So we hear the term marketing all the time. But what does it actually mean? Does it apply to my business? What's the point of it? How do I go about it? And more importantly, can it be done cheaply?
Over a series of articles, I will try to explode the marketing myth and reveal the answers to these questions and more. Hopefully leaving you with some practical tips of how to relate marketing to your own activities, and to effectively put your own programme in place.
What actually is marketing?
Well, ask the academics to define the subject and we'll be here all day. My practical experiences lead me to define marketing as this: its purpose is to create the opportunity to sell. It is not about making the sale; it's simply about underpinning the sales process, by providing the tools necessary to allow the conversation to begin. 'Marketing' is in fact the all-encompassing term for these methods, which include activities such as branding, websites, advertising, direct mail and PR.
A basic principle
One of the basic principles good marketers employ is the concept of the customer buying decision process. This is the path or steps a potential customer takes from discovering a company or product, through to actually making a purchase decision. Failure to understand these clear series of steps in my view is the reason why much small business marketing material falls short of its objectives, i.e. to make sales.
If the purpose of marketing is to support the sales process, it makes the planning of a campaign much simpler, because all you need to do is to map out the sales process relevant to your business. Achieving this will provide a structure for you to select which marketing tools to use, and at which stage of the process to use them. This structure should also be used to identify the correct message to use at each step, from discovery by the prospective customer that you or your product exists, through to their decision to buy.
What are the marketing options?
Before we cover the research, planning and implementation of marketing activities in future articles, it's important to understand the end goal. That is, which marketing methods should we consider selecting? A comprehensive list of the available tools follows. For convenience I've divided these elements loosely into four main sections, but they could easily be split in other ways; in either case on their own, they do not provide the structure to plan a campaign, that's coming in a later article:
Okay, so finally we have some transparency as to what 'marketing' actually means, in practical terms. Next time we'll explore more about how to plan marketing activity.
An important tip
There are two types of marketing communications: the "reactive" also known as collateral, are the tools that don't necessarily generate the business, but are the elements without which business is much harder to generate; for instance a corporate image or logo, a business card, a sign, or perhaps a brochure.
The "proactive" tools are those that go into the written or spoken word. They seek to communicate what it is you do, with a view to generating customers, wanting to find out more information or to actually buy your product or service.
The tip here is that many new businesses do not differentiate between the two, when they are planning which marketing tools to use. Too much is often spent on the reactive and not enough on the proactive. Be sure that you achieve a good balance between the two.
