THE CLUSTER BOMB STRATEGY © (PART 1: A THEORETICAL APPROACH)

The Cluster Bomb Strategy © is a marketing strategy that brings to mind a specific use of heavy weaponry in which a single shot allows the pilot of an aircraft to hit multiple targets at the same time, amplifying the devastating effect over an area.

According to Cambridge Dictionary, a cluster bomb is an “explosive device that throws out smaller bombs when it explodes.”

You may ask:
“How does a cluster bomb fit with a marketing strategy?”
Let me explain it to you in detail.

The entire world of marketing is crowded with self-defined professionals who stay in marketing as they seem not to see any connection with the sales department

They let sales people do the dirty work.

Sales, indeed, has always been negatively associated with morality.

Sales people are unreliable and greedy according to the common sense of the term. They do not want to sell you their service because it is the best solution to your problem but because they get their commission by doing so.

They will never tell you the truth.

They try to make you believe what they want you to believe: their own truth.

And their own truth is always associated with an indisputable call to action that is supposed to end with your signature at the bottom of the page.

This is the stereotypical connotation of "sales person."

“Vox populi, vox dei,” the Romans would say.

Working in a marketing department has a kind of romance that the psychological compulsion of a sales department doesn’t have at all.

However, the expression marketing campaign itself doesn’t remind us of anything romantic at all.

A campaign is first defined as a military operation, making a marketing campaign an aggressive action planned in detail to defeat a chosen enemy.

What enemy do you need to defeat when you are in business?

According to an evolutionary perspective, we could say that an enemy can be defined as any entity that doesn’t allow you to get access to specific resources you claim to be yours as they are necessary to your survival.

Applying that definition to the business world, then, your enemy is any single member of your direct competition.

There is no single war on this planet in history that hasn’t been waged for material purposes, which are the resources available on a specific territory and the consequential benefits of monopolising their ownership.

If you re-read the last sentence above, there is no mistake:

A war is an action undertaken for material purposes, which are the resources available on a specific territory and the consequential benefits of monopolising their ownership.

Let’s clarify a few important terms included in this sentence:

1. Material purposes: It’s trendy to believe that the most important asset a company and an entrepreneur can have is the core values and higher purpose of the entrepreneur. However, it doesn’t matter how good your intention is. What will make your company sustainable isn’t some sort of moral code, but your ability to sell that moral code by way of your product, thus bringing in revenue.
2. Resources: By definition, resources are limited and an instrument to satisfy either a natural or a cultural need. How are resources connected to material purposes? We have just said that the material purposes of a company are represented by the goal to consolidate and escalate its revenue. Thus, we can define as resources the potential purchasing power of a single collectivity in a limited space, and the average sum of that purchasing power that a single subject is willing to spend to acquire your product and indirectly increase your revenue.
3. Specific territory: Even the most successful multinational corporation started by being local. When considering a marketing campaign, you must set its specific goal within the limited resources at your disposal. Both the resources and the specific territory are claiming your need to have a target audience that is represented by those who have a certain need that only your product can satisfy and who are willing and able to exchange your product for their money.
4. Monopolising: The aim of a company isn't to compete but to dominate. A company who dominates is usually more stable than a company that faces fierce competition. The most effective strategy in dominating is what Al Ries defines as being first in a new category: you can be the first to create a specific product or the first to create a niche as a consequence of the need to differentiate and specialise yourself. Leave competition to the world of academia and put your efforts toward a progressive monopoly that only the creation of a reliable, stable brand can help you achieve.

A marketing campaign can be defined as a war:
An action undertaken for material purposes which are the resources available on a specific territory and the consequential benefits of monopolising their ownership.

The evolution in communications over the last decade has compelled companies to change their marketing strategy, moving from a single channel approach to a multichannel approach in customer acquisition.

Some call it the network effect to define the movement of your prospect into an environment where he gets trapped before being eaten by the spider (or better, making an order).
However, this violent image (that well describes the job of a marketer) is just a partial description of an ongoing process, and a misleading one at that.

Indeed, insects do not voluntarily trap themselves in a web or network.

Prospects do.

At least, they believe they do.
The beginning of a marketing campaign is a declaration of war.

A company states that from a specific day until a given deadline it will deploy part of its resources to conquer additional resources that, at the moment, do not belong to it, with the goal of creating more consent around its authoritative position in the market, thus driving more revenue into its own hands.

“How a war can lead to consent?” you may ask.

Indeed, it should lead to the opposite.

Let’s answer this question by taking the long way.

A military campaign is a proof of force.
An army heading to war is a symbolic representation of power.

Here is where the Cluster Bomb Strategy© takes effect.

You want to achieve your marketing goal by reaching the best result with the least cost.

In the business environment, this is called budget optimisation.
The most effective way to do this is by leading an offensive from different angles with different strategies proportional to your organisational availability, capable of consistently reaching your target at the same time.

A war itself is a multi-channel approach: you don’t just deploy the soldiers you have at your disposal, but you use different types of weaponry (heavy and light) and strategies according to the specific characteristics of a territory and the number and quality of resources available.

When you first bring your product into the market, it's like crossing the border of a territory that doesn’t belong to you (yet): you find enthusiastic hard resistance.

The human brain, indeed, naturally fears and resists the unknown (the evil).

It will take time before your existence becomes normalised and acceptable.

People escape what is new.

It’s part of a process called discovery.

Having people embrace your product is what you could define as victory, which is a long and hard task of endless persuasion.

Let’s return to the Cluster Bomb Strategy©.

As previously said, during a military campaign your goal is to optimize your resources.
The most effective way to optimize your resources is by weakening the morale of the resistant.

The less the resistance, the fewer resources you will need to deploy to gain the consent you need.
By weakening the morale of the resistant, you have indirect recognition of your invincibility.

Your power has been proven and recognised.
However, having people refusing to fight back doesn’t mean they will love and accept your presence.
The first peace is always a conditional peace.
What you can do is start the engine of a propaganda machine that your target audience can’t avoid hearing and seeing.
This is where the Cluster Bomb Strategy© comes in.
Before cluster bombs were banned by international law, aircraft had been using them to widen the reach of damage over a target area in order to weaken courageous resistance.
As an entrepreneur, you can use a massive propaganda plan to hit multiple targets with a single channel in a multichannel approach.

You are now building your brand by consistently telling your story wherever your target customer spends most of his time.

Indeed, what is a brand if not a self-fulfilling indisputable truth in the mind of an audience?

At this stage there is one further question which needs to be answered, although the topic will be developed more deeply in one of the next articles of this blog.

How do you build your brand by creating your own truth in the mind of your prospects?

The easiest answer might be the following:

By spreading your values consistently until they become widely accepted, something that cannot be questioned anymore.

When your company becomes a brand it represents a single idea, and that single idea, when coherent, becomes a lifelong widely accepted truth if you sell it correctly and persistently.
To build your own truth—that is, your own brand—you MUST develop these three strategies:

1. Third Party Endorsement (PR)
2. Content Marketing
3. Direct Marketing

The Cluster Bomb Strategy © is the epitome of all these paths that, consequently, have different sub-paths (channels) where they can fulfill their reason to exist.

The Cluster Bomb Strategy © is a strategy that allows a company to reach its target audience wherever it is at the same time (multi-channel approach), in an extremely optimised way, thus making that audience surrender to an indisputable authority to whom it gives its own consent without opposing any further resistance.

The authority that comes through your marketing attack is the influence you need to automate a behaviour without giving an order.

The consent you are looking for is automatic, internalised consent.

Internalised consent is the measure of a successful process of normalization.

It is a new synaptic connection in your brain that automatically generates an output when a specific need comes to mind.

What you want is to be the output of that synaptic dynamic, the single indisputable truth your target audience needs to hear, see, and believe in.

THREE STEPS:

1. Represent a self-fulfilling idea.
2. Conquer their brain.
3. Get their money.

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ONE WAY: THE CLUSTER BOMB STRATEGY©. ​