Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Your Four Food Groups

Yesterday, our latest 12 Most post was published.  Loads of people retweeted and shared (thank you all) and the awesome Chris Westfall left some comments as well.  It was his comments and my subsequent thoughts which I'd like to share with you today.  I know you're busy but, if you've a moment, I would ask that you read the original post and the comments if you've not already done so.

Do you have a balanced diet?

There's no need to tell me, the Idea Chef, you're ovo lacto vegetarian but you'll eat bacon among friends and can't stay away from grandma's brisket.  This is a question about your marketing diet.

There's a reason why my mom wants to make sure I've had milk, fruits, veggies and protein.  She wants me healthy.  So, too, with your marketing diet.  Not paying attention to your diet isn't good for your marketing (nor your business) health.

Here's what I mean by a balanced diet (see below).  Of course, everyone's got a different view of things.  This is just my take.


Be a marketing nutritionist.

Your business relies on consistent balanced ingestion and digestion of vitamins, minerals and a host of other goodies.  When we fail to take these four marketing food groups into holistic consideration, it's not healthy.  If we're paying too much attention to Competition and not enough to the other three, for example, we're missing key elements in making sure our marketing system is working properly.

It doesn't matter if Competition is first to market with something if you know it to be non consistent with your Value Proposition, your Product or your Customer needs/wants.  And yet, we often make this mistake of not looking at the big dietary picture with the net result of confusing ourselves (and worse, our customer) with doing things that deviate from who we are holistically.  And that does not make anyone healthy.

What's your food strategy?

These four business food groups must work in harmony with one another with each element influenced by one or a combo of the others at all times.   Think of this holistic view as no different from, complementary to or even influencer of your SWOT analysis that you do for new product development, marketing strategy development, etc.

So, I ask you, what's in your marketing diet?  How do you feed your marketing to make sure all of the systems are working properly?  Please share below and, if you've enjoyed this, please share with friends.

Parissa Behnia
Idea Chef

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3 comments:

  1. Really like this! Of course, I'm partial to anything listing "customer" as part of a marketing strategy. Hurrah!

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  2. Thanks so much, Jeannie! I agree that we don't always pay attention to the customer enough! They are our reason for being and should always be top of mind.

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  3. I love the concept of a marketing nutritionalist.

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