Lies, Damned Lies, and Marketing: Separate Fact from Fiction and Drive Growth

By Atul Minocha

When it comes to your relationship with marketing, it's time to wipe the slate clean.

You've been promised big results with a quick turnaround. You've been told that social media is a silver bullet for increased sales (so far, you haven't seen an impact). Your marketing team and vendors have overpromised and underdelivered, and you're disappointed. You're frustrated. Perhaps you're close to giving up on marketing entirely, but something tells you that you shouldn't—you just need to know how to use it wisely.

In Lies, Damned Lies, and Marketing, Atul Minocha reveals the root causes of your frustration and provides you with the insight you need to utilize your marketing dollars for real results. He helps you understand why you need marketing, the important distinctions between marketing and sales, and how to attain the right blend of hard data and softer creativity to persuade your audience. Bringing with him more than thirty-five years of experience, Atul shows you how to make marketing work for you and finally achieve the results you've been waiting for.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jul 27, 2021
• ISBN: 9781544521213

Book preview

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Advance Praise

Common sense about marketing in uncommonly well-told examples. Atul Minocha has lived it, and you would be wise to go on his journey of experience and wisdom.

—Chuck Alvey, Vistage Chair

Taking a ‘forest’ view and working with the ‘trees’ in this business jungle is what Atul does best. He used his framework and principles to help us grow 6x in five years and get acquired by a large services company in 2020. The same methodical and logical approach is reflected in this must-read book for CEOs and business owners.

—Anurag Kumar, Founder and CEO, iTexico (an Improving company)

Real-world experience trumps long-standing myths to create a much-needed pragmatic CEO’s guide to getting the most from marketing. Easy read with thoughtful analysis and examples.

—Dan Kerpelman, President and CEO, Bio-Optronics Inc.

In the work that Atul did for our company, I learned many of the lessons he elucidates in Lies, Damned Lies, and Marketing. It reminded me why his approach was so effective: he asks the right questions and distills complex systems into clear, actionable ideas.

—Molly Kellogg, CEO, Hubbard-Hall Inc.

Chock-full of great advice from an experienced CMO who is passionate about helping companies make sense of their marketing. At Rösler, we worked with Atul and implemented many of the recommendations he outlines in his new book. And we see the impact on our business. Thanks for providing this ‘manual’ with a lot of practical advice.

—Bernie Kerschbaum, CEO, Rösler Metal Finishing USA

In this book, Atul reveals at least a dozen lies that have been served by marketing agencies. I know of no better way to learn the truth about marketing and reap its benefits. Invaluable!

—Patrick Renvoise, President, Sales Brain, LLC; co-author of The Persuasion Code

Atul does a wonderful job of breaking down marketing into small, bite-sized areas of improvement which allow you to quickly alter your marketing strategy and the impact it has by attacking the area that needs improvement. All this without all the fluff!

—Stephen Blanchard, COO, TRIO Electric, LLC

I like the way Atul has brought out the importance of a cohesive marketing strategy—akin to a good conductor of an orchestra.

—Arun Mirchandani, former CEO, PEC Limited

This is a book that all C-level (and marketing) executives can benefit from reading. The insights into the ‘why’ as well as the ‘how to’ provide valuable contributions to progressive company growth strategies. Author’s extensive personal experience adds credibility to what works well and what doesn’t.

—Bob Goff, Chair Emeritus, Sierra Angels

Atul brilliantly frames marketing in big-M and small-m terms and guides decision makers on how to bring the two together to profitably navigate the myriad of decisions to build coherent strategies, build brands, and drive growth. Lies, Damned Lies, and Marketing is a must-read for all business executives.

—Kamesh V. Chivukula, former COO, Rea Magnet Wire Company

This book has changed my outlook on marketing. Atul’s book is a nonintimidating how-to guide for getting the most out of marketing. I have bought and half-read many business books, usually never past the first twenty pages. With this one, I learned something useful every time I turned the page.

—Danéll Wilson-Perlman, CEO, Reno Tahoe Limousine

Sharp and simple insights from years of practical experience are succinctly put and illustrated contextually—making this an extremely relevant read for anyone wanting to get more out of their marketing.

—Sandeep Singh, CEO and MD, Tata Hitachi Construction Machinery, India; Executive Officer, Hitachi Construction Machinery, Japan

Atul Minocha has written the best strategic and ‘how-to’ marketing book for small and midsize businesses I have read. The book captures the marketing dilemmas faced by company CEOs and provides marketing strategies and tactics for creating and maintaining a long-term, successful marketing approach.

—Randy Yost, Vistage Chair

Through this book, Atul has brought together his rich experience across multiple decades, from starting off as an ‘accidental marketer’ to working with multinational companies globally, practicing the art and science of marketing. Filled with real-life experiences and anecdotes, this book demystifies the world of marketing in an ever-changing world moving from brick and mortar to mouse clicks and mobile. It will definitely help CEOs and other C-level executives leverage the new-age marketing tools while avoiding many common pitfalls. Excellent read from an accomplished practitioner.

—Vipin Sondhi, MD and CEO, Ashok Leyland

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Copyright © 2021 Atul V. Minocha

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-5445-2121-3

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To my mother,

who gave me the instinct to discern lies,

and to my father who, unbeknownst to me,

developed my love for marketing

by sharing his love for economics.

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Contents

Introduction

Part One: What Is Marketing?

1. Let’s Define Marketing

Part Two: Big-M Marketing

2. Left Brain or Right Brain

3. Being Rational about Irrationality

4. Riches Are in Niches…But Not in Trenches

5. It’s All Digital Now

6. Yes, Our CFO Manages Pricing

7. Speed (Alone) Kills

8. Quantity over Quality (in Research)

Part Three: Small-m Marketing

9. Social Distancing in Social Media

10. Likes and Followers

11. More Tools, Less Mastery

12. Quantity over Quality (in Tactics)

13. Random Acts of Marketing

Part Four: Big-M + small-m Marketing

14. Fake ROI

15. Ready, Fire, Aim

16. Cracking the Google Code

17. Monkey Business with Long Tails

18. Let’s Automate

19. Self before Service

Conclusion

Reference Guide

Acknowledgments

About the Author

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Introduction

Has your marketing team ever left you feeling disappointed? Maybe they made promises that they didn’t or couldn’t keep, or worse, maybe it seems like they willfully misled and lied to you.

Of course you’ve felt like this. I’m guessing it’s, at least in part, why you’re reading this book.

Like most CEOs and business leaders, you’ve probably been burned by bad experiences with marketing. Maybe you’ve begun to suspect that your chief marketing officer (CMO) and the marketing team have been taking you for a ride with their lies and damned lies (as Mark Twain might have put it). As a result, you might even be wondering if you should simply avoid the problem altogether by eliminating, or at least minimizing, the role of marketing.

If you’ve felt this way, you are not alone in questioning the value of marketing. Let’s suppose you’re in a boat with your entire C-suite, and the boat starts to sink. To stay afloat, you realize you’ll have to throw someone overboard. Who’s going first? Certainly not the CFO. You’ll keep the CFO to the bitter end. No, chances are, the CMO is getting tossed before anyone else. Good luck, buddy. Hope you can swim! If someone has to go overboard, it might as well be the person whose contribution is unclear.

While this frustration is common, you can’t just abandon marketing because of bad experiences or disappointing results. That’s like saying, I got shampoo in my eyes, and it really stung. So, I no longer believe washing my hair is good for me. Marketing can’t—and shouldn’t—be avoided. Doing so will only lead to a whole host of problems and significant underperformance.

Every year, a New York-based market intelligence and business analytics company, named CB Insights, conducts a study of private companies that have closed shop in the previous twelve months, analyzing the factors that contributed to their failure. Let’s take a look at what they have identified as the top ten reasons well-funded companies fail. See if you notice a recurring theme.

As you can see, eight of the top ten reasons for failure could have been addressed by better and timelier marketing (everything, in fact, except for out of cash and team issues). In other words, if these companies had just executed their marketing well, they might have overcome major challenges and survived. The takeaway? Underestimate the value and capabilities of the marketing function at your own peril.

At a minimum, marketing done well can improve your business performance. Often, it stands between success and utter failure.

So, why is there such a disconnect between what marketing can do and how you currently feel about it? Keep reading, and you will understand why this gap exists.

While your reasons for feeling frustrated, underwhelmed, or disappointed are real, the value that great marketing provides is just as real.

Where the Lies Come From

The fact is, many CEOs are data nerds, just like I was and, in many ways, still am. This convergence of hard data with customer behavior may not be obvious, which can make marketing seem almost counterintuitive. So if you’re spending money like crazy on marketing and getting little or nothing in return, what is the source of the problem? Is your CMO incompetent? Dishonest? A con artist? Probably not. Actually, in most cases, there are possibly one or two contributing factors.

First, there are errors of omission.

It’s entirely possible that your CMO lacks the knowledge or breadth of experience to be able to see the full forest and not get lost in the trees, or worse, the weeds. This would also hurt their ability to use your marketing dollars effectively. They may also be blind to some key pieces of the marketing puzzle and are therefore not able to deliver the big-picture impact you expect from marketing.

Second, there are errors of commission.

Eager to please, a marketer can easily overpromise and under-deliver. Over time, this causes the CEO to begin viewing the marketer, and