Does everybody in your company speak the same language? Like, when you have a meeting does everybody speak English or French? Or maybe, like in a lot of companies, you speak a lot of different languages, so it sounds like a cacophony of sounds. Ok, you say you speak the same language, but do you really?
One thing we've learned from consulting with a lot of companies is that when you say the word "segmentation", it means different things to different people. Some think it means grouping customers together, others think it means grouping products together. So, when someone says "Which segment should we target?" everybody thinks of different things.
Same with the word "quality." When you say the word "quality" in your company, does everybody know what you mean? Probably not. This is the same for a lot of words in marketing used by people everyday, like a value propositions, positioning, and attributes and benefits.
But - and here's the real problem - people don't agree on what these words mean. Isn't this the same as speaking different languages? Wouldn't you expect confusion if you were speaking different languages? But you accept this confusion in marketing every day.
THINGS YOU CAN DO
Get your company or marketing team together and begin by listing the marketing words you use everyday and come up with a common definition. Now, make sure everyone means the same thing when they use the words like:
- Segment
- Quality
- Value
- Strategy
- Performance
- Image
- Position
- Branding
- etc., etc.
Now, here's another thing to do. What does your company's product stand for? I mean, if you could name just two benefits that your product provides (after all, customers rarely can remember more than two or three things about your product), what would you say?
More importantly, is that what everyone in your company would say? Would your promotions people say the same thing, and your salesforce say the same thing?
If you're like most companies, you'd probably get different answers. The reason is that you haven't determined the positioning of your product, or at least everyone doesn't agree on the product's position - or as I said before, you don't agree on what a product's "position" means!
So, if you've got these types of things going on in your company, you might as well be speaking different languages. Go ahead and don't change anything, but do so with this in mind.
In the United Nations they need a lot of translators and the talk moves slowly - else confusion reigns. So get ready to hire translators, headsets, and all the rest (you'll probaly end up hiring high priced consultants to clear up your confusion). Or, better yet, get your marketing department to agree on a common language!
