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Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing, where we are trying the first world’s Marketing PodStorm — 30 days of strategies and ideas to help you create the future that you want because we believe that nothing legendary is going to happen, at any kind of scale, without legendary marketing.

In this episode, let’s discuss if you are either part of the noise or how you can rise above the noise with the power of a marketing lightning strike!

Reach and Frequency

It turns out that most marketing executions are predicated on an ancient idea on reach and frequency. The theory is, the more people who see your marketing efforts, the more successful your company will be. 

“The reality is we get somewhere between 40,000  to 60,000 marketing messages a day. Reach and frequency really doesn’t work anymore.” – Christopher Lochhead

Christopher shares the idea of a lightning strike. It is taking a disproportionate amount of your marketing resources and execute in a very short period of time, against a small number of targets to get the maximum leverage.

Play Bigger: What is a Lightning Strike?

Now, let’s talk about how to stand out;

An excerpt from Play Bigger reads:

“A great lightning strike is a category-defining event. It evangelizes a new problem or an old problem that can be solved in a new way. It tells the world that this company knows how to define the problem and knows how to solve it. It makes potential customers believe that the company has the solution, and makes would-be competitors panic and call emergency board meetings. A strike is an event or coordinated series of events in a small window of time. It can take many forms. It can be tied to a product unveiling or a new round of funding. It could be a manufactured industry summit for the sole purpose of the strike.”

Do It Tight

The idea for a lightning strike comes from the movie industry. They stir up events to get maximum attention the two weeks before a movie launches.

What do you need? Christopher shares the following

•  Pick a timing. 
• Get super clear on your target audience. 
• Make your target list as small as possible. You’re looking for leverage. You want to move your market category to action, by activating the most powerful, influential people in your category. If you get their attention and imagination and you get them talking. The idea is, “if you’re one of our Super Consumers, there is not a chance you’ll miss our lightning strike. You looking to create fast, word of mouth, leverage.
• Think of ALL of the components of the marketing mix that you use: Ads, PR, Social, Direct mail, email, podcasts, blogs, etc. Do a few legendary marketing executions that combined, will have maximum impact

To hear more about specific real-life lightning strikes event, download and listen to this episode. 

Bio:

Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger.

He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur.

Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist.

In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion.

He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; was the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive.

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook,  Twitter, Instagram and subscribe on iTunes! You may also subscribe to his newsletter, The Difference, for some amazing content.

Podcast (lochheadonmarketing): Play in new window | Download (Duration: 6:41 — 4.6MB) | Embed

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | RSS | More

Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing, where we are trying the first world’s Marketing PodStorm — 30 days of strategies and ideas to help you create the future that you want because we believe that nothing legendary is going to happen, at any kind of scale, without legendary marketing.

In this episode, let’s talk about, arguably, the most important issue facing your marketing as you go forward powerfully: is your category a must-have, a nice to have or a don’t really need to have?

Customers Prioritize Categories When…

Christopher shares an important insight from a lot of CEOs and CMOs saying “our problem is that we are too much of a vitamin and not enough of an aspirin.” As it turns out, the more strategic, valuable, and urgent the market perceives a category, the greater the chances these customers will prioritize and buy from that business.

“I think there’s something very important to understand about what’s going on right now in the economy. We are all in a game of wallet share, much more than a game of market share. Customers’ wallets, as a result of the recession, are much smaller. They are going on a prioritization, deciding what is more important and what they can live without.” – Christopher Lochhead

Becoming a Must-have Is Job Number 1

Christopher mentions his observation about the mistake most companies are making as the economy starts to open up. They are evangelizing their brand, not their category.

“A brand is about us, is about our company it is about our product. The category is about customers, their problems, their opportunities. Categories are about customers, brands are about us. Right now, savvy marketers are focused on their customers and making their space, their category, critical.” – Christopher Lochhead

A Couple of Examples

The Washington Post has a very powerful tagline “democracy dies in darkness.” They are not hard-selling their brand, services, and company. The Washington Post is laying down a point of view about democracy and evangelizing this point of view results to elevating the value of Free Press. 

“By evangelizing the category and keeping your brand more on the background, you also elevate your brand above everybody else in the category because, in the mind of the consumer, the company or the person evangelizing the category must be the category queen or king.” – Christopher Lochhead

To know more about how to make your market category a must-have, download and listen to this episode.

Bio:

Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger.

He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur.

Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist.

In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion.

He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; was the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive.

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter,Instagram and subscribe on iTunes! You may also subscribe to his newsletter,The Difference, for some amazing content.