Tim Koelzer - Upstream Marketing: Unlock Growth Using the Combined Principles of Insight + Identity + Innovation

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Copyright 2021 Tim Koelzer and Kristin Kurth

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Print ISBN: 978-1-62634-751-9

eBook ISBN: 978-1-62634-752-6

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First Edition

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CONTENT MARKETING. INFLUENCER MARKETING. SEARCH marketing. Social media marketing. Inbound marketing. Outbound marketing. Re-marketing marketing.

These are all proven ways to promote your business, though they are downstream in nature. Theyre mainly tactical tools, delivered digitally, and designed to sell products already developed. While downstream marketing is necessary, its not sufficient.

Winning marketers relentlessly focus on expanding their playing field using a strategic approach to identify and fulfill unmet customer needs. Creating and capturing new market spaces and building strong brands is the domain of upstream marketing, and the focus of this book.

We developed this book using upstream marketing and the three combined principles of insight, identity, and innovation.

We captured insight from hundreds of client executives and industry experts, including a deep dive on seven companies profiled in this book: Amazon, Apple, Google, Nike, Southwest, Starbucks, and The Walt Disney Company.

The books identitythe Upstream Marketing title and cover designwas created to appeal to a distinct target audience: you.

Innovation concepts, including a minimum viable product, were used to create the book youre now holding in your hands or reading on a screen.

The same principles used to create this book are employed by EquiBrand Consulting every day to help grow strong brands and businesses for our clients.

EquiBrand, a strategic marketing consultancy, was founded over twenty years ago. The company name comes from two wordsequity and brand. Equi ties to the economic and analytical side of marketing, making cash registers ring. Brand relates to identity and innovation, creating something out of nothing.

As classically trained marketers, we are functional specialists and work across a spectrum of companiesfrom global Fortune 500 companies to venture-backed startups, within business-to-business and business-to-consumer settings. Our client list reads like a whos who of top global brands and businesses, and projects where weve played a major role have contributed over $1 billion dollars in sales to their businesses.

To support our client work, our team conducts extensive research to identify and further develop best management practices. Its a continuous loop where we discover and apply these methods to client situations, then feed the learning back into our frameworks to transform businesses.

Everything weve learned about upstream marketing is summarized and explained here for the first time.

We hope Upstream Marketing provides you with the inspiration and tools to execute it within your organization.

As you read it, visit www.upstreammarketing.com to learn more and engage with us. Here, youll find additional contenttemplates, training videos, and implementation services.

Were always interested in feedback that helps us review and refine our approach. So, as ideas come up, drop us a line, and lets get started!

It is well known that problem avoidance is an important part of problem-solving. Instead of solving the problem, you go upstream and alter the system so that the problem does not occur in the first place.

Edward De Bono, author, Serious Creativity

Because the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has twoand only twobasic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs. Marketing is the distinguishing, unique function of the business.

Peter F. Drucker, author, The Practice of Management

As to methods, there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble.

Harrington Emerson, management consultant and efficiency expert

THERES AN OLD STORY ABOUT a man searching at night on his hands and knees under a streetlight, looking through the grass. A passerby stops and asks what hes looking for, and the man replies, The keys to my car. Being helpful, the passerby joins in the search. After some time, with no success, the passerby asks whether the man is certain he dropped the keys near the streetlight. No, he replies. I lost the keys somewhere across the street.

Why look here then? asks the surprised and slightly irritated helper.

The man responds, The light is much better here.

If one thing is clear from our years of management consulting, it is this: Most organizations search for growth in all the wrong places. They believe an ad campaign, refreshed website, digital marketing funnel, more content, social media, sales promotion, or similar effort is going to drive sustainable growth.