The team and I were chatting yesterday and Gayle made a point that has stuck with me all night: When we talk to people, too many of them don’t understand what marketing is.
Los Angeles Experiential Agency will understand the requirements of the people and provides better results. There are some dos and don’ts that you need to follow. It provides more sales and profits for the business with affiliate marketing. The benefits are excellent for the individuals.
She’s right. And it can make it difficult to show people where we can fit into their company. If they don’t really understand what marketing is, how will they know they need it?
I’ve talked about this a lot. It bugs me, but I also understand it.
The problem, as I have written about before, is the fact that most people conflate strategy and tactics. Or if they are not conflating the two of them, they are focussing all their attention on the one, never bothering to think of the other.
That’s the reason people think of websites, advertising, brochures, leaflets, SEO, Adwords etc. whenever they think of marketing. It’s why they think of pretty words and pretty pictures. They forget that, if you do it well, all of those things come at the end of a process. A process that starts with what marketing is all about.
So I’m going to throw my hat into the ring for a bit, and talk about how we, at Designate, approach marketing. It’s not an exhaustive list, but it may give you some ideas of where you need to focus on, particularly if something isn’t working.
So. Marketing, the Designate way:
Understanding what you do and how it makes money
Seems obvious, but it’s not. What you really do as a business is sometimes the hardest thing to figure out. Too many companies are reactive in this sense. They see an opportunity and they go for it, regardless of how suitable it is. The first thing you really need to do is understand what you do and how it makes the best money. Understanding where you fit
OK, you see some good long-term opportunities. But how do you fit? Where does your offering sit? Do you have competitors? How are you placed against them? Why would someone chose you? What are you bringing to the table? If you can’t answer that, how can you expect prospective clients to do the same? Understanding who your customers are
Who are your real customers, and how much are you kidding yourself on. It’s all well and good to say “anyone who needs…” is a customer, but let’s be honest, they are not. It’s a pipe dream, a fantasy, and an absolutely straight ride to ruin. You need to understand who your customers are really going to be. Who is really your target audience. Who are you really trying to reach and how are you fitting with them? Until you understand this, how can you expect to reach them? Understanding how to reach them
This can sometimes be the pretty bits, so relax, they are here at last. Understanding how to reach your customers is a skill all on it’s own, but notice that it comes on the fourth point? There are three other crucial areas you need to understand before you start to create the mechanisms to reach your customers. And mechanisms will change. They should change. But more importantly, they need to be based on points 1-3 or you’re just as likely to spend a lot of money for nothing. This is precisely why so many companies feel like marketing is a black hole of money. They jump straight to this step and miss out the fundamentals. Understanding how to scale
This is important. Understanding how you’ll scale is one of the truly overlooked aspects of marketing, but one that tends to bite people straight on the ass. If you can’t understand how you’ll scale and cope with the business your marketing brings in, you might as well not do the marketing. You’ll lose those new clients right away. You see marketing isn’t just about bringing in new opportunities, it’s also about keeping the existing ones. It’s about making sure your best foot is forward with everyone in every situation. If your capacity can’t cope with the marketing, you need to think again.
