This evening I stumbled across what I could only describe as a bombshell for the so called “professional marketing” world.
You see there are just far too many businesses trying too out do one another using overly creative marketing produced by these vary same companies and all they end up with is more confusion and empty pockets.
If these so called “marketing professional” were any good at what they did they would be able to use their own marketing skills to win new business right ? WRONG!
Where Growth Comes FromGrowth occurs where you have a very simple equation that describes the coming together of demand and supply. The greater the demand and the weaker the supply the faster the business growth develops, similar to the simple equation to calculate force which Newton describes in his second law, Force = Mass x Acceleration or F=ma.
There are however other factors that will impact the trajectory of growth in your business which come from shifts in the market that alter what is now deemed in demand and ultimately where supply comes from.
No matter how good your sales and marketing is, it will become ineffective in the long run if your products and services are a pile of tut.
Even Sir Alan Sugar, who’s been labelled himself for producing some questionable products said (and rather well) during one of the apprentice shows:
“I sent you out on a mission to France, to sell quality British products. I gave you a list of organic farmers, people who use tender love and care to create something special, that they take a pride in. And I wanted you to take that product and say “This is what us British produce, this is not mass-produced tut…” and what you do, is you go and buy a breeze block-load of bloody cheddar cheese!”
Well, I’m not going to say much here except that today I received a piece of outbound marketing from none other than…..GOOGLE. Yes one of the worlds biggest online inbound marketing forces and they are sending me an outbound marketing piece to promote Adsense.
Why are they doing this ? Well, not everybody is online, nor are they online all of the time and good outbound marketing still works well if done properly and it helps to create a true closed loop environment.
Right now the whole world seems to be running for the hills into the digital sales and marketing inbound yonder, which is no surprise given the “possibilities” that lay ahead. However many are running blind, taking with them what they have always done into the same digital space which will lead to further confusion if their “other” sales and marketing strategies were or are still ineffective.
A new medium does not translate into success if your message and market just don’t match. What and where your market is and where it goes to look for sources of information will be important to where and how you should start marketing your products or services.
Following up with customers and interested prospects is an area that probably most marketers are actually poor at, as everybody is trying to avoid annoying people on their database.
What I think it really comes down to though is not having enough value to offer your customers or prospects in exchange for making contact other than just trying to push them along towards a sale.
When faced with difficult or seemingly impossible situations most think about giving up, but its often those that are prepared to face their fears and to keep on, keeping on, that go on to reap the rewards from their efforts.
Fear cripples us all in some shape or form. I remember fearing public speaking, so I joined Toastmaster International which helped a great deal.
What did you fear and how did you overcome it ?
I am amazed by just how many people and companies are running away from “selling” or “marketing” because they think its dirty and unnecessary. In fact I spoke about this in a similar article on the love and hate in sales and marketing. It’s not selling and marketing that is the problem, its how people use it in ways that are not mutually beneficial to supplier, customer or partner.
One of the companies I’ve been working with recently landed a £70K+ contract to design and build a customised piece of advanced manufacturing technology, after they were told that the buyer was going to place an order with another supplier just before Christmas last year because they were too expensive.
Now, most companies at this point would have given up, or started to panic, but I knew their was a deal waiting to happen and it just need the right moves.
For some time now I’ve been extending my own social media activity, slowly. When you don’t have lots of staff and massive budgets and you are focused on helping your customer its a tough thing to do and get right. You know what it should look like but creating and engaging amongst everything else you are doing is a tall order indeed.
Just being in a position to “listen” or watch the conversations unfold can be very eye opening and you begin to get a feel for what people are saying, doing and why.
Measuring the effectiveness of your marketing is about “metrics” or building a return on investment “ROI” which helps you to describe the relationship between costs and the return achieved in either leads or profit generated.One of the reasons that stops businesses from measuring their marketing effectiveness is they believe its too early in the process to start when creating or developing their new marketing channel and its especially so with the internet or web marketing because the technology feels so new for many businesses.
I don’t know about you but I’ve noticed that whenever the subjects of Marketing and Sales come up it’s like watching the front row of a horror film at it’s most gruesome part of the show. Just the words on their own are enough to spin people into a frenzy of anger, even when the topic is essential to not just every businesses or organisation but to each and everyone one of us in our daily lives. Connecting and creating friendships, relationships and valuable partnerships is what makes the world go around and we all sell and market in some shape or form, whether we know it or not.
Will Smith on developing a successful attitude in your business.
Ok it’s Friday so here’s a nice idea to end the week. If you’ve heard of the Mad Men series then you’ll love this idea (if not why not!). Jump along to MadMenYourself and get a stylised version of your marketing Mad Men self. What do you think eh ?
p.s. the music on the site is groovy man!
Well as part of a strategic marketing consultancy I thought I should answer this question.
Having a strategy is an important part of developing a businesses and working out where you are going. Your marketing strategy is the route you will take to create customers and generate sales and therefore profits for the business.
Your marketing strategy not only states your goals, objectives and describes your routes to market but it also pulls together all of the different channels and media that can be used and ensures a consistent approach that connects, engages and converts customers which can be measured, tracked and modified for improvement.
Get the new change white paper called the Triangle Of Change which exposes the shocking truths which every business needs to know in order to create growth on today's terms of business.
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