Understanding the Ladders in Your Head
Published May 29, 2010 | 
To cope with the explosion of products, people have learned to rank products and brands in their mind, and perhaps this can be best visualized by imagining a series of ladders in the mind, on each row is a different brand, 
and each different ladder represents a completely different product category, and while some ladders have many steps (seven is me) and others have few, if any, and a competitor that wants to increase its share of the business, must either dislodge the brand above (a task that is usually impossible) or somehow relate its brand to the other companies position.
Too many companies embark on marketing and advertising campaigns as if the competitor’s position did not exist and this strategy seldom works, as they advertise their products in a vacuum of market attention, and are disappointed when their messages failed to get through, as they fail to understand that moving up the ladder in the mind can be extremely difficult, especially if they prance about without a strong foothold, and no leverage or positioning strategy is applied.
The positioning strategy for you to use depends on which rung you occupy on the ladder and your marketing strategy should depend on how soon you got into the mind of the consumer, and consequently which rung of the ladder you occupy, the higher the better, of course. 
The consumer mind is selective and prospects use their ladders in deciding which information to accept and which information to reject, and in general, any mind accepts only new data that is consistent with its product ladder in that category, and everything else is ignored.
The ladder is a simple, but powerful analogy and can help you understand and deal with the critical issues in marketing, but before starting any marketing program, ask yourself which ladder are “we” on, and more specifically, where are “we” on the ladder in the prospects mind, on the top rung, on the second rung, or are we not on the ladder at all?
You will come to understand that positioning is counter to classic marketing thinking, which is brand oriented, as in how I get people to prefer my brand, but you have to forget the brand and think categories, since prospects are always on the defensive when it comes to brands and everyone is talking about why their brand is better, but prospects have an open mind when it comes to the latest, as everyone is interested in what’s new, and few people are interested in what is better.
Early on, a new category is a matter of many rungs (remember seven is many), and in the long run, every market becomes a two horse race, and this is known as the “Law of Duality.” In photographic film, it is Kodak and Fuji, and in hamburgers, it is McDonalds and Burger King. In colas, it is Coke and Pepsi, and in sneakers, it is Nike and Reebok. In toothpaste, it is Crest and Colgate, and in long-distance, it is AT&T and MCI. 
Successful marketers concentrate on the top two rungs and Jack Welch, the former chairman and CEO of General Electric, said “Only businesses that are number one or number two in their markets, could win in the increasingly competitive global arena. Those that could not were fixed, closed, or sold.”
Over time, a category will often divide into two or more categories, and like an amoeba dividing in any petri dish, the marketing arena can be viewed as an ever expanding sea of categories, and a category starts off as a single entity, as in computers, but over time, the category breaks up into other segments including mainframes, minicomputers, workstations, personal computers, laptops, notebooks, Palm computers, etc., and instead of understanding this concept of division, many business leaders wrongly hold the belief that categories are combining, but it won’t happen, as categories are dividing not combining.
An Entrepreneur who wants to introduce a new product category must carry in a new ladder and this too, is difficult, especially if the new category is not positioned against an old one, as the mind has no room for what is new and different, unless it is somehow related to the old.
You must understand that’s why if you have a truly new product, it is often better to tell the prospect what the product is not, rather than what it is, as the first automobile, for example, was called the “horseless”
carriage. Words like “off-track” betting, “lead-free” gasoline, “sugar free” soda, and “wireless” Internet connections, are all examples of how new concepts can be positioned against the old.
Finally, due to the existence of ladders in the mind, there are only a few generic external positioning strategies you can employ including getting into the mind first, or finding the niche, positioning yourself to the leader, or repositioning the competition.
Understanding Your Assault on the Mind
Published May 28, 2010 | In order to be successful today, you have to touch base with reality and the only reality that counts is what’s already in the prospect’s mind, and to be creative, to create something that doesn’t already exist in the mind, is 
becoming more and more difficult, so the best and most basic approach to positioning for you is not to create something new and different, but to manipulate what’s already up there in the minds of your target market niche, too retie connections that already exist.
You must understand that the mind, as a defense against the volume of today’s communications, screens and rejects much of the information offered it, and in general, the mind accepts only that which matches prior knowledge or experience, and there is no telling just how many millions of dollars have been wasted trying to change minds with traditional advertising, as the average person cannot tolerate being told that they are wrong, since once in mind is made up, it’s almost impossible to change it.
The best approach that you can take in our over-communicated society is the over-simplified message, and you should always remember that in communication as in our architecture, less is more, so you have to sharpen your message to cut into the consumer’s mind. 
It’s a selection process, and you have to select the material that has the best chance of getting through to the mind, and the enemy that is keeping your messages from hitting pay dirt is the sheer volume of communication the average person is exposed to, and it is always important to know that only when you appreciate the nature of the problem can you understand the solution.
To better understand what your message is up against, let’s take a closer look at the ultimate objective of all communication, which is the human mind. Like the memory bank of computers, the mind has a slot or positioned for each bit of information it retains, but there is one critically important difference, and that is a computer has to accept what you put into it and the mind does not, in fact, the mind is quite the opposite, as it rejects any new information that doesn’t “compute”, and it accepts only that new information which matches its current state, as it filters everything else out.
Not only does the human mind reject information which does not match its prior knowledge or experience, it doesn’t have much prior knowledge or experience to work with, and an important fact for you to remember, is that the average human mind cannot deal with more than seven units at a time, 
which is why seven is a popular number for things that have to be remembered including seven-digit phone numbers, the Seven Wonders, seven card stud, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, just to name a few.
If you ever want to test the fact of “seven,” just ask someone to name all of the brands he or she remembers in a given product category and rarely will anyone name more than seven, and that’s for a high-interest product category, and as for low-interest products, you will find the average consumer can usually name no more than one or two brands, and with the strategy for the assault on the consumer mind you ultimately develop and use, it is a good thing to always remember that simpler is better, and less is more, in your campaign for the greatest positioning success.
Understanding Your Positioning and Message
Published May 26, 2010 | 
To begin with, you must understand that marketing results depend less on how advertising is written than how the product or service is positioned, since positioning is really used as a communication tool to reach target customers that are part of a niche in a sometimes very crowded marketplace, and while your positioning begins with a product, it’s not what you do to the product, positioning is what you do to the mind of the customer, and your marketing then becomes a battle of mental perceptions, not products.
Now, when it comes to developing your positioning plan, there are essentially only three generic positioning strategies including (1) positioning a leader within a unique niche, (2) positioning the follower, and (3) repositioning the competition, so you must always keep it in mind and ask yourself “How can I be the first thing a customer thinks about when thinking about my product or service”, and what exactly is my positioning message to the market? So an important point for you to remember is the consumer’s mind reacts by accepting only what is consistent with their prior knowledge 
or experience, also known as their “frame of reference,” and don’t try to change their mind, instead you should find a position that they already believe to be true, or have trouble being in opposition to, such as the “Clean Air Act”.
Remember, that to be successful at positioning, you must OWN your niche and own it outright, with no one else occupying any of your space, and if you can’t OWN it, especially after experiencing an ineffective marketing expenditure outlay, then decrease the size of the niche until you can claim OWNERSHIP, then start growing the size of the niche, and if somebody else occupies any of the space you have chosen then you will have to reposition them.
Other possible positioning strategies that you can pursue include product attributes (what are the specific product attributes?), benefits (what are the benefits to the customers?), and usage occasions (when / how can the product be used?), Users (identify a class of users), against a competitor (positioned directly against a competitor), away from a competitor (positioned away from competitor), and product classes (compared to different classes of products).
Understand How to Create Your Business Plan – Part 1
Published April 24, 2010 | Imagine if you are given a huge list of ingredients and asked to prepare an elaborate dish, without a recipe your chances to complete it successfully would not be very good, and as in any business, the ingredients are the product, the employees, the inventory, customers, the suppliers, the software, etc., and of course, the recipe is the strategy by which the ingredients will be combined to execute the overall plan of the business. 
It is important to understand that if you do not have the right recipe you will have a terrible time trying to make the ingredients into anything other than a mess, so let’s look at how to create a business plan for the business you are planning to start.
First, in order to provide context to the scope of your business plan, you should identify the time period for which the plan will focused, be it one year, two years, three or more, this time constraint is necessary in order to provide context for your thinking and decision-making.
Now, a business plan is at heart, a story that should explain in detail how a business works, and when a business plan doesn’t work, it’s because it fails either the narrative test or the numbers test including two simple questions, “does the story makes sense?”, and “does the story add up?”.
A business plan is therefore usually broken down into these two test sections which include a written section typically called the plan narrative, and a numbers section typically referred to as both the financial projections, and financial feasibility. The projections are simply a numerical representation of the business itself, and its marketing strategy that is presented in the plan narrative, and the two sections must be completely entwined, as each one represents the other.
The narrative of a business plan is usually broken down into three major sections including the business description section, the marketing strategy section, and the management and operations section, so let’s look at each of the sections in turn and illustrate what types of information go into each section.
The business description section simply describes attributes about the business itself and should include the mission (the purpose), the vision (the big dream with a deadline), industry characteristics, benchmarks and trends, and a general description of the business including the background of the business, your current situation, and your future plans, goals, and objectives.
The market strategy section documents all of the activities surrounding the most important function of your business which is marketing, and it addresses the questions of what you sell and how you sell it, and if you are interested in creating an organization that is built to last it’s important not to confuse what you sell with who you are, and as your business grows, you will find that the products it sells and the ways in which it sells them must change over time, and many times to a great extent, in order to adapt to the continual evolution and shifts of the ever changing market.
The market strategy of your plan should also include a customer description, a product and service description, a competitive analysis, a positioning strategy (your place in the customer’s mind), a pricing strategy, a social media and Web marketing strategy, a public relations strategy, and a distribution and location strategy, and the most important component of building lasting customer relationships that should be the central goal and driving force of a focused and successful marketing plan.
Creating Buzz Video: Stephen Hanson on “How I Built It”!
Published March 11, 2010 | Team Altman Great Creating Buzz Video!
We are always in search of Entrepreneurs that have found and developed their pathway to success and share the knowledge and experiences they have acquired along the way. There is no better way to learn entrepreneurial wisdom and not only “what to do,” but also “what not to do.” Stephen Hanson, founder of B.R. Guest Restaurants in New York, speaks with WSJ’s Colleen DeBaise about establishing a successful chain of eateries and surviving the recession.
As always enjoy, and share the Creating Buzz!