What You’re Doing Isn’t Marketing

Marketing Is So Much More Than Pretty Pictures

During the course of my work, I speak with coaches, consultants and business owners pretty much every single day.

With very few exceptions, most of them confuse ‘Marketing’ with ‘Promotion’, or ‘Ads’, or ‘Public Relations.

The danger, moving forward, is that the historic role of marketing – as a key component of an organisation’s strategic execution – will disappear forever.

We’ll be left with Martech-driven, cookie-cutter campaigns producing ever lower returns – and where marketing will get the blame.

Marketing brings the customer's voice to the table.

Not only is this important for future product and sales strategy. It (should) include insights and recommendations on real-world, tangible metrics like Customer Lifetime Value and Customer Acquisition Cost.

Real marketing is first about having a deep and fundamental understanding of your customer. After that, it’s coming up with a strategy designed to help your business increase sales in the market you’re in. The sexy bells and whistles are, of course, an essential part of the route to success. But they’re not where you should begin – and they’re certainly not the most significant part.

It’s no wonder so many businesses come to us complaining about how their marketing isn’t working.

Most coaches, consultants and small business owners haven’t a clue about the internal workings of the business where they work.

They just want to post (yet) another pretty picture on Instagram. 

That’s not marketing.