Are You Trying to Be Everything to Everyone?

A Story You Might Recognize

Bob used to work for a Big Corporation as a product manager, but he recently decided to make a change.  Bob joined the team at Medium-Sized Business Ltd. (MSB).  MSB is a dynamic, up and coming, growing manufacturer of custom-made, high-end wall units for home entertainment systems.

Bob’s boss is Joe.  Joe started MSB five years ago, as a one-man show.  He would build units on commission for family and friends, and eventually his reputation grew.  Now, Joe has a team of 50 people working for him.  MSB is known as a premiere boutique shop for high-end living room furniture in the metropolitan area where it is located.  While many other boutique shops are going out of business due to tough economic times, MSB has only seen a slight dip in revenues, and Joe, being a savvy businessman, sees the downturn as an opportunity.

Joe wants to expand MSB.  He has the high-end market segment locked down, so he has decided he wants to make a play for the mass market – the middle-class consumer.  He knows that to do this, he will have to compete with the big box stores, and he will have to make changes to his product line.  That’s why he hired, Bob.  Bob knows what it takes to sell to the middle-class.

Bob spends his first couple of months at MSB, crafting a product line that he believes will be a big hit with the demographic Joe wants to target.  It’s cheaper than MSB’s customized offerings, and as a result is far less customized.  It’s a basic product line, with only three options of colors, and a handful of configuration options.  Because the products are more standardized, MSB can churn them out at greater scale, for less cost, and can afford to sell them at prices that appeal to the middle-class consumer. It will stand apart from the products of the big box store because it has MSB’s reputation behind it, and because despite being cheaper, it will still be well-crafted.

Bob thinks they have a winner on their hands, so he presents the plans to Joe, and Joe is onboard.  Initial investment begins to create the infrastructure needed to add to MSB’s current custom business and bulid a standardized product line parallel to the custom line.

Two weeks before the launch of the new product line, Joe calls Bob into his office.

“Bob, I was talking to Sally from sales, and she’s really concerned that we’re not offering chestnut as a colour.  She thinks that if we don’t have chestnut, which has been one of our signature colours on our current products, we might lose our customer base.”

“Uhh…  Joe, we launch in two weeks.”

“I know, but I need you to find a way to add a chestnut colour option.”

Bob runs out of Joe’s office spends three sleepless nights at the office, but eventually figures out a way to add a chestnut colour option to the product line, and still launch on time.

A week before the product line launches, Joe again calls Bob into his office.  Joe looks anxious, which is unusual for Joe, normally a very calm and collected man.

“Bob, I was talking to Tim from sales, and he’s concerned that we don’t have a $50 piece in the new line.”

“Uhh…  Joe, we launch next week.”

“I know, but Tim thinks that without a piece at a bargain price-point, we’re not going to be able to get the bargain hunters.”

Bob has always prided himself on getting things done, and so he runs out of Joe’s office, grabs MSB’s chief designer, and they throw together a cheap, bargain-priced unit to add to the line, just two days before launch.

Launch time comes, Bob is exhausted, also he’s worried.  The last minute changes to the line make it a lot less tight than the line that he had initially planned out.  The production process is no longer as smooth and seamless as it was, as now there are manual workarounds that had to be worked out to accomodate the last minute changes.  There’s possibilities for human errors.

Sales start coming in, and Joe is ecstatic, they’re getting the sales from the mass-market segment they were looking for, but they’re also getting tons of orders for the low-end $50 bargain piece.  Also, Chestnut is the least popular colour in the line, but there are still a decent number of orders for it.

Volumes continue to grow, and Joe continues to get happier as he sees his revenues growing.  Bob, on the other hand is getting increasingly concerned. He hasn’t been sleeping of late.  He’s been talking to the people on the production room floor and they’re having trouble accommodating the volume of the bargain-priced piece, and the cost of keeping the chestnut coloured stain in stock is straining their budget.

Soon, a few glitches start happening in the production process, and the team falls behind its production schedule.  In order to make up for lost time, they start taking shortcuts, and some of the units going out are not the quality that MSB is used to producing.  Also, the shortcuts take less time, but cost more money.  Joe’s looking at his revenues, but Bob’s looking at the balance sheet, and while it’s still in the black, it’s not looking as great as he’d hoped.

Two months into the new product line, Furniture Weekly, after five years of writing nothing but glowing reviews of MSB, has slammed their new product line as “cheap, and of poor craftsmanship.” MSB’s reputation takes a hit, and the sales of their flagship custom line start to fall.

Joe calls Bob into his office one last time and tells him that he made a mistake. “I should have stuck to what we did best.  I’m sorry, Bob, but we’re going back to making high-end furniture only.  We’re not going to need your services anymore.”

The Moral of the Story

The above story is fictional, but I’m sure anyone who has worked in business for a little while has seen variations on it many times over.

Joe did make a mistake, but it wasn’t expanding his business.  There’s a large movement towards “small is the new big,” but I think what people forget is that this doesn’t mean that small can’t continue to grow.  Joe had successfully cornered his market, and he was in a good position to unlock a new revenue stream.  He wasn’t growing just for the sake of growing.  It was intelligent growth.

Joe’s mistake was that with his new product line, he tried to be everything to everyone.  By adding in the new colour option at the 11th hour, he was trying to appeal to the customers that he was already serving with his customized product.  By adding in the bargain-priced unit, he was trying to target the bargain shopper.  Bob’s product line was not meant to target either of those consumers.  It was meant to target the middle-class consumer who wants good quality at a reasonable price.  The consumer who wants a wider colour palette needs to spend more.  The consumer who wants bargain-priced goods is going to buy from Walmart, and isn’t as concerned about craftsmanship.

When you try to be all things to all people, you weaken your product offering, and you set yourself up for failure. Bob knew this, but he didn’t say anything because he was the new guy and he wanted to please his boss.  In the end, this cost Bob his job, so Bob failed in a big way, too.  It was his responsibility to make sure Joe understood what was happening.

What does this have to do with marketing?

If you don’t understand that this whole story is about marketing, I think you should head over and read Mitch Joel’s recent post on Six Pixels of Separation on the differences between marketing and advertising (even if you did understand it, Mitch Joel is still worth reading).

On a more precise note, however, the same lesson needs to be applied to all your marketing strategies.  Know your target market, and target them with a single-mindedness. Don’t get distracted by those that kind of look like your target market, but aren’t quite it.  The bigger your target market, the broader and more generic your messaging has to be.  The broader and more generic your message becomes, the less attractive it is to your target market.

Resolve to Treat Your Target Audience Well

A new year will be starting soon, and you’ll probably be making some resolutions.  Include in there a resolution to treat your target market with respect, and not get tempted to market to the world.

Happy Holidays, All. I hope you’ll all be taking this time to spend with your families, and enjoy some downtime, no matter your beliefs or religious denominations.