Not 100% sure what marketing is, or how to do it?

James Rae

Free Member
Mar 31, 2018
135
25
UK
Am I wrong? I believe that the best form of marketing has been and always will be 'word of mouth'. The lowest acquisition cost is that of NEW customers propagated from HAPPY past and exiting customers........ Is it not?

So great offering great customer service and a noteworthy customer experience will provide reviews to attract new customers.
 
Upvote 0
As some of you will know, I'm a marketing and business development consultant who specialises in speaking to business owners just before they embark on any kind of marketing activity, to make sure they base all of their decisions and activities on a sound strategy. As such, I speak to many hundreds of small business owners every year. If I could pinpoint one topic of conversation that gets clients thinking about marketing in the right way, more than any other topic, it's this.

Marketing is everything you do. There isn't a single thing you do in your business that shouldn't be thought of as marketing (or shouldn't at least be considered from a marketing perspective).

If you are struggling to understand exactly what marketing is or how it should be used, try thinking of it like this. It shouldn't take you long at all to have a much better understanding of what marketing is, and how you should be incorporating in into absolutely everything you do.

Marketing isn't another name for advertising, or a way in which you find clients (although obviously, if done well marketing will provide you with as many clients as you could ever need). Marketing is a process you use to tailor every part of your business to both meet the needs of your target market, and also to maximise your profits. Whilst I'm on the subject, it's also the way in which you choose who your target markets are in the first place, and also how you find out what their needs are.

I hope some of you find the above thought provoking.

Nice information, The main thing which I like "Marketing isn't another name for advertising." People often consider that Marketing=Branding=Asvertising, which is completely wrong.
 
Upvote 0

Calvin Crane

Free Member
Jun 8, 2018
260
35
At the very top of this discussion was the point I strongly agree with. It saddens me that many would be successful businesses will fail because they fail to do more than have a facebook page and or twitter. These are great tools and those channels are excellent but they are just a part of the digital marketing mix. Also those platforms are very good at getting you to boost a post etc..If you do advertise on those channels do so by directly targeting setting an Ad up properly not boost a post. You may need to do a lot of testing reading and be ready to loose money when you start if you are going to DIY it. Then you need to look at the sales funnel side after the social media click happens..conversion.
 
Upvote 0

Cullen Evans

Free Member
Jun 27, 2018
1
0
Excellent post. I think you're absolutely right, marketing should incorporate all aspects of the business and we should always be thinking about how we can market ourselves more and more each day.

That being said, I think a lot of people forget about how our own customers can be used as marketing tools - seen as word of mouth promotion is the most powerful form of promotion for small businesses.

There are lots of platforms that make this easy for business owners out there too these days and Im curious why so many SB owners are not using them to gather feedback.

There's some food for thought guys!
 
Upvote 0
D

Dheepika Cho

I
As some of you will know, I'm a marketing and business development consultant who specialises in speaking to business owners just before they embark on any kind of marketing activity, to make sure they base all of their decisions and activities on a sound strategy. As such, I speak to many hundreds of small business owners every year. If I could pinpoint one topic of conversation that gets clients thinking about marketing in the right way, more than any other topic, it's this.

Marketing is everything you do. There isn't a single thing you do in your business that shouldn't be thought of as marketing (or shouldn't at least be considered from a marketing perspective).

If you are struggling to understand exactly what marketing is or how it should be used, try thinking of it like this. It shouldn't take you long at all to have a much better understanding of what marketing is, and how you should be incorporating in into absolutely everything you do.

Marketing isn't another name for advertising, or a way in which you find clients (although obviously, if done well marketing will provide you with as many clients as you could ever need). Marketing is a process you use to tailor every part of your business to both meet the needs of your target market, and also to maximise your profits. Whilst I'm on the subject, it's also the way in which you choose who your target markets are in the first place, and also how you find out what their needs are.

I hope some of you find the above thought provoking.

It's indeed thought provoking. Thanks for the good post.
 
Upvote 0

AMSUSER

Free Member
Jul 20, 2018
32
4
I think that the many arms of marketing include:

Public relations
Brand management
Market research
Marketing communications, which can be further divided into digital marketing, social media marketing, direct (mail) marketing, and traditional channels like print, radio, and billboards.
Sales
Customer service

Marketing is not sales. Yes, it leads to sales by getting the word out there through branding and advertising, via both the written word and images, and then luring prospective customers in, but a marketer is not the one to actually interact with the sales lead—that’s the job of the sales person in the sales department.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Partner Relations
Upvote 0

Partner Relations

Free Member
Jul 31, 2018
14
0
This is a very good post and I agree, I even consider the way your dress/present yourself as marketing. I am always ready for somebody to enquire about business just from the way I dress. The other day some kids asked me if I was a member of the secret service. I responded "Yes, but it is a secret so don't tell anybody." appearances are important and I find I am taken more seriously and make better informed decisions when I look like the kind of person who's time is valuable.
 
Upvote 0

Partner Relations

Free Member
Jul 31, 2018
14
0
I think that the many arms of marketing include:

Public relations
Brand management
Market research
Marketing communications, which can be further divided into digital marketing, social media marketing, direct (mail) marketing, and traditional channels like print, radio, and billboards.
Sales
Customer service

Marketing is not sales. Yes, it leads to sales by getting the word out there through branding and advertising, via both the written word and images, and then luring prospective customers in, but a marketer is not the one to actually interact with the sales lead—that’s the job of the sales person in the sales department.


You hit the nail on the head with customer service, my biggest strength is my in person communication and relationship building skills. I work at a hotel and we have a silent competition of who can get mentioned the most on trip advisor.
 
Upvote 0

Partner Relations

Free Member
Jul 31, 2018
14
0
That's a good example of a business which need not do any advertising, but could certainly gain from thinking of many of the things it does from a marketing perspective. For example, when choosing which Ram to use, I'm sure they look for one which will give the offspring more desirable or 'marketable' characteristics.

As I said in my introduction post; a lot of businesses leave so much money on the table...
 
Upvote 0
I think it's pretty widely accepted now among businesses of every side, that marketing - and more particularly digital marketing - is not a bolt on task for interns, junior staff members or admin staff. Rather it's a large part of somebody's job description and one they should be experienced in...
 
Upvote 0
My personal experience from moving from SMe s to big business and back is this:
80% of CEOs think marketing brings in sales and apart form eCommerce (nearly) it absolutely does not.
eCommerce and even very simple lead generation also relies heavily on language, information architecture, user experience none of which is marketing.
Marketing is how you a produce large number of suspects qualified into a very small number of prospects so that a sales person or rarely an eCommerce engine can convert them into customers.
I have seen a sales-rep leave a meeting in anger walk into a cafe and return in an hour with a signed up order, you won't ever see a marketer do that. If you can only afford one of them, hire the salesman.
Most people overspend marketing budget mistakenly trying to sell to them, don;t do it.
I read many questions about why people are so nice and then don't buy anything and I hear wannabe sales people talk about hard closing tricks that might have cornered them. That is all bologne too.
A salesman sitting with a dozen qualified prospects will return with a lot of business and no bullying or trickery needed. The amateurs however waste their days trying stupid tricks with people who would never have bought anyhow. That is the one and only difference. Its also the reason to be very wary around social media and networking events.
 
Upvote 0
Interesting how long this thread has been running! I always viewed 'Marketing' as being 'identifying your market' and all the thought and research that goes into getting your promotion efforts to work, and 'advertising' as promoting yourself to your market having worked out what promotion you need to do. This means your 'advertising' is a result of your 'marketing' research and decisions. A search on google for the difference between marketing and advertising says similar:

The REAL Difference Between Marketing & Advertising. Advertising is just one component, or subset, of marketing. Public relations, media planning, product pricing and distribution, sales strategy, customer support, marketresearch and community involvement are all parts of comprehensive marketing efforts.

I think people get confused as new methods for doing both arise. Some people may think they are 'not advertising' when using these new methods (e.g. posting on social media or forums). But really, whether you are paying for an 'advertisement' or consuming your own time posting on social media ('your time' spent posting is a form of payment too), you are still 'marketing and advertising'.

Going back to 'marketing' then, in all our own business sectors, we have to compete with numerous other businesses like ourselves, (I am a hotel, so I am commpeting against other hotels) to get seen 'on line'. The way to do this is to 'specialise', otherwise you have no chance of being seen. But if we all did this, we would all end up doing one tiny aspect of what we currently do. I tried various ideas to fill my hotel, many of which failed but eventually I learned which niches worked - the main guests I attract are dogs, ghost hunters and weddings. These are not compatible, so each specilaity requires its own website. Over the years these sites attract reasonable organic traffic, by 'specialising' in one aspect of the hotel, and they do better than if I had relied on just one 'general' website for the hotel as a whole.

Successful Marketing in the internet age, I feel is about identifying niche markets so you can market to a niche speciality, and then looking to find and develop further niches. Yes you have to 'specialise' to get found on line, but you can have several 'special niches'.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Tin
Upvote 0

Haindiary

Free Member
Jan 14, 2019
37
0
Amsuser all right said. It is not for nothing that large companies have separate marketing departments. This is a very large area that requires training and investment.
Yes, of course, the old methods from a satisfied customer to another, the potential is good.
Have a page in social networks you need. Site. Ok, but this is not enough to get new customers. Advertising in social networks is already something.
I tend to think that all means are good in war. You have invested in the idea, you are hoping to make a profit and expand the business - it means that you will get into marketing.
 
Upvote 0

HomeWrking

Free Member
Mar 9, 2019
35
5
Good points here - people often have the most superficial understanding of marketing and marketers need to do well in educating the small business marketplace. One problem is that many small business owners are run ragged and there attention span is short so preaching this message can seem a bit annoying...
 
Upvote 0

Darkterror

Free Member
Mar 17, 2019
48
4
Marketing skills are very important for everyone engaging in business activities of any kind. You might be having an established company with a marketing department, but that doesn't mean you should have no PR skills yourself. You never know when it will come in handy.
 
Upvote 0
A lot of answers above are on definitions of marketing. The bigger question is how to do it. To recap, there is an old mnemonic - SPACCO - Suspects, Prospects, Appointments, Continuing Sales Activity, Close and Order. Marketing I view as the identification of the Suspects, for your service or product.

Advertising is the promotion of ones goods or services to the Suspects who might be in the market for your services etc.

Marketing and Advertising are almost interchangeable, but both are very different from sales. The sales process starts when Suspects respond, and by enquiring, become Prospects. The selling process involves stages of conversion, to convert the Prospects into Appointments, and the Appointments into bookings or signed contracts - this being the Close. Order comes after the Close and is the stage at which the product or service is delivered and paid for, or the product is consumed and paid for.

Some examples might be useful.

As an example of Marketing, my first job involved selling inventions insurance to inventors. The Suspects were everyone who applied for a Patent, so we obtained lists from the Patent office of all Patent applications. These were mailed and those who responded were Prospects. We then booked appointments with the people who responded, and I went and saw them, and some bought Patent Insurance.

If we did not get enough people enquiring, we simply phoned the people who were listed on the Patent Application. I tended to call people whose product would more likely need to be insured, as (A) they were more likely to buy if they needed the cover, and (B) if they needed the cover, they were higher risk and so the premium would be higher and I would earn more commission on the higher premiums.

My identification of the right patent owners for our insurance I would term as Marketing. So in a way the marketing element here was collecting the Patent Applications from the patent office, and the advertising element was contacting them by mail. My selecting which ones to phone was perhaps 'marketing' but the act of phoning them was a form of prospecting, and once I phone them I was clearly 'selling'.

As I was selective who I called, the success rate on booking appointments was high. I would not call phoning them 'marketing' as it was a 'sales call'. I was selling them on booking an appointment. Marketing was the process of selection re who to call.

Not everyone knew they needed the cover even when I told them, but generally they understood the logic that if their product could be mass produced cheaply, and had a reasonable mark-up, then the risk of it being copied was higher than if it was a product with a limited use in a specialist, tiny market.

In my first business - a domestic cleaning agency launched in 1987, before the internet - Marketing involved identifying the types of houses and areas that would likely become clients employing a private cleaner. The advertising took the form of leaflets and cards door dropped into the wealthier areas, houses and flats, having targeted houses most likely to need a cleaner.

The people who enquired were the prospects, and the selling system was to book appointments with them, sign them up to the agency terms, then allocate a cleaner to be interviewed, and to bill them once the cleaner was started. The marketing element was identifying the houses most likely to become clients.

The cleaners were initially loads of part timers including a load of overseas students on student visas (these were allowed to work 20 hours a week in those days). The business was successful as the more leaflets one delivered the more clients we obtained. The marketing system (leafleting) enabled the business to be franchised, and eventually there were 93 branches and tens of thousands of clients and cleaners nationally.

It all worked wonderfully, until the internet came along and loads of competitors were able to set up and market themselves with their own websites, with more and more workers coming in from Eastern European countries joining the EU. Our own agencies which once dominated the market were flooded with competition and leafleting was no longer effective.

My second and current business is a once derelict castle in the Brecon Beacons, bought initially to act as an HQ for the cleaning agency franchise, but also as a form of Escape to the Country from London. It was a way of buying somewhere interesting that could be done up, on the profits of the main business. As the main business declined, over the years, so the Castle had to pay its own way. This involved a bit more 'marketing' to establish who would visit the castle.

We thought of conferences, hen parties, weddings, and walkers and cyclists in the Brecon Beacons. Of these only weddings took off and we now have 110 weddings a year.

To supplement the weddings, we eventually identified dog walkers and dog owners and promoted ourselves as a dog friendly B&B in Wales. The site was first written in 2012, as if by a dog. We now mainly have B&B guests with dogs and the hotel midweek often has more dogs than humans.

Other niches followed, including a chance encounter with a ghost hunting outfit who started running ghost hunts at the castle, and then we were featured on Living TV's Most Haunted (2004). Ghost Hunting at the Castle has been a feature for nearly 20 years, with an average of 30 ghost hunts groups a year (all staying the night on a D,B&B basis).

With the Internet, the prospecting side of things, trying to find ones markets, is much more 'marketing' orientated than 'sales' orientated. The whole process of SEO, keywords, niche pages or niche websites on specific products or services etc, follows on from deciding what one's niche markets are. I found the key niches for my hotel are Brides and Grooms looking for a wedding venue, Dog owners looking for a dog friendly break, and Ghost Hunters looking for a paranormal experience. Each niche is so different, each requires its own website and promotion.

Once one establishes ones niche markets, the advertising stage (which feels more like a marketing stage) is now focused on 'being found' - hence all this emphasis on SEO. My sites do OK on SEO but they could do a lot better. I am probably not doing half the things I should do. Adwords is always a fall back when something specific needs promoting.

I don't think SEO work is traditional advertising; it's more marketing as it's all about fighting to be found first. Our ghost hunting niche is small but we can always be found by someone searching for ghost hunts in Wales. Weddings is far more competitive, so more sub-niches need to be worked on within 'weddings' - e.g. 'castle weddings'.

If you find a specialist niche and it is big enough to earn a good return you are eventually going to find a lot of competition trying to outdo you on getting to the top of the pile, to be found first.

Is it 'marketing' when you do SEO work to ensure one can be found by buyers of your niche services, or is it 'advertising'. Certainly Adwords is advertising, but doing things that get your site to the top of Google organically - this feels to me a bit more like marketing - much the same as when I was identifying the houses that would likely employ cleaners.

When I created a niche website on dog friendly B&B, this felt like a marketing exercise rather than advertising. I agree that advertising and marketing get very blurred, but would contend that marketing is the intellectual process of defining ones market, while advertising is promoting oneself to that market.

Viewing the two elements as separate is useful as if you wear your marketing hat it gets you thinking, "who are my buyers" "where will I find them" (looking at the Suspects in SPACCO). Whereas if you put on your advertising hat, the question is more "how do I advertise to get people enquiring?", "where do I advertise to this group of suspects?", "how do I word my advertising?" "what is my unique selling proposition?" and all the design work etc.

I know now if I went into another hotel, I would identify some niche markets I use (marketing) that they might benefit from attracting too. I bet most hotels have not targeted dog owners as I have, and certainly not ghost hunters. And I might pick up on some things they are doing that I have not spotted. Likewise if you went and visited some of your competitors, you might find elements of marketing that they have identified that would work for you, things they have thought of that you have not. This process I suppose would be identified as 'marketing' yet we so often see marketing as 'marketing ourselves to buyers' which is 'advertising'. Oh well, I thought I knew what Marketing was, but whatever it is, I do enjoy doing it! It is very satisfying when one gets it right.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
  • Like
Reactions: Alison Moore
Upvote 0

Edward Sparrow

Free Member
May 28, 2019
6
0
Good post.

The other thing is the underestimation many people and businesses have of the amount of effort marketing can take. There are innumerable threads on UKBF from people struggling to get sales but when questioned about how much makering they have done if often reduces to posing on facebook and tweeting.

Markering can be 90% of everything you do. The other 10% is processing the enquiries.

Agree with the above, you can't underestimate the amount of required.
 
Upvote 0

mannierichardson214

Free Member
Jun 19, 2019
31
3
The simplest way to explain it to you:
Marketing is one of the most powerful tools a company can use to create real value for the customer and to make him buy their product or service. The idea is to create a long-term relationship with the customers, multiply them and deliver great value for great prices. Also, this is implemented with the McCarthy's 4P's concept for Product, Price, Place and Promotion. (read some more information about it) Practicing Marketing is a life-long adventure, you have to be persistent, learn new skills and be creative.
 
Upvote 0

TheoNe

Business Member
Business Listing
Jul 6, 2019
143
18
www.vatcalculators.co.uk
As a small business owner, I couldn't agree more. Successfully building brand awareness and recognition can be achieved through dedication to marketing activities.
 
Upvote 0

Nick Garnett

Free Member
Oct 31, 2019
35
9
Suffolk
As some of you will know, I'm a marketing and business development consultant who specialises in speaking to business owners just before they embark on any kind of marketing activity, to make sure they base all of their decisions and activities on a sound strategy. As such, I speak to many hundreds of small business owners every year. If I could pinpoint one topic of conversation that gets clients thinking about marketing in the right way, more than any other topic, it's this.

Marketing is everything you do. There isn't a single thing you do in your business that shouldn't be thought of as marketing (or shouldn't at least be considered from a marketing perspective).

If you are struggling to understand exactly what marketing is or how it should be used, try thinking of it like this. It shouldn't take you long at all to have a much better understanding of what marketing is, and how you should be incorporating in into absolutely everything you do.

Marketing isn't another name for advertising, or a way in which you find clients (although obviously, if done well marketing will provide you with as many clients as you could ever need). Marketing is a process you use to tailor every part of your business to both meet the needs of your target market, and also to maximise your profits. Whilst I'm on the subject, it's also the way in which you choose who your target markets are in the first place, and also how you find out what their needs are.

I hope some of you find the above thought-provoking.
Interesting, I've been saying this for years and you're one of the few people I've ever heard saying the same thing, not " we need to do some marketing", it's the same with "customer service", if I hear another person say "our customer service is the best" I'll scream, everything is customer service. Great to hear
 
Upvote 0

Faizan Shaikh

Free Member
Jan 4, 2020
8
0
When you have a business you need to do marketing to make your business successful.With out marketing not any business can take growth.Marketing you can do in many ways such as verbally by mouth you can talk to anyone and can do marketing and there are more wayssuch as doing it online where people needs information there you can tell about your brand/company/product.
 
Upvote 0
I agree with you completely. Many underestimate the work of marketers and consider this area of activity frivolous. But I can say that in our company, which is a provider of personnel services, the activities of marketers are very much appreciated.
 
Upvote 0

Limited100

Free Member
May 1, 2020
84
17
Marketing is the art of defining your company goals, conducting internal and external analyses to identify opportunities and develop strategic objectives such as 'to invest £x in marketing activity to deliver a lifetime customer value of x by date x'. It's about learning what customers want, defining who your ideal customers are and then packaging your product in a way that is enticing, relevant and valuable enough for them to buy from you, ideally again and again. Another way of looking at marketing is that it's about helping prospects and customers at each stage of the customer journey, making it frictionless for them to progress to the next stage (awareness, consideration, evaluation, purchase, loyalty, advocacy).
 
Upvote 0

Latest Articles

Join UK Business Forums for free business advice