By Remy Raitt

Considered one of the world’s foremost authorities on strategic marketing, market segmentation, sales and strategic/key account management, McDonald has also written over 45 books on the subject of marketing. In addition to being the chairperson of six companies, McDonald is also a professor at a number of top business schools. At the conference, held at the Indaba Hotel between Wednesday, 4 and Saturday, 7 November, McDonald advised the delegates on how to develop a winning marketing strategy to grow sales and profits.

His core message at his address on Thursday, 5 November was to keep the customer top of mind, create value for them and remain true to the cornerstones of the profession. He said this is best done by focusing on the long-game through differentiation and segmentation and not getting too caught up in elements like digital and ad campaigns.

“Most heads of marketing can't answer the most simple of questions,” McDonald said. And this is a problem. “There’s nothing new in marketing, it's just we’ve forgotten the basics. Research is the best practice and a great place to start.”

This research should focus on how to increase your market growth, not your revenure growth, and McDonald believes this starts with knowing your customers, because, according to him; “The only sustainable future is creating long-term demand from you customers.” Therefore, segmentation is key. “You can't treat the market as an average,” McDonald said.

And once you know who you’re selling to, you have to focus on differentiation. “Differentiation is at the heart of successful marketing. If you can't come up with something genuinely different and superior, nothing will save you,” he said.

While sharing in-depth steps to take to create a plan that will succeed, and supplying a list of pertinent questions to ask to ensure you’re focusing on the right elements at the right times, McDonald continuously drove home the importance of putting on your customers first.

His dry British humour and witty quips kept the conference room engaged through-out the morning-long seminar. A few of his insights even shocked the crowd. “SWOT analysis does not work,” he said, “it only works at the segment level, and if I ever hear of any of you using it anywhere else I will have you killed.”

What McDonald does believe works, and should find its way into every marketing strategy, is the Ansoff Matrix. “Before you start your planning, do an Ansoff Matrix, they really do still work its just that no one uses them because they don’t know how,” he said. Marketing maps are also crucial; “Draw a marketing map to help you realise what's going on and who is making decisions,” he advised.

At 78-years-old McDonald doesn’t believe that digital is the answer to all of marketing’s problems. “We live in a physical tangible world,” he said, “Digital is just another channel of communication.” And he believes attempting to win over the board with social media stats won’t work either. “The board of directors don’t give a toss about Facebook likes, they care about money,” he chuckled.

At the end of the day, he said it comes down to creating value for your customers not “buggering around with digital”. McDonald said that if your core focus is on identifying and creating a sustainable competitive advantage, strategy versus tactics, maintaining, and investing (which should always be thought of separately), your marketing plan is probably on the right track. And if you still need help, he’s got 45 books to learn from.

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