KIA Corner: Marketing Approaches to Drive Differentiation

1) "Explanation Driven" vs. "Data-Driven" Marketing Research: As is so clearly outlined in the Kellogg School of Management's 2010 edition of Kellogg on Marketing there is a vast difference between data-driven marketing research and explanation-driven marketing research. Explanation-driven research begins with a creatively conceived hypothesis that can be proven, disproven, or further nuanced by the data generated by the marketing research process.

Data-driven research begins with an essentially blank slate, fills in the columns and rows, and then tries to extract meaning from the data. The latter approach may seem more "scientific" but it more often than not leads to not seeing the forest for the data trees and provides less guidance for formulating a marketing strategy that differentiates and succeeds. KIA's experiences in helping consulting firms differentiate and win tells us that the explanation-driven approach almost always leads to superior results.

2) Frozen Perceptions: Frozen perceptions are often the critical factor in a consulting firm's marketing messages having impact with clients. They are ingrained biases that interfere with a target audience's ability to hear a marketing message at all, let alone be moved towards purchase. Frozen perceptions operate like an aperture on a camera. If the ingrained perceptual bias is very intense, then the aperture for "fresh" information—including all the positives—are effectively not heard. Ergo, it is very hard to persuade a prospective client of all your great benefits.

In the consulting industry, some wide-spread frozen perceptions are: "IT firms are not strategic," "strategy firms are poor implementers," and "HR is boring, slow to change." If you are an IT firm leader trying to sell more strategic services, a strategy firm leader trying to convince the market that you can also implement, or an HR firm trying to market an exciting new solution, you have likely fallen victim to these frozen perceptions.

3) Entropy: Even if you have successfully executed on "shake, rattle, and roll" you may bump up against the marketing message bogeyman of "entropy." In the marketing context, entropy is the loss of meaning due to too much redundancy or too much variety. Put simply, in consulting sectors where every firm sounds the same and is positioned very similarly, target audiences simply tune out.

Conversely, in consulting sectors where there is too much variety in messaging and (attempted but superficial) variety in positioning, target audiences also tend to tune out. Understanding the push-and-pull between redundancy and over-variety in your consulting sector is critical to successfully messaging and differentiating.

4) Surprise: Finally, few consulting firms effectively make use of "surprise" to get an audience's attention—and how can you differentiate if no one is paying attention? Surprise in this context can come in many forms, but the judicious use of humor can be a particularly powerful way to begin the persuasion process. At this point you may be saying to yourself: There's nothing funny about consulting!—and after being a consultant myself for nearly twenty years I tend to agree.

But if that's the case it's equally true that there's nothing funny about insurance or financial services and this didn't stop Geico, Aflac or Scott Trade from using incisive humor to begin to effectively differentiate in their markets.

We've only been able to scratch the surface of the marketing concepts enumerated above. If you would like to know more on how your firm can benefit from them, KIA is standing by to help.