ego. Do yourself and the company a favor- recognize failure early, know when you’ve exhausted opportunities to pivot, and learn from it. Both you and the company will come out stronger.
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Why this book is my pick
There are things that work in marketing and things that don’t, requisites for success and fallacies that guarantee failure. Ries and Trout examined the history of the successes and failures of marketing of the past 25 years. They found that there are fundamental laws of marketing, and that often it’s a disregard or ignorance of these laws that leads to mistakes. The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing delineates each of these laws, colored with examples of companies that adhered to them, and those that didn’t.