by Dan Freeman, Editor SMB Marketing Report
Why does marketing always seem to get the short shrift among small & mid-sized businesses? This was the question we posed to John Jantsch, author of the top selling book Duct Tape Marketing. “It’s pretty simple really, they didn't get into business because they were great marketers, they got into business because they wanted to or knew how to do what the business does. It doesn't take long though for them to realize they are actually in the marketing business”. Yet even those executives that understand the value of marketing have a hard time committing the time or resources to it. “Even though most business owners are also their firm's CMO, they rarely spend any time in that box. If they do, it's primarily reacting to the ‘idea of the week’ “, say Jantsch.
In his best-selling book, E-Myth, Michael E. Gerber observes that most businesses fail because the founders are specialists that were inspired to start a business without knowledge of how successful businesses run. The ‘myth’ is that people who are experts regarding technical aspects of a product or service will also be expert at running a business. All businesses must eventually learn to build internal systems or processes, so that work activities are systematized, like in a franchise operation. No business process is more crucial to systematize than marketing. Marketing is responsible for the profitable growth of a business and no organization can scale up without building repeatable, measurable and improvable marketing processes.
There are three dimensions to a successful marketing system. First, you need an ongoing marketing strategy. This is where you hone in on your target market and your understanding of that market. It’s also where you identify your competition, position your products and articulate what makes you different and the value you provide. According to Gerber, “your marketing strategy starts, ends, lives, and dies with your customer”. Yet, he observes that “most small business owners, suffering from…‘willful disinformation’, simply decide what they want to do without any information at all”.
After your marketing strategy is established and you have an ongoing process to assess and improve it, every business needs a lead generation process. Simply put, this is an organized set of activities that stimulate demand, capture interest and generate leads. This is where you implement your marketing mix. The key to systematizing your lead generation process is establishing goals, measuring results, and making adjustments and improvements along the way. One important consideration for small businesses is what to do ‘in-house’ or with existing resources versus what you may want to consider bringing in the experts for. According to Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing. “this is an area that can be outsourced, but certainly not abdicate”. Business owners and managers need to be actively involved in creating and managing the lead generation process.
The last dimension of a marketing system is the use of marketing & sales technology. The most important technology a small or mid-sized company needs to master is their web site. Today, a web site is more than a requirement for being in business. A web site should serve as your marketing hub. It should contain your core messages and be highly focused on your target market. Of course your site needs to be professional looking and easy to navigate, but that is just the start. The site should attract prospects and engage customers. While the web site serves as the marketing hub, it must be enabled with both inbound and outbound marketing. Inbound marketing is a particularly hot area today and included search engine marketing and the creation of rich content which may be found on blogs RSS feeds and other easy to use content generators. Jantsch is a big fan of blogs. “Blogs are a great way to build trust, spread your expertise, and get PR opportunities. I’ve had more than one publication interview me just for the fact that I had a blog. There are still some industries where that is a very unique tool all by itself.”
Outbound marketing constitutes more of the traditional activities such as direct mail and, today, email marketing programs. Here again, the key is to systematize these activities. That means setting goals, measuring results, and capturing leads. For example, an email marketing campaign today should always measure opens and links, and should drive recipients to a targeted landing page with a clear call to action. Every step in the process should be monitored and managed for optimum results. For more information about creating a marketing system for your business visit
www.marketinggs.com.
