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Showing posts from September, 2019

Do you need a marketing strategy, or a business strategy?

Here are a few strategic questions I ask when I engage companies on their marketing: Where do you want to go with this company? What are you selling? Who are you selling it too? Why must they buy it? How do you communicate it to them? Are customers responding? Clearly, these are foundational, but are they marketing strategy questions, or business strategy questions? The more I consult to companies, the more I am confronted by the overlap in these. In many cases, marketing strategy is business strategy. Often step one in helping a company improve its marketing, is to focus on the business itself. If there is no vision, clear offerings and clarity on whom it serves, there can be no marketing. Marketing strategy depends on business strategy. Be careful next time that you phone a marketer - they may just ask uncomfortable business questions. Marketing strategy questions are really business strategy questions in disguise. If your business strategy is unclear, you can't do

Marketing is a hundred times more difficult.

The usual progression goes like this: Sell through your network, Sell through a sales force, Sell through marketing. As you move from one level to the next, the job becomes incrementally more difficult.  10X. There's this idea of "ten ex", i.e. ten times better, faster, smarter in order to stand a chance and survive in today's business environment. Maybe 10X also applies to the added difficulty of moving from network selling to salesforce selling, to sales driven by marketing?  Using a salesforce is ten times more difficult than relying on your network, and incorporating marketing comms is a further ten times harder. Think about it. Maybe 10X also applies to the added difficulty of moving from network selling to salesforce selling, to sales driven by marketing?  Selling through marketing is likely a hundred times more difficult than asking your buddy to buy from you. (it is also a much more powerful because your reach is much larger)

Marketing is the bridge to your next sale.

List your marketing activities and draw a line that connects everything to the next sale. This line represents the purchase funnel of your business. It's seldom straight, meaning it may start with someone seeing a post on LinkedIn, then taking a detour to your website before going back to LinkedIn and then emailing you. This line is the purchase funnel of your business. It is the bridge that connects your company to the customer. It is probably the most critical concept to understand for entrepreneurs. If you can draw this line that connects your product, marketing comms, business dev and sales to the customer's eyeballs, you are in the money. A pathway to the gold at the end of the rainbow. All you need to do now is make sure your product is available and delivers on its promise. Sweet dreams. It is a well-accepted analogy that marketing (in its broadest sense) as a bridge that connects your company with prospective customers. This bridge can have many on-roads where pro