Marketing is more than a few posts

 

Many moons ago when I did my professional qualifications, I was astonished to discover that the label ‘marketing’ covered far more than advertising and promotion.

It starts with market research – know your market place

• Companies that offer a similar product or service
• Pricing – lowest to highest – and why the difference
• The consumer and what they are actually looking for.

With that information in hand, marketing moves into development, the ‘D’ of ‘R&D’.  It’s where you look at whether your products or services fulfil current buyer needs.  Do you need something new or to revamp an existing offer?  How does it satisfy the consumer demands and what can you offer that is better in design, pricing, functionality than your competitors?

Now finance joins the party and looks at cost of sale, competitive pricing, profit margins, etc.

Now the action moves over to what most people (including me at the time) consider to be ‘marketing’.  That’s the advertising, promotional activities to raise the consumer’s awareness of the exciting new offer!  In those days this would include press ads, maybe TV ads, getting coverage in the relevant media – publications, etc.  PR – on a broader basis, getting key people (usually the CEO) interviewed or authoring thought-leader articles, and things like getting the organisation entered for awards – and, ideally, winning one or two.  In today’s world, social media, blogs, video material and podcasts all play a part.

The launch campaign is critical and will launch your new product or service into the right communities.

On the back of this the sales team now takes on a critical role, contacting either consumers directly or wholesales and retailers who will stock your product or white label your service.

I remember there being a lot of arguments – about whether marketing is part of sales, or sales is a part of marketing.  I was taught that sales is part of marketing, but it doesn’t really matter – as long as sales are made!  The way I see it a business is really a huge marketing machine.  Every part of it should be focused on delivering value to the customer.

Someone once quoted Karl Albrecht to me ‘If you’re not serving the customer you’d better be serving someone who is’.

Blogging: little and often beats occasional and brilliant

I've written blogs all day today, which is either an excellent or a terrible position from which to write a blog about blogging – you decide.  But it's given me a useful reminder: the businesses that blog well aren't the ones with the best ideas, they're the ones who actually show up.

I've lost count of the number of clients who've told me they're ‘not really bloggers’. What they mean is they wrote three posts in 2019, ran out of steam, and have felt vaguely guilty about their neglected blog page ever since.  Sound familiar?

Perfection is the enemy here

Waiting for the perfect topic, the perfect time, or the perfect 1,500-word masterpiece is precisely why most business blogs go quiet.  Nobody's inbox is desperate for your magnum opus.  What readers actually want is something short, useful, and honest, delivered often enough that they start to expect it.

A 400-word post that answers one real question your customers keep asking will outperform a 2,000-word essay that nobody finishes, published once and never again.

Consistency beats brilliance

Search engines like fresh, regular content.  Readers like knowing you're still there.  And – this is the bit people forget – you get better at writing the more often you do it.  The first post is always the hardest.  By the twentieth, it's just Tuesday.

If a weekly post feels unrealistic, be honest with yourself and pick a rhythm you can actually keep.  Fortnightly and reliable beats weekly and abandoned by October.

Where the ideas actually come from

They're not hiding in some special ‘blog ideas’ vault.  They're in your inbox, in the questions your customers ask on calls, in the thing you explained for the third time this week and thought, ‘I should really write this down’.  Your blog doesn't need to be clever.  It needs to sound like you, and it needs to solve a small, real problem for the person reading it.

The bit nobody wants to hear

Blogging isn't a one-off task you tick off and forget.  It's a habit, like flossing or actually reading the terms and conditions.  The value isn't in any single post – it's in the body of work that builds up over months, quietly proving you know what you're talking about.

So if your blog's gathering dust, don't aim for brilliant.  Aim for done, and then aim for it again next fortnight.  That's really the whole trick.

Nobody says ‘sell me something’

I hate selling, mainly because I hate being sold at.  That doesn’t mean I don’t buy things, I definitely do, but I like to feel like I’m in the driving seat, not being driven to a destination I’m not sure I want to be at.

I know people who can sell ice to the Eskimos, but only once.  I’m not interested in single sales, it makes much more sense to have repeat sales, one ‘sale’ and then people keep buying.

That’s usually because they’ve done that thing all the networking groups talk about – know, like, trust.  It’s all about relationships.

It’s about telling people enough that they want to buy – and there’s the difference.

Back in the dark ages when I learned sales skills (selling hotel function facilities, then bottles of pop in two different roles, where I was sent on a sales course), I learned all about features and benefits.  I was told that you can’t just explain what the product is, but what it does AND how that benefits the customer.

I think today’s selling isn’t quite so structured.  Yes, there are still elements of all that, but strong businesses work because their customers like the person they’re dealing with and have built a relationship.  The supplier is someone they can call up and ask for help when the going gets tough and feels like a part of their team.

It’s not just “Here’s a product that will be £50 please!”

It’s more “What do you need the product to do?  OK, have you thought about product X – it does everything you need, and is a bit cheaper?”  or “You could save more time if you used X instead, even though it’s a bit more expensive, you’ll get that back in the first production run.”

In other words, it’s about the supplier understanding their customer well enough to make intelligent suggestions. 

When you’re meeting a potential customer, it’s important to get to know them as people as well as their needs as a customer.  Back in the hotel sales department we were forbidden to talk business with potential clients over lunch.  We had to find some common ground and get to know them, whether it was their love of sailing, golf addiction or their newest grandchild.  It’s not a bad strategy, the better you know your client, the more comfortable they will feel and the more likely that they will actually want to work with you.