The Difficult Task of Focusing

I recently conducted a marketing training session.  Things went smoothly until we began the discussion of target selection.  There were different company stakeholders in the room and it seemed that each lobbied for a different marketing target that they wanted to add to the plan.

The problem, of course, is that by spreading yourself too thin ... well, you spread yourself too thin.  You risk taking limited resources and making the budgets even less effective.  I recall that when I was doing the marketing for Hawaii Pizza Hut, there were always store managers who wanted to spend money to attract sports teams ... or youth groups ... or other targets.  Don't get me wrong: these people eat pizza.  But, by adding them to the target list, we would have diminished the budget for our primary target: families with young children.

You can lose focus, too, by trying to promote too much of your product line.  I once had a contract with the Hawaii State Department of Agriculture.  They had a large budget - about $1 million - to promote the flower industry.  I suggested that we concentrate on one or two primary products which were well connected with Hawaii ... or promote the general idea of "flowers from Hawaii."  Instead, the department responded to pressure from the different grower groups.  They budgeted a little for anthuriums ... a little for protea ... a little for ginger ... a little for tropical foliage ... a little for ... well, you get the picture.  They took what was a meaningful budget and spread it way too thin.  Each of the stakeholders was happy because each got a little piece of the pie; but, the impact of the whole program was minimal.

Focus is one of those incredibly powerful ideas in business.