What a German Genius Can Teach us about Effective Marketing

“The aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous.”

Peter Drucker

What comes to your mind when you think of Germany?

Do you think of Hitler? Do you recall the harrowing horrors of the Holocaust? In spite of the stain of the Holocaust, the truth is the Germans have given the world wonderful inventions, conceptions, and riveting personalities.

What do you see when you hear or read about Germany? Do you think of Martin Luther, the great Gutenberg, Goethe, of first-class footballers, excellent engineers, compelling classical music composers? 

This article is about some highly beneficial insights of Theodore Levitt. These are insights that you can leverage for exponential business growth.

 He is regarded as one of the most vital thinkers and teachers, who expanded our notion of marketing’s immense potential. His most celebrated article was titled “Marketing Myopia”. He also popularized the term, ‘Globalization’, and is acclaimed by some of his students, at Harvard, as someone who changed their lives!

He also asked the now iconic question: What business are you in? It is a simple question, with profound implications for us all.

Let’s get started by exploring the relationship between marketing and sales.

Sales’ Ambitious Sibling

Before we go on, let me ask you a question, which speaks to the essence of this article: are you focused on satisfying your clients, or on merely selling your products?

If we’re honest, we can start making tangible changes in the way we do business, which means, we will have different results. We have to be sincere with ourselves, then, we extend that honesty to those we serve and how we serve them. So, don’t forget the question. Then, let me add another one, how would you like a company to treat you, if you were their customer, are you treating your customers or clients like that?

Most people have a “sales” focus. They think they are marketers, but they are in sales mode, all the time.

Sales was the first-born. Marketing, the more ambitious sibling came many, many years later. Sales was doing well, pretty well, but at a point, entrepreneurs evolved to a point where they know they need research about the markets they are serving. Marketing evolved to satisfy this need, and it brought some highly beneficial scientific discipline.

Over time, marketing exploded and now has many strands. It even dominated sales. It subsumed it. I don’t see it as superior, it is complementary. It’s indispensable for any serious entrepreneur.

At the end of the day, it’s sales that executes the “closing” and brings in the gold. Marketing creates an atmosphere which makes that possible. It paves the way for sales. Marketing is so vital; it starts even before one has a product or a company. It could take the form of research into the preferences of a target market.

Let’s explore an illustration:

Have you heard the story of two salesmen who were sent to Africa 200 years ago? (Honestly, I have embellished the story). I’ll make it short. But, it’s profound and instructive. The salesmen represent a company that sells shoes.

The first salesman saw Africans walking barefoot in the heat and in the rain, on soft grass, and on thorns. His heart sank. His dreams of retiring to the Caribbean faded away. These Africans! He sent back a telegram to the U.K. “Situation hopeless, they don’t wear shoes!”

What about the second salesman who explored another part of the same town? He was ecstatic with joy when he saw barefooted tribes. He mingled with them. He went from village to village, attending the meetings and festivals, eating and dining, and was secretly recording how many people were in each village.

He estimated their shoe sizes. He started learning the language and the culture. He started knowing these denizens of the Dark Continent. He discovered they do not live in trees.

He discovered the enthralling pleasure of palm-wine. Rumor has it that he even had something to do with a princess. I could not confirm that. He sent his telegram back to the U.K. He wrote: “Glorious opportunity, they don’t have any shoes yet!”

The same condition elicited different perceptions.

Which salesman do you think is a smart marketer?

It’s interesting and instructive that where one person saw a problem, another saw an opportunity! This is a great lesson for us. Most problems are opportunities in disguise. They could be fuel for our growth if we see them in a new light. We ought to be like the person who saw opportunity in the midst of a hopeless situation.

Growth –Hacking Your Way to Millions

 You’ve been reading about how start-ups are leveraging growth-hacking to make out like bandits! Everywhere you turn, some twenty-three year old is becoming a millionaire on the strength of an app! And, why should they have all the fun?

So, one weekend, you dreamed up with this wicked app that’s going to revolutionize how women communicate, you’re sure, it is going to be a hit. You felt so creative (but you also wonder if the beer was not the catalyst). You’ve been able to convince one of your serious bean -counter friends, to work with you on crafting a winning business plan. He agreed.

 But, he’s been asking you some illuminating questions. He works with a marketing consultancy, and he’s an excellent analyst. Some of his questions are making you think, they’re helping you see dimensions you never thought of…so, now, you’re a tad reluctant to raise the $15m! You continued working on the business plan, and as you do, your understanding of what it takes to run a business expands.

One weekend, while reading a top business magazine, you came across a story about an entrepreneur, a dude in his late thirties, who raised $20m for an app that is focused on students.

The start-up is in its third year and is currently valued at $120m. It was a long article, but, it’s so informative that you don’t mind. At a point, it was as if your scales fell.

You saw something the guy said, and it was an epiphany for you. When asked the secret of his success, he said: research. He said he’s been conducting research into student behavior for 5 years before he had the app developed.

He said his focus was not really selling an app, but helping students with some of the financial challenges they were going through. He recalls how tough things were, dealing with finances when he was a student.

He said: The technology is secondary. The technology is secondary. The business model is secondary. The customer is the cornerstone. The customer is the cornerstone. He repeated that a couple of times. He said some businesses fail because they are product-centric. He leverages the marketing concept, and that’s his open secret.

So, what is the marketing concept? How did it evolve?

The stories you’ve just read may seem simplistic, but both are a potent illustration of the marketing concept. You start with the customer. It’s a customer – centric approach to doing business. It’s all about the customer.

You’re thinking of the customer, even before you design the product or service. The customer is not an after-thought. Her needs and satisfaction are what your marketing and approach to business are all about?

You don’t imagine a product in your head, and then try and force it on hapless customers. You have a deep understanding of them – their hopes, fears, needs…You know them like the back of your hands.

The mediocre entrepreneur or marketer is PRODUCT –centered, the smart marketer, is CUSTOMER-centric. It’s not a subtle difference. Think about it. It’s not about technology, it’s not about the latest buzzwords, and it’s not about mindlessly copying what others are doing. It’s about strategy, and it’s about mindset. It’s about offering astonishing excellence in all that you do.

A Marketing Giant

Theodore’s’ family fled Nazi Germany for America. He was born in Vollmerz, Germany in 1925. His family settled in Ohio. He bagged a Ph.D. in Economics in 1951. His contributions to marketing are immense, and his story is inspirational.

A cobbler’s son, who rose to the height of becoming one of those who steered myriads back to a more sensible, simple, and profitable path…

He is seen by many, as one of the founders of modern marketing. One of his dominant desires was to use his knowledge and insights, in serving the needs of the business community. Are you already seeing the marketer, in the revered professor?

His early works were relatively conventional academic work. (You know how boring that can be). Some of these ideas may seem obvious to us now. But we must recall that he wrote his most celebrated work, MARKETING MYOPIA in 1960. The work left the realm of being an article, it morphed into a manifesto. It was not just for marketers or marketing departments…it was for companies as a whole.

It was an epiphany. It was a paradigm shift.

Trust me, if you were to read it. It’s fresh. It’s not dated at all. It’s still powerful. He urged companies not to define themselves by what they produce, but to attune themselves and align themselves with CUSTOMER NEEDS.

‘Ted Levitt exhorted executives to put their customers at the center of all they do – and to put marketing at the heart of strategy’

Harvard Business Review

For about 5 years, he was editor of Harvard Business Review. He introduced tangible changes, which brought more readers and more profit. So, he was not a mere theorist.

Because of the constraint of space, I cannot cover all the key facets of Professor Levitt’s contributions. So, let’s wrap up with another one of his contributions: “What business are you in?”

Try and answer that question. Please do. It is enlightening. Then, check your answer. Is it product-centered? Is it customer-centered? Is it centered on your company’s needs?

If your answer is not customer-centric, then, you need to revisit your strategy and your business, as a whole.

Professor Levitt illustrated the importance of this question, by talking about the downfall of the railroads in America. At a time, the owners of the railroads were richer than King Solomon. They had more money than Midas.

So, what happened to them?

They thought they were in the railroad business, so when other forms of transportations came on… cars, trucks, airplanes…

They gradually lost their dominance and their shirts.

Let me share what Theodore Levitt said:

’They let others take away customers away from them because they assumed themselves to be in the railroad business rather than in the transportation business. The reason they defined their industry incorrectly was that they were railroad oriented, instead of transportation oriented; they were product oriented instead of customer oriented.’

In conclusion, let me share another quote by Peter Drucker, one of the fathers of modern management. Interestingly, he also emigrated from Germany to America.

“It [Marketing] is not a specialized activity at all. It encompasses the entire business. It is the whole business seen from the point of view of the final result that is from the customer's point of view. Concern and responsibility for marketing must, therefore, permeate all areas of the enterprise.”

Michael Newman