If you want your business to be successful, you have to do marketing. Even the businesses that say they don’t do marketing, really do – it might just be simple. Or ineffective.
It’s easy to think of marketing only as advertising. Social. Paid search. SEO. Radio. TV. Billboards. Yes, those are marketing. Advertising is a form of marketing. But marketing is broader than that.
Marketing, at a fundamental level, is about how you present your business to the market. To your target market. To your potential customers.
Too many businesses don’t do this fundamental step well: define very clearly what they are, what they do, what they sell, and then present that directly to customers in a straightforward way.
Can a customer easily tell:
- What your business does?
- What you’re selling – is it software, a product, a service?
- What the “attitude” of your business is – established, challenger, cheeky, formal?
- Who your target customers are – individuals, dog owners, small businesses, enterprise? Is it them?
If a slightly disinterested1 prospect who hasn’t dealt with your business before can’t easily tell what your business does within a few seconds of first interacting with your business – usually through the website, but it could be a brochure or similar – you need to improve.
Not everyone needs to understand. But your potential customers do.
If you don’t get this step right, it’s hard to make the other layers of marketing function as effectively as they could. And it will hold your business back.
PS: It’s been a few months since I’ve written anything – sorry about that – moving house and a busier than planned schedule impacted me quite a bit, but that should be settling down now.
- Most prospects are slightly disinterested when they first encounter a new business. ↩︎