I'd like to share with you two passions of mine: a passion for marketing and a genuine interest in applying marketing to mid-sized companies. I don't know the origins of my first passion; I just feel it. The second dates back to 1989 when my former partner Daniel Dalarossa and I started a technology company in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and then later in 1991 opened an office in Silicon Valley. This company, Cyclades Corporation, grew from the two of us to almost 300 people, from our first customer to 85% of Fortune 100 companies, and from a small office in Fremont, California, to a global presence with offices in 15 countries.
When I look back at what we went through to grow Cyclades, I realize that it would have been easier if we had seen it through a marketing lens. I had a lot of good intuition and a fountain of energy to try new things, discard what did not work, and expand what worked. However, I wish we had applied good strategic marketing practices initially to bring clarity and predictability to unforeseen situations; it would have saved us time, money, and energy.
I believe this lack of market orientation affects many companies. My journey was like driving down a foggy road, where you move forward slowly and run the risk of hitting the unknown. In spite of the lack of strategic marketing practices and processes, we managed to be successful, mainly because of the passion, determination, and hard work of our great team. During the last few years of my tenure at Cyclades, I devoted a good amount of my time to studying and applying marketing practices to our company; I could not finish this task because the company was sold in March 2006. While still at Cyclades, I promised myself that I would develop a marketing program to help mid-sized companies become market oriented.
With this perspective in mind, I'm now fulfilling my promise with the Coffee Bean Online Marketing Framework, which is introduced below.
I feel your pain because for over 16 years I walked in your shoes. I know exactly what is needed from a marketing program to grow a business. I will strive to deliver a framework that is effective, has the necessary depth in theory and processes, and at the same time is flexible and easy to deploy. My mission will be accomplished only after you apply the framework and provide us with your valuable feedback about what worked well and what didn't work as well. This is the spirit of this project, and the Internet provides an ideal platform for your feedback.
A challenge that I faced at Cyclades was a lack of marketing orientation, or more specifically studying the market (represented by customers, competitors and influencers) to plan the business. Even though we focused on customer needs, we were mostly technology and product oriented. We lacked the culture, tools and processes to conduct market analysis to support our decisions and business plans.
I recall long meetings where the dominant themes were technology and the technical features of our products. Such an approach left us with unanswered questions, such as what are our customers' real needs; how do we take advantage of changes in the market and in technology; what should be our next product generation. Certainly a market orientation would have answered our questions.
At Cyclades, we did practice strategic marketing, as do many mid-sized companies. The problem was that we practiced "unconsciously" (or spontaneously) and often inconsistently. Therefore our marketing efforts did not expand, as we did not engage enough people to bring more creativity and possibly more innovation to the process. The proper application of some important classical concepts such as target market, product or brand positioning, value proposition, and situational analysis would have resulted in less business risk, more visibility, and less stress for our managers.
A word about the Coffee Bean Online Marketing Framework
I emphasize three interrelated aspects of the framework: the business essence, the people factor, and the market orientation.
The business essence
The business essence is called "the source of energy" because it's the idea responsible for creating value for the business. If you ignore it,
you may kill the business. In many cases the business essence holds the uniqueness to be explored as a competitive advantage. The Internet and
globalization have created an extremely competitive and fast moving environment. We feel the pressure of competition; we breathe it. Such a
condition creates an extreme need for differentiators; in many cases these are hidden in the business essence, waiting to be explored. I hope
to inspire you to discover or rediscover the business essence in your company and extract its uniqueness as your competitive advantage.
The people factor
Marketing is a pervasive and mature discipline that is supported by a vast array of books, magazines, online information, classical educational
curriculum, consultants, and gurus. We also have access to well-designed marketing processes. With so much information and resources available,
why are only a limited number of companies practicing strategic marketing? There is a big gap between the available information and its effective
application; only people can bridge the gap.
Good marketing practices lead to transformation, to change, and people resist change. Books and processes are passive entities; they cannot deliver transformation, only people can. The success of a marketing program does not rely on its content (potential) but on what is effectively implemented and absorbed by the company culture. The spirit behind this framework is to convince leaders to educate their company in marketing; explaining the potentialities of marketing and inspiring the team to incorporate strategic marketing into their daily routine. The challenge of engaging people is great but the rewards are huge. Companies that are successful marketers are without doubt the leaders in their respective markets.
The market orientation
A fundamental characteristic of successful companies is the ability to create value for their customers. In order to understand value creation
you need to go beyond your company's borders and analyze how the customer experiences your products. You also need to understand your competitors'
value creation model and to consider external market forces such as suppliers, government, press, etc.
Your company, customers, competitors and influencers make up your market. To be market oriented means to make decisions and plans according to your market. Such an approach assures that your products reflect customer needs and consequently are of value to them.
Lack of positioning hurts
Cyclades was founded in Brazil in 1989, and one year later we established clear positioning and a target market in computer networking with a focus on Unix for PCs. We were the local leader. In 1991 we founded Cyclades Corporation in Fremont, California; our aim was to target the same market that we had in Brazil. However, when we expanded into the US market, we had a big surprise. Our target market was saturated, no room left for us. In other words, we had no positioning and it hurt us. We had hard times in 1992 and 1993. We didn't give up because of our iron will. Then in the middle of 1993 something very interesting happened. We noted the many requests for open source (Linux) network products. We responded quickly, developing products for this market; we embraced Linux and the open source model. We now had fresh positioning: "The Leader in Linux Connectivity". It was a success! We had taken the first step towards growth.
The symbol of Linux is a penguin; our penguin wears lens to combat marketing myopia. The sky is clear.
John Lima