I want to make sure that we are on the same page when we are talking about Marketing.
Marketing is not advertising. To define this point I am going to take two definitions, straight from Wikipedia.
What is marketing?
Marketing is defined by the AMA as "an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating, and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders.” – Wikipedia
What does that mean?
Marketing is every bit of contact your company has with anyone.
What is advertising?
Advertising is a form of communication used to encourage or persuade an audience (viewers, readers or listeners) to continue or take some new action. – Wikipedia
What does that mean?
Advertising is persuasive communication and only a part of marketing.
So here we have our marketing chart. On it we have
· market research
· media planning
· public relations
· product pricing
· distribution
· customer support
· sales strategy
· community involvement
· Advertising
As you can see, advertising is only a part of marketing and each part is important, however, often we focus so much on advertising. I have to advertise, must advertise, how do I advertise, I don’t know, just advertise, advertise and they will come. And suddenly you have visions of your customers appearing out of the corn field, somehow drawn to your business because of advertising.
If you only focus on advertising, you are losing money.
I want to start with money, because it is a language that we can understand. Ultimately, marketing comes down to making money. Maybe you’re uncomfortable thinking about it that way. The goal of my business is to create a profit. That is the bottom line. You do not go into business to create a deficit, I imagine that your business goals include paying yourself some sort of wage? Even a not-for-profit organization wants to generate enough income to cover the bottom line.
So if you focus only on one piece of the pie, the rest of the pie gets blurred, and what is the result? Poor marketing, unhappy customers, lost profits.
I was asked the question, How do I use marketing?
Well, marketing is going to look different for every business. To say that there is one formula for multiple businesses is crazy. There is no such thing, no seriously, there is no such thing. However, each business has marketing ideal that they want to reach.
So with that in mind I want to share with you some marketing aspects that I feel have been important for me. I hope they are something new that you can learn or something old that you need to think about again. I have broken them down into simple questions.
Also I am convinced that there is very little in life that you can actually separate from each other.
I want to take the next number of posts this week to share some marketing questions that have been important to me.
Do you need help with your marketing? Contact me to get started today!