Welcome to the Rocket Fuel Blog.
2nd June 2010 sees the official launch of Rocket Fuel Marketing, a technology marketing business specialising in product and service launches. It’s not all new but a collaboration of marketing specialists who have been in the business for twelve years or more. We bring together a full range of strategic and tactical capability in marketing that works from before the point of product conception, through development, planning and live launches to full market adoption. We embrace traditional and new marketing methods in a way that’s different and challenging. We bring enjoyment, stimulus, creativity and interest to your work. Our belief is that if we’re not stretched by what we’re doing and it’s not taxing our grey matter, then we’re probably not doing it right!
Why now?
Good question!
It’s a truism that the marketing function will frequently be cut back during an economic downturn. We’ll not debate the rights and wrongs here. It’s a fact.
Marketing creates customers, innovates and drives sales. For most organisations of any size, it’s impossible to do without it; therefore marketing resource is bought in. Consequently, a technology business may be forced to manage multiple agencies with different approaches, methods and skills…not to mention egos. Launching a new product is stressful enough. We’ve seen this multiple agency mash-up more than once of late; situations that are not only difficult to manage but where expertise is mismatched to the task in hand and strategic intent is overlooked in key aspects of the marketing and launch process. What was meant to achieve cost-savings becomes an inefficient money sink. Rocket Fuel delivers and takes responsibility for any and all marketing activities associated with a launch. Efficiencies are gained by being able to select the services you need, as much resource as you need, whenever you need it without cost penalty or wasteful inefficiency.
Another answer to the “why now?” question is to do with changes taking place in the marketing industry itself. There’s a whole new wave of marketers proselytising digital and social media and content (“content is king”) as the be all and end all of marketing. We recognise that it’s vital too but it’s not the whole story.
There are the new soothsayers of marketing doom proclaiming that marketing is dead and that it’s only purpose is lead-generation. True, the ultimate purpose of marketing is to drive sales, but again it’s not the whole story. Imagine selling the wrong product at the wrong price to the wrong customer via an inappropriate channel-to-market. You can generate as many sales-leads as you like but without a well-executed marketing strategy, you won’t make sales. Interestingly, some of these new wave experts claim that strategy is outdated…that it’s dark and medieval, that it takes place outside marketing and that it’s engineers exclusively who (should) manage product development. So is this new world one where the sales-lead generator doesn’t so much as consider the customer or their values, beliefs, attitudes, behaviours or needs? There are no brand values either, since the only point of a brand is…what? You guessed it – lead generation.
At the other end of the spectrum, there are the traditional marketing specialists selling hope and promise wrapped up in methodological and scientific rigour. This group may be characterised by their claim of superior knowledge, mystification of the subject or a remedial approach. They appear to work on the assumption that they have a conduit to superior market wisdom or offer the “cure” to a company’s marketing malaise.
At Rocket Fuel, we’re not career consultants or new wave advocates drawn from website design, advertising or PR. Our client service directors have worked the streets opening, negotiating and closing multi-million pound technology deals. We respect sales people and we’ve done their job too. Forging a close alliance with a sales team is, for us, a fundamental part of building a successful marketing campaign. Their views are frequently the closest to the customer and demand our respect. We’re not all theory, but we know our discipline backwards. We take pride in being practical and pragmatic, of generating ideas that connect with our clients and their customers as well as initiatives that drive sales revenue and profit growth. And at the end of the day, that’s all that matters.
The Rocket Fuel Marketing Team
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