Definition: (DOD) A capability that, when added to and employed by a combat force, significantly increases the combat potential of that force and thus enhances the probability of successful mission accomplishment.

The definition above comes from the Department of Defense and we are taking the liberty of using it in a business setting. This week’s AH-ha! moment suggests that every brand needs a Force Multiplier if it wants to see growth. The challenge is finding the right force multipliers (note the plural) to apply to your business.

While these shots of marketing adrenalin always put marketing at the top of the pyramid of business management, other may disagree, especially if they are not in marketing. Grudgingly, we have to agree. The marketplace continues to change, and the change is constant. There is no end to the change messengers affecting the marketplace. There is no such thing as being safe in doing business in the Age of NOW! Every brand is at risk. Last week, Vemma was shut down by the FTC for not having enough customers and too many distributors. At the same time another MLM is building a Customer Centric Strategy so that their distributors percentage is around 5% of their customers!  This suggests the imperative for identifying the force multipliers that can drive your brands’ growth need to be identified and cultivated.

While traveling last week, we paid particular attention to what was important to the clients we visited. It’s one thing to draw out their key points of pain. The concept of “points of pain” may be stale and overdone. What management should do is focus on what can be done to positively improve the business. Most think creating a new focus for the business is a good thing. We believe the benefit of “Force Multiplier” has a direct relationship to the “hook” or the addictive nature of the offer.

In the definition above, the focus is on adding a capability. Our focus is on adding processes because we want the sum of the marketing parts to cohesively come together and be larger than the whole marketing effort. In most other disciplines in an organization, the force multipliers are more operational to improve store operations or manufacturing productivity.

THE MARKETING IMPLICATIONS

Force multipliers in marketing begin with strategy and process. Modern marketers must create new strategies because we all know the marketing landscape has evolved and changed dramatically, equally impacting both retailers and brands. Linear thinking is doing business in the Age of Yesterday. Force multipliers explode the myth of linear thinking to give marketing teams the opportunity to keep up with the pace of change.

Setting a crisp strategy is not an easy task because even though there is a wealth of data available to the marketing teams, the challenge is defining the right strategy. In a business review last week with one of our clients, we noted that customer counts for February had tumbled, and while sales did not fall as drastically, customer count declines are a potential harbinger of things to come. Getting the strategy right begins with getting the data right and then determining a course of action. In this case, there are two schools of thought as outlined in an Elcom white paper. How do we best use consumer data? According to Elcom, “Some experts claim the financial return of selling more to existing customers outweighs time and effort chasing new business. Others advise companies to forget retention efforts and focus on the ‘here and now’ – seeking consumers that want your product of information today.”

This suggests that there are multiple strategies that can direct force multipliers. We offer the following suggestions for identifying the optimum force multipliers to use – with the caveat that as conditions change so must the marketing strategy that is instilled in the current force multiplier.

Understand how data-driven marketing impacts your business. Your data strategy must withstand anticipated changes to the data landscape tomorrow. That means using the right data that is integrated and standardized across all touch points.

Think content marketing but think beyond content. Ginger Conlon, editor-in-Chief of DM News, says we have to be contextually relevant. “One form of ‘personalization’ growing in popularity is context: What is the customer doing, why, when, where, and on what device? Targeting communications based on some or all of that criteria can be incredibly effective.”

Let go of the old force multipliers that may have been effective THEN. This is the Age of NOW!