You won't build a sustainable business unless you build a company brand, and to build a brand, you need to do marketing. Scream and kick as much as you like, but ultimately you will have to spend money on marketing to create a name for your business that stands by itself, even if you are on holiday, or dead. I have come to realise that few business owners want to grow beyond a certain point, so I have stopped saying to them "do marketing for growth". Growth can be a pain, and most entrepreneurs just want to have a good life (including me). Growing for the sake of growing seems "so American". Instead, I have realised there is a much more appealing proposal: do marketing to build a brand.  When marketing blossoms, you have a brand. Almost every entrepreneur wants to leave a legacy. The business is their art-piece,  and they want to know that it will stay behind even if they are long gone. Doing proper marketing is essential in making sure this can happ

There is somewhat of a trend globally not to have "Chief Marketing Officers" in large companies but rather other titles, such as Chief Growth Officers (the title at Coca Cola), etc. You can't help but wonder: do you, as a business owner, even need someone with the title "marketing" in your company? My answer? Not necessarily. But you do need marketing, as a business skill, in your company! No business can survive without marketing. There is no debate about whether marketing fundamentals are still relevant. Being focused on the customer; defining a clear value proposition; having a strong, well-recognised brand and clear messaging. These things are not in dispute. But do you need someone with the title "marketing" to make these things happen? Not really. Arguably, the best marketer to have ever lived is Steve Jobs, and his title was never "Chief Marketing Officer". He was the CEO of Apple but understood the essentials of marketing

In business, when you don't know what to say, you use the word "strategy". Do we have a strategy? What is the strategy? Let's have a strategy workshop. It's an overused word that means: I'm not sure what to do, and desperately need to look confident. Strategy time! But do you really need a marketing strategy, or is it just a fancy word for hot air? Let's answer this by starting at the beginning: In business, you want to make investments, not incur expenses. An "investment" is similar to an "expense" but with a long term benefit to the business. To move from pure expense to investment, you need to think deeply about how you spend your money: where are you spending it, why and what should the results be? I regard this process of thinking as "strategy". Too many businesses don't think through their marketing, meaning it remains a pure expense, with little upside. This is why you need a marketing strategy - to

I was at a function last week when the owner of a small business told me he was struggling to make sales. I hear this often, but what made it different this time was that the business had an existing contract with a big corporate: MTN, the multinational mobile operator. How do you struggle for new business when you already have such a large customer on your side? Like most entrepreneurs, this one also had a lingering feeling that maybe better marketing could be the answer, but precisely what needed to be done? I decided to try and help with some practical advice: My first question: Where do you want to get new business from? (he needed some time to think - like most entrepreneurs faced with this question) Answer: Other telecoms companies. Me: do you have a list of such "other telecoms companies"? Him: no First recommendation: Get someone to prepare such a list. (a good idea, he thought)  Me: once you have your list, do you know what you are goi

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