Marketing isn't a Magic Bullet

Many people come to me to do marketing. What they really want is a magic bullet. I don't have a magic bullet. And as far as I know, neither does any other consultant -- but I am at least honest about that. (Some might convince you they have the Magic Bullet).

Seth Godin wrote a blog about the 3 types of Advertising. Advertising is a subset of Marketing. (So is PR, email, event and 49 other types of marketing.)

Take heed: "Budget appropriately, because the very worst thing you can do with an ad is spend too little--it will get you the same results as spending nothing."

One issue I face with prospects is that they have little budget but have Pepsi sized goals or ideas. Or they have a friend or Fivver that will do it on the cheap. All of that is fine, but you get the results of marketing based on a game plan. Would you just add a component to a computer or a network without knowing its function and how it fits in the whole LAN? Unlikely. All the types of marketing you do should have a goal, a message, a call to action and should all contribute to your brand.

"In order for businesses to win market share and stay relevant they need to consider many types of marketing strategies. Each marketing strategy can communicate to a target market the benefits and features of a product." I disagree with the features part. No one cares about features. They care about the benefit of them, or more significantly the Outcome or Impact of those features. For example, do we care about a 333 horsepower engine or that it means that the SUV (Porsche Cayenne) will be fast?

Marketing can take months to work. Unless you are looking to burn a list or just for a small, one time bump in noise (that may or may not lead to sales.)

Companies need to realize that marketing is about the value proposition but it is dependent on deployment, order processing, billing, etc. (unless you are a monopoly or household name).

When a sales call comes in or a web lead emails in, there needs to be a process to track and handle it - all the way through to billing. You don't have to. Obviously, you can swivel chair it and not track it, but if you don't measure it, you can't manage it (or improve it).