A strange and intriguing email came to me from a reader who told me, that he couldn’t afford to market. His business was on life-support, he was in a deep hole and the last thing he could imagine was investing in some expensive marketing. Could I help?
I shared with this reader that the best time to dig a well is before you are thirsty. He seemed confused at first but in his next email, he acknowledge that he knew I was right, and he was drowning and should have reached out for help three years ago when he started. This reader shared with me that he didn’t understand what marketing is, and what marketing isn’t.
Advice for Starts Ups. If you have a new business, and you aren’t thinking about marketing, you too may be thirsty without a well. Before you are gulping for water, here is some advice to make clear what marketing isn’t and what it is…
What Marketing ISN’T
- Marketing isn’t advertising. It can be a tactic you use, but advertising isn’t marketing.
- Marketing isn’t an afterthought you bolt on. You need to develop your product and service through the filter of what pain point you will solve. Think painkillers not vitamins.
- Marketing isn’t separate and apart from the quality of the people you hire to work on your business. They will touch your customers you better make sure they represent the ethos of your brand from the start.
- Marketing isn’t a cold call to a disinterested party that interrupts them.
- Marketing isn’t selling before a relationship is established. Marketing isn’t continuously interrupting without permission.
- Marketing isn’t a fancy four-color brochure that no one reads when it talks about you, your building and all the stuff you do.
- Marketing isn’t a website that no one visits like a trade show booth stuck in a corner.
- Marketing isn’t an after the fact activity. Marketing thinking is something you build into everything you do from day one.
Marketing IS
- The helpful and useful things you do for the community you want to serve
- The clear benefit that you communicate that helps distinguish you from your competitors
- The respect you show customers who lost their receipt and wanted to exchange something at the store.
- The thoughtful and intelligent way you help customer’s navigate through your website to find what they need.
- Waiting to be invited to explain your product offering after building a deeper connection first
- Helping me, as the customer to trust you and believe in your promise.
- The story that I, as the consumer tell myself about your brand.
- The way you leverage a social media channel to build a brand personality with true human characteristics.
- Marketing is the unique and distinctive business model that cuts out a middle man or offers an alternative approach to the conventional and accepted.
No one would start a business without an understanding of the capital needed to get the business off the ground. You’d get financial advice. Why wouldn’t you give the same consideration to the “communications capital” required to tell your story and get your message to your targeted audience? Ask a marketing professional to review your plans early in the process. A few hours of a marketing professionals time could help you sharpen your message.
Marketing happens at every point where you, your employees and your brand touch a potential customer. Don’t be thirsty when its too late.
I have a shovel and am ready to dig virtually a well with you. Let’s get started.
