
February 4, 2020
How to Do Marketing Like a LEGEND: Christopher Lochhead on the Real Marketing Real Fast Podcast, Hosted By Doug Morneau
Check Out The Real Marketing Real Fast Episode Page and Show Notes
Key Takeaways
- CREATE YOUR OWN CATEGORY
- Legends never compete—competition, by definition. is a comparison game
- Data allows businesses to know their customers— if something can be digitized, it can be personalized
- Products don’t speak for themselves—position yourself or be positioned
- “The empires of the future do not fit into the categories and paradigms of the past. Product-market fit, by definition, is backward-looking, not forward-looking.”– Chris Lochhead
Books Mentioned
- To improve your marketing skills, Persuasion: Convincing Others When Facts Don’t Matter by Lee Hartley Carter is a must-read
Intro
- Chris Lochhead (@Lochhead) is the former Chief Marketing Officer of three publicly-traded companies
- He’s also the bestselling author of Niche Down and Play Bigger, as well as the host of the Lochhead on Marketing podcast
- Check out his website
- Host – Doug Morneau (@DougMorneau)
Category Creation (Marketing Legends Break New Ground)
- When a business creates a new category, everything/everyone that attempts to compete is compared to them—they become the standard
- “The number one skill that CEOs are looking for in CMOs [Chief Marketing Officers] is the ability to create and design categories” – Chris Lochhead
- Legends never compete—competition, by definition. is a comparison game
- CREATE YOUR OWN CATEGORY
- In the beginning, new categories are often described by what they’re not
- Ex.: “Horseless carriage”
Using Data to Improve Your Customer Relationships
- In a sense, category leaders build a moat with their customer data
- Data allows businesses to know their customers— if something can be digitized, it can be personalized
- For example, every time you consume a piece of content on Netflix, that transaction is logged and stored to provide you with improved recommendations
- Companies who are “first movers” acquire data on their users and have market intelligence nobody else has access to
- Customer data is more valuable than cash
- Why? – It’s more monetizable
- Think of your product or service as a data platform
- For instance, Tesla doesn’t sell cars—they sell a platform
Incoming Shifts in the Marketing World
- The science part of marketing is becoming more precise and powerful
- The combination of human creativity and the increasing cost-effectiveness of starting a company offers widespread opportunities
- “We can have an idea, deploy that idea, and see what response we get. We can try a bunch of different things. We then invest in the things that get traction … Our ability to do that for a very small amount of money is incredible.” – Chris Lochhead
How do you get somebody to Google something?
- Design a category with a provocative/unique point-of-view, encouraging the world to think about something specific in a massively different way
- Example: Dyson competes in vacuum cleaner category, but changed the discussion/priorities by going bagless
How do entrepreneurs with existing businesses shift in a new direction?
- Start off with where you think you can be radically different. Then, connect that to a problem.
- Ask yourself: “What makes us radically different? What problem or opportunity do we see that no one else sees?”
- Then, offer customers a unique, differentiated product
- “When there’s nothing unique, you have a stupid conversation that says, ‘Compare us on price, availability, and service’.” – Chris Lochhead
Legends Educate Customers to Think in Different Ways
- Radical differentiation: Figure out a unique and interesting way to look at a problem, then tie it together with a radical point of view
- Products don’t speak for themselves—position yourself or be positioned
- If you don’t tell people how to think about a product, they may not “get it”
It Ain’t All About Product-Market Fit
- Chris says: Product-market fit is one of the most dangerous ideas in the history of business
- “The empires of the future do not fit into the categories and paradigms of the past. Product-market fit, by definition, is backward-looking, not forward-looking.”– Chris Lochhead
- Think: The reason companies like Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft are now worth trillions is because they were unique upon conception
- “The empires of the future do not fit into the categories and paradigms of the past. Product-market fit, by definition, is backward-looking, not forward-looking.”– Chris Lochhead