Alice

One factor facing marketing today that is not accommodated adequately by businesses is that it needs to take time to succeed. So many companies confuse it with sales and expect immediate results, whereas marketing is a long-term strategy, slowly building up relationships, spreading expertise and gaining credibility – for both products and services. The discrepancy between sales and marketing is often confused, fuzzy and misunderstood.

There are so many facets to marketing, whether off or online. All are valid, and yet the question arises: which one should you focus on, or should you try and do all of them at once? Obviously spreading yourself thinly isn’t a good thing, but it would be wise to make yourself aware of your customer or target market, undergoing relevant research into their habits, environment and mind-set, as this will enable you to focus on the correct marketing format needed for your project or campaign.

Capital expenditure certainly determines the limits of your marketing activities. Large budgets enable huge branding and awareness campaigns, smaller budgets rely on social marketing, off and online, carefully and strategically focused on a niche or subject area. It’s important to remember who your customer is, how they think, how they see your product or service, how it will make their lives better, what they feel about it, can they do without it…? Then consider how you will present your product or service to them so that they will take notice and react, such as what special feature do you have that will make them take action in the way that you want?

As today’s customers are saturated with marketing everywhere, what makes yours different? How can you stop them ignoring your hard-worked efforts with a shrug of their shoulders or a turn of their heel? Adverts are glossed over, good marketing is swamped with inappropriate alternatives, bad design and copy make marketing laughable, and hard sell tactics turn people off. To survive you need to study successful marketers to learn how it is done, and then go away and create your own version of it.

Develop a style, become instantly recognisable, measure your results and act upon your findings. Form a long-term goal, focus on the methods of getting there, regularly review your strategies as you go, mark each achievement along the time-line, and never give up, even when things don’t go well. You will always go more steps forward than backwards, because of all the information and data you gain on the way. And each time you perform them, the techniques become slicker, more efficient, easier to accomplish.

So what marketing issues affect you and your business? Is it specific methods, various techniques, understanding motives and interpreting the results? Is it lack of resources, short on expertise, failure to focus or scant ideas? Let us know by leaving a comment in the box below.