Dodo Loves Marketing

One way to keep focused on finding things that really sell stuff is to make conversion rates one of the key measurements that you track. Retailers do this by counting how many of the people who come into the store actually buy something. The fast-food business measures incidence, or the number of high-profit side items such as fries and drinks, that it sells along with the low- profit burgers and chicken. ..more

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One big lesson that everybody should learn from Starbucks is that, even though consumers have to understand your product if you want them to buy it, sometimes consumers can understand a product too well. By that I mean, sometimes people will fix a product in their minds as being for Purpose A, and then you have to work real hard to get them to see that it can also serve Purpose B and C. But the rewards can be enormous. ..more

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When a market is in turmoil, it’s particularly important to have good, clear profit and loss statements. That’s because you are going to have to decide at some point whether the market is suffering temporary problems or if it is going into a long-term decline and that you should get out. When a market, or an economy, goes into a tailspin, the first thing you should do is resist the temptation to cut spending. Not only should you keep spending in times of turmoil in order to keep from losing customers, but you should also realize that times of turmoil are great growth opportunities. ..more

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Sure, you have to have manufacturing, distribution, and a sales force. But in the end, it really doesn’t matter how well you distribute your product, how efficiently you manufacture it, or

“You can have the most modern fleet of airplanes properly outfitted with the latest seats, but you only make money if you put butts in those seats.”

Even how good your salespeople are at cutting deals if nobody wants to buy your product. A car company can be the most efficient manufacturer of automobiles, but it will only make money when the automobiles are sold. Think about it: where are the DeLorean cars these days? ..more

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Selling everything a company can make until you have reached the point where the marginal spending to produce and sell the product won’t yield the return you want.

The implications of that and how a company needs to include marketers in all of its decision-making processes. That’s because if you really want to maximize profits, you need to know how much you can sell before you decide how much to produce. For the moment, however, I will focus on current capacity and simply say that ..more

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