Marketing

I know what marketing is!

Here is my frustration, just because you know what marketing is, does not mean you know how to do it correctly. If you want to go down that road, I know what open heart-surgery is, yet I should not do it. For some reason there seems to be a misconception that marketing is easy and has no real “idea behind it”. This is frustrating for two reasons, one it is wrong and second, for a group of people (marketers) dedicated to creating a message that compels and attracts people, we quite frankly suck at our job.

Here are some common misconceptions about marketing. It’s all about getting customers, no matter where they are from. Speak to everyone so your message hits as many people as possible. We need to be everywhere, that way everyone will see us. While there are many more, these are a few that bug me the most.

First off, yes the point of marketing is to get customers in your door, whether it be a building or online. However it is getting the right customers in the door. If you are selling airplanes, which would you rather have, a group of 100 college students or a group of ten fortune 500 CEO’s. It is about quality not quantity. Actionable Tip: Instead of looking at purely how many people you will reach, look at who they are. Anyone that comes to you and asks for advertising without this info, is not worth your time.

Along with the paragraph above, one major misconception people have with marketing is that your message should speak to everyone. When the truth is, the more direct your message is, the more it speaks in the voice of your customer, the better results you will get. Actionable Tip: Instead of focusing on a general and generic message, create shorter and compelling messages for each segment of your target market or line extension your company offers.

Finally wrapping up, just because your advertising is out there does not mean people are paying attention to it. A key to marketing is determining where your target market is looking and where they pay attention. It has been estimated that people see over 1,500 advertisements per day (http://ams.aaaa.org/eweb/upload/faqs/adexposures.pdf) however the real question is, how many do they remember? Just because you have an ad out there does not mean it will be seen. In fact most of the ads today because of the overload are just white noise that no one pays attention to. Actionable Tip: I will focus on placing my advertising where it will be seen and heard, even if it means a drop in “total reach”. I will instead focus on reaching the right people at the right place and time.

We have just gone over three of the foundations for marketing. They are customer segmentation (who are your customers and what compels them), messaging and channel distribution (where are you placing your marketing). If you start to determine these, your marketing will get a lot of help.