I was in a meeting this week with an owner who was clearly frustrated with the marketing results he had seen over the years. He was at wit's end with all the "e-marketers" that has been through his door, none able to help him grow his business. From my experience working with entrepreneurs, many share this frustration. Yet, despite its poor track record, successful marketing remains an ideal that many entrepreneurs are hoping for as they try and grow their companies. They tend to give up on marketers, but not on marketing. Fundamentally, there is an understanding that surely a pure sales based approach cannot be the only way. A sales only approach is inefficient. Hours on the phone trying to secure meetings. More hours on the road driving to meetings, waiting in reception areas, often just to be told to come back later. And once you get into the meeting, there is the inevitable fight over price with margins disappearing quickly. A sales-based approach is

Let's think about your sales situation as a garden. Most businesses have a bone dry garden. There's hardly anything growing, or the little that is, grows too slow. How to improve this situation? Surprisingly, most entrepreneurs will admit they should sprinkle a dose of marketing water over their sales garden to stimulate growth. But there is a problem...instead of piping the water in, many entrepreneurs dump it in, or drip it in. By dumping the proverbial marketing water into your sales garden, the marketing is all over the place with lots of spillage and erosion. No one knows what is going where and why. Today it's Facebook, tomorrow Google Ads; then a few events, followed by nothing for months. On the contrary, dripping the water in results in too little activity happening. You spend a couple of bucks here and there hoping to see a change. With both dumping and dripping, the results are poor. Neither has a measurable effect on sales. You need to pipe the marketing

It is one thing agreeing to do marketing. It is a whole different thing, actually doing it. Most small/medium sized businesses don't do marketing, because - get this - they don't do marketing. That's right; nothing happens, because no-one is doing it. I see this all the time. My client agrees to update their website; then nothing happens; post to social media, nothing happens; write a monthly article to establish opinion leadership....nothing. Marketing requires someone in the business to do something, or someone outside the company must be tasked with doing it. Bottom-line, something needs to happen. "Sales" happen when someone picks up the phone and makes a call to a prospect and goes to visit them. Manufacturing happens when someone flicks a switch to start the machines. Marketing happens when someone writes something, designs it, posts it and promotes it. It doesn't "just happen". If you believe that marketing is an important component of h

We’re all looking to find new business, but how many potential sales sit in your existing network? If you had to send a short email to everyone you have been dealing with over the last five years and told them you’re still around, still focused on solving the same problems, only difference: you’re now better and more experienced - how many of them will re-engage with you? Essentially this is what a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tool is all about - extracting value from relationships. The more I am building my own consulting business, the more I realise the importance of going back to reap, where I have already sowed. It is not just about establishing new fields. In your company, do you keep a list of who you have been dealing with and periodically touch base again? Interestingly, I don’t believe it matters whether these contacts had a good or bad experience working with you. There could have been a massive fallout, or a disastrous outcome - the fact is time

I woke up this morning to the surprising news that Anthony Joshua, big talking super fit and chiselled British boxing superstar, got himself beaten by an overweight, unknown Mexican called Andy Ruiz Jr and decided to change the heading of this blog to "roll up your sleeves and fight!" You see, as I work with businesses in various stages of development, I can't help but ask the question: "what is your attack plan over the next few months?". I know it sounds aggressive, but instead of using fancy words like "strategy" we should all instead prepare for battle. It's tough out there, and you need to be on the offensive to survive. Before you say "yes, but we don't want to be that aggressive, we simply want to make a living... there's room for everyone in our market", let me tell you, your customer does not think like this. They ultimately do something horrible - they choose to either buy from you or someone else. This is where al

I spent time yesterday workshopping through a marketing challenge with a team of very clever people. An electrical engineering PhD, software programmer and university lecturer. They have built the most amazing tool you can imagine. And no one is buying it. Needless to say, as a last resort, they phoned a marketer. Some of the questions they asked: “How much harder must we try to sell?” “How much longer should we spend money on marketing?” “How do we get people to use it?” In my experience, the way to talk about marketing to highly analytical people is to revert back to the core foundations of marketing - the stuff that is decades old and forms the basis of how companies have always grown. Market research, market segments; target customers, brand positioning, marketing messaging and the four Ps: price, promotion, place and product. Thinking through a marketing challenge this way requires everyone in the room, especially myself as the consultant, to admit that actually, we do

It’s about results. Every function in your business must deliver results. Clear; tangible, measured in numbers, and ultimately, money. As I work with small-medium sized companies this truth is evident daily. There is no room for wastage. Every function in the business must deliver - results. But why does Marketing have such a bad reputation with this? Why is so much marketing counted as wastage? It’s because marketing is very easy to do, but very difficult to get right. It’s like running - everyone can run, but only about a hundred and forty people have ever run a hundred meters under 10 seconds. Unbelievable. Everyone can do marketing, but very few see results. Why? Because marketing has two parts: a doing part, and a strategy part. The doing part is flooded with easy options. You can open a Facebook page for your business in minutes and spend the first hundred bucks instantly. However, the strategy part is hidden, silent and where the real secret lies. Marketing strategy