The way marketing trends guru Jack Trout sees it, the biggest problem facing customer relationship marketers today is Wall Street and its “growth for growth’s sake” philosophy. The constant pressure companies face to not only sell more products but also hatch new ones has led to such flops as clear cola and yellow ketchup. They are products not born of marketing genius but of Wall Street hunger. And they have marketers feeling caught between a proverbial rock and a hard place. Trout is the best-selling coauthor of The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, as well as Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind and several other influential books. FuelNet caught up with him to get his insights on how marketing has evolved over the years and what companies must do to stare down the suits on Wall Street.

Act now to download your free copy of 10 Secrets for Successful Customer Relationship Marketing without cost or obligation.

FuelNet: How has marketing changed over the years?

Trout: I think the No. 1 change concerns more than marketing; it’s the enormous rise of competition. It’s coming at you from all around the globe. Who needs [Alan] Greenspan to keep inflation down when you’ve got Wal-Mart? In the old days, if you had a great idea, you just waded in. Now you have to be much more sensitive to your competition, and you have to think about the competition as soon as you have a product idea. It’s not about what you want, it’s about what you can do. Hope will not spring eternal here. The impossible is impossible. I got a call from someone in the press recently about Wrigley’s getting into the mint world. There are millions of mints out there. What can you do in the mint business now? I’ll tell you, not much, unless you’ve got one hell of a mint.

FuelNet: How important has online advertising been to marketing, specifically email?

Trout: The digital world has created an ability to do more things — more targeting, more research, more segmenting of media. It gives people more tools to reach customers and prospects. It’s about delivering information: instead of sending people a brochure, you can send them online and sell stuff directly. Email is a higher degree of direct mail marketing. It’s easier, it’s simple and you can send out more of it, but that opens us up to the world of spam, which is a huge problem. With direct mail, you can do more interesting stuff. Sure, you can do downloads with email, but I think in this world of viruses, people don’t like to download stuff, and that becomes a problem.

FuelNet: What is some key advice that you give companies about customer relationship marketing in today’s economic climate?

Trout: The CEOs have got to be involved in the process. You can’t just have them delegating. Marketing is too important to be left just to the marketing department. You need to train a CEO about marketing. They are the keeper of the flame, the brand. The guys in the middle, they have too many personal agendas — how do I get ahead, how do I look good. The only way to stamp out personal agendas is to set the company’s direction. You look at all of the marketing mistakes companies have made in the past decade, and what strikes you is that top management doesn’t have a clue about marketing. Guys are saying do this, do that, and they don’t know if they’re right or wrong.

FuelNet: What are the biggest threats to relationship marketing?

Trout: The real bad guy out there screwing up most marketing is Wall Street. You lose touch with reality if you let Wall Street run your business. There’s this pressure to get bigger. Many bad mistakes are driven from that. That’s why the guys at Enron were cooking the books. It’s the same pressure. The poor marketing guy, he has no control over that. The CEO gets beat up, and it all goes downhill from there. The CEOs don’t stand up to Wall Street. That’s the problem. It’s tragic.

Permalink: http://www.stepbystepmarketing.com/?p=204