Rational Marketing

Is it really the economy, or is the recovery sluggish because people are not being reached when they want to consider marketing messages?

In a post that appeared on a Harvard Business Review blog, Dick Patton suggested that the four P’s of the traditional marketing mix (product, price, placement and promotion) be replaced. His article suggests a new acrostic: ROIDs

• Responsibility marketing, including social responsibility, green marketing, and sustainability
• Organizational leadership, requiring marketing to touch as much of the value chain as possible
• Insights about customers, based on new analytic techniques that replace yesterday’s market research
• Digital marketing, requiring companies to master an amorphous bundle of fast-changing media

What about the four D’s?

• Dependability, as in marketing that is accountable, conscientious and responsible
• Direction, marketing should be an integral part of determining where the company goes
• Discernment, understanding of customers and the environment
• Digital, companies must harness the power of ever-changing media, but be careful not to give it more influence than it deserves

Direct marketing needs to stay an integral part of this future; even as the environment, the rules, the models and what is really working and yielding results and returns on investment keep changing. Many businesses in many sectors have put more and more resources toward marketing using new technology, but the profits and revenue have not been created.

We need to talk to people when they want to receive information, not when they are in the middle of trying to just get through 50 emails or when they are gathering information for what they are ready to buy right now.