RAINMAKERS
RAINMAKERS
Really Differentiate Your Approach
By Dr . Clifford Ferguson
Marketing Guru Philip Kotler defines Differentiation as ‘ the act of designing a set of meaningful differences to distinguish the company ’ s offering from competitors offerings ’. This has driven marketers throughout the construction and consultancy arenas to strive to position themselves in a way that makes them truly different to their competitors .
This has involved considerable amounts of marketing spend and yet we constantly hear Managing and Finance Directors complaining that this expenditure does not seem to make any real difference to their success . This article investigates why this happens and how we can make differentiation more effective .
Considerable amounts of marketing expenditure are focused on the communication of the firm ’ s message ( s ) telling as wide an audience as possible about how their firm is different . Although all forms of marketing are effective some of this expenditure might be better utilised supporting the message ( s ) in a ‘ different ’ manner .
Firstly let ’ s look at why so much of our communication is ineffective - “ information overload ” is a phenomena of modern times . There has been an explosion of media forms and the volume of communication we all receive today is incredible .
Here are some statistics to illustrate the problem : More information has been produced in the last 25 years than in the previous 5000 ; The total of all printed knowledge doubles every four or five years ; One edition of The Daily Telegraph contains more information than the average person was likely to encounter in a lifetime in the seventeenth century ; More than 4000 books are published around the world every day ; According to Scientific American every day the World Wide Web grows by a million electronic pages ; and Research in Sweden suggests
Are the senior people in your organisation demonstrating the necessary client focused behaviours to illustrate that they actually believe that the ‘ client is king ’. that the average consumer receives 3000 commercial messages ( in various forms ) a day .
Our perceptions are selective and our memory is highly selective . Our minds are not able to handle infinite numbers of stimuli . This means in a highly competitive market such as construction our difference is not enough unless it is seen to be real !
Many Clients say that all the messages are similar and more alarming they state , “ more often than not they are untrue or not delivered ”. As the Managing Director of a major retail chain stated recently at a Chief Executives forum – construction people still make claims that they cannot deliver – then they wonder why we are not loyal to them ”.
In all client research we have undertaken or been involved with , the word ‘ trust ’ has become the carrion call . Complaints about construction firms making promises that seem believable but subsequently were not delivered are commonplace . Therefore the construction marketer has to overcome the problem of not being believed when trying to differentiate !
In a crowded market such as construction it is all too easy to make marketing statements that are quickly copied by the competition ( which seems like a waste
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