Davide Materazzi's Marketing Blog

Act organically and be focused

You might be the best around for what you are able to do but if you don't invest time and resources to devolop the fundamental management skills nor promote yourself, your abilities are useless.

To get economic/career success as individuals you have to focus on three different areas:

1) TECHNICAL COMPETENCES - which refers to your ability to perform the job well, whatever the industry or the role. Think of it as a mix of knowledge, skills and behavior. 

2) FUNDAMENTAL MANAGEMENT SKILLS - I'm referring to those skills required in every market in every era in every part of the world:

        a. Communication, that answers to questions like: Can I communicate clearly with other human beings? Do I know how to write a formal letter, how to have a formal conversation or how to present a report? Can I speak in front of a crowd without getting nervous?

        b. Project Management: planning, organizing, securing and managing resources to bring about the successful completion of specific project goals and objectives.

        c. Leadership: Can I work in a team? Can I take the best decision for the best results? Can I speak to people? Can I manage people and team even in difficult circumstances?

3) MARKETING YOURSELF - Build a network of relationships related to your job, build credibility investing time and resources to attend meetings & conferences, try to write an article, start a blog...there are countless opportunities - just don't expect an immediate result.

Think long-term and try to build yourself as a professional brick by brick. Act organically and be focused.

Creativity isn't free (but it might have a big ROI)

Creativity isn't free because you spend time while working on it.

Creativity isn't free because you spent time and time on your resources for being good at it.

Creativity can be a great investment - and it can change your life. How?

Creativity generates ideas. It's hard to sell ideas so you'll have to apply them - that's innovation. Being innovative it's very different from being creative. The first one requires method, project management, resource management, people management and so on. It's more technical. The second one requires you to see things others can't see and to question anything around you (even innovation).

Great creativity alone is not going to make things better, while innovation alone can delivery good results even with mediocre ideas. Great creativity and great innovation skills will delivery outstanding results. Just try to see them separately and everything will be clearer.

Names

Ever heard of Ralph Lifschitz? Nether do I. Do you think that it would ever become a successful brand? I don't think so.

What about Ralph Lauren? Does it sound familiar? Well, it's the same person as Ralph Lifschitz.

You can't expect your name to improve over time, if it doesn't sound right...just change it.

Sub-sub-sub product categories don't need a name

It's true. I mean, what the hell is an instant-ebook? Just call it ebook. You better focus on the value it provides or even on the title. I don't think that inventing a "new product category" will benefit your sales.

Don't force creativity, it comes naturally; you can improve your ability to being good at it, but you can't expect good results if you force it. 

Yes, I understand!

In the digital era, you can often stream content free. Think of Facebook, Twitter, blogs, emails and so on.

You have the BIG temptation to stream your message over and over to your users or followers or whatever. Don't do it. As a user, I might appreciate the fact that you are very determined, but seeing the exactly same message/status/update everyday at anytime is annoying.

You can choose to stream the same message but less often (losing visibility) or you can choose to stream unique messages as often as before. Ask yourself if you prefer resisting the temptation or being creative. The second one requires work, but remember - no work no results.

 

Values

I think that implementing values is perhaps the single key for the success. Many companies ignore values or think they have no time to find out their personal ones. Even if it's a tricky work, finding your real values will make you understand what are your unique strenghts. That's why values should be personal, and detailed.

These are the values that Alitalia, which is the biggest italian airline company, is proudly saying to have:

1. Costumer focus - I guess if there is any business in the planet not sharing this value
2. Developing people - ordinary
3. Working together - this should be the basis of every organization
4. Entrepreneurship - is this even a value?
5. Competitiveness - essential if you don't want to go bankrupt

If you want to list your values anywhere try to:

•     Capture the real ones, those that make you different, those that are really yours
•     Be original
•     Be detailed

Ordinary values are for ordinary businesses. Remember: values create value.

Coherence

Taken from Wikipedia:

"In physics, coherence is a property of waves that enables stationary (i.e. temporally and spatially constant) interference. More generally, coherence describes all properties of the correlation between physical quantities of a wave."

Let's do some fun work bringing the text out of the box and replacing some words:

"In business, coherence is a property of actions that enables stationary (i.e. temporally and spatially constant) brand identity. More generally, coherence describes all properties of the correlation between profit-linked quantities of an action"

Coherence is one of the key aspects of a successful business, especially in the mid-term. Being coherent in anything you do as a business will benefit your positioning (=more sales) and your identity (=more sales). And most of all, it's totally free. It's a terrific marketing weapon. Use it.

Cheap vs Absolutely free

99% of the times we prefer to get an absolutely free solution rather than a very similar cheap one.

But...99% of the times, the cheap solution has something, even a very very little detail that is going to save you something - it could be money, it could be time or even energy.

So it's absolutely free really absolutely free?

It's your choice: save money upfront getting an absolutely free product/service or try to understand why the apparently same product isn't free. If you choose the first one, try to foresee what would happen if any of the pieces it's made of would broke, write it on a piece of paper and ask yourself again if the cheapest solution is worth the money.

If still it's not - go and invent it or get the free one.

Alternatives

We do need alternatives. We need to think in alternative ways.

For anything you see, you listen, you enjoy or you hate: think of a possible alternative.

It might be useless, but it's a great exercise that will train your imagination. And you will force your mind to watch things differently.

Some of the greatest business ideas ever came from finding an alternative to something that already existed.

So, look deeper and think harder.