Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is Strategic Marketing and why should I care?

2. What does 'Outside-In' mean, and why should I care?

3. How can you help us if you don't have any industry experience?

1. What is Strategic Marketing and why should I care?

Good Marketing has two parts: Strategic and Tactical.

Strategic Marketing defines your unique identity as a business. It describes Who you serve, How you serve them, and Why you matter in the marketplace.

Strategic Marketing focuses your business and should guide everything you do: your feature set; your Pricing; your Sales, Distribution and Customer service processes; and the way that you Promote your products and business. The book Marketing As Strategy discusses the role of market strategies in shaping overall corporate strategy.

Tactical Marketing communicates your identity through logos and taglines, web sites, brochures, press releases and other marketing and sales activities.

If Strategic Marketing is the message, then Tactical Marketing is the medium for that message.

You should always start with Strategic Marketing, and use it to guide your Tactical Marketing activities. Unfortunately, inexperienced marketers jump directly to the Tactical Marketing activities. They create web sites and brochures that may look great, but they have weak and inconsistent messages that don't tell customers what they need to hear. The end result is wasted time and money, and often a failed business.

Strategic Marketing will give your business these valuable benefits:

• Products that are easier to sell at a higher price

• Meaningful innovations that will differentiate your business from your competitors

• Marketing activities that are delivered in less time, at lower cost and with higher team morale

The Bottom Line: Smart companies use Strategic Marketing to become stronger and more profitable.

"Tactics without Strategy is the noise before defeat"
– Sun Tzu, from The Art of War

top of page

2. What does 'Outside-In' mean, and why should I care?

• Customers are Company Outsiders; and ‘Outside-In’ is how they think about your company and products.

• Employees are Company Insiders; and ‘Inside-Out’ is how they often think about your company and products.

This fundamental difference can lead to a huge disconnect that prevents potential Customers from buying your products.

Here’s why:

Customers start with their needs and find their way to your products. Customers buy your products, but they’re paying for the benefits that these products deliver. They really don’t care about the minute details of your technology and they don't want to pore over your feature set to understand what your product will do for them. They just want their problems to go away so they can start their next task.

Conversely, Employees often start with product features and technology, because that’s what they think about all day. And that’s what they usually talk about.

If you want Customers to buy your products, take an Outsider-In perspective: understand their problems, speak their language, and talk about benefits, not features and technology.

Because these writers don’t understand
how their products solve customer problems,
they cover by explaining how the product works
and pepper this blather with industry jargon.
- David Meerman Scott

top of page

3. What does “Days and Dollars” mean, and why should I care?

Companies often talk about their products in terms of percentages and other units that are meaningless to Customers. For example, what's the difference between 1.6 Ghz and 1.9 GHz?

Because Customers are too busy to “do the math” and “connect the dots” they never understand or appreciate what your product can do for them.

To capture your Customer’s attention, you should express the benefits your product delivers in terms of Time and Money ('Days and Dollars'). That will get their attention because you're speaking their language.

For example, “increasing productivity by 12%” doesn't really stir the blood, but "eliminating 7 days of work and $47,000 in expenses" will get anyone's attention.

The Bottom Line: Customers want you to tell them how your product will benefit them in real world terms. Using 'Days and Dollars’ is a great place to start.

Get rid of what is inessential
to find the essential.
Truth is simple.
- Martin Nowak, Director, Program for Evolutionary Dynamics - Harvard

top of page