Blog Author Mellissah Smith - Page 65

My friends keep telling me that "life begins at 40". To be brutally honest, I am not so sure. How can someone think that is the case, when in your 20's you made all your mistakes but had the time of your life. In your 30's, you made some more, but they were far more manageable and life was pretty good. You had more money than in your 20's, more experience and had fewer issues. You felt as though you were more comfortable in your own skin and you came to terms with your flaws.

Then you started approaching 40. Somehow everything went back a few steps. Firstly, just when you thought you were comfortable in your own skin, you realized that there were a few things you wanted to change. For instance, your appearance. Do those wrinkles really belong to you? Have your eyebrows really drooped that much? Are your boobs really that saggy?

After reading HBR's 10 Must Reads book "On Strategic Marketing", it has made me realize how much small businesses are being confused by what they read and hear in regards to strategic marketing.

If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Right? Well, not always, but it is a good idea to have a plan in place that is a blueprint for what your business is trying to achieve.

The thing with strategic marketing plans is that there are so many variables that have changed and continue to change, that no plan can be set in stone. In fact, you really do need to pick it up out of your drawer every month and revise it, otherwise, you may find out that you are losing ground on what you are trying to achieve as a business.

Googling strategic marketing plans and looking up examples of what other people have written is a waste of time and energy. If this is how you put together your marketing blueprint, then think again. What comes up on Google is simply embarrassing to the marketing industry. Often the examples have been written years ago and do not take into account new marketing techniques, changes in economic conditions or the fact that social media is something that no business can ignore.

Like many books today, On Strategic Marketing is all cover, with little substance relating to the topic at all. Yes, it talks about how sales and marketing can work together, it talks on customer relationships, branding in the digital age adn more. But to be totally honest, its a bland read that needs some real substance. Not too indifferent from other reads on the bookshelf that have eye catching titles but fail to live up to expectations.

Strategic marketing has changed and there are many variables to take into account:

1. Overall business goals, objectives and resources
2. Target market and SWOT analysis
3. Customer relationships
4. Employee relationships and culture
5. 5 P's; Product, price, promotion, place and people
6. Social media
7. Technology 
8. KPI's

By moving Social media and technology out of what we all learnt at University in the 5P's, it allows us to give these areas of importance individual focus and accomodate the fact that social media and technology are the biggest drivers of marketing strategies today.

Establishing a workable marketing strategy that is continually updated and deeply ingrained in your company's DNA is paramount to achieving marketing success.

Innovation was a popular word in the office yesterday and as I watched everyone talk about innovation in one way or another, I became enthralled with how excited everyone was just by using the term.

It was eight years ago when I first came up with the idea of producing a custom magazine for my business Marketing Eye.

I put it in my business plan and had every intention of doing it.

Over the years, I have been dumb-founded by what former employees have written on their LinkedIn profiles about what they did while working at Marketing Eye.

The first one that had me gob-smacked was a French assistant, who wrote that she had developed and managed the Marketing Eye brand, building the company’s marketing strategy and executing it.

In reality, she was a personal assistant, who had poor English and was struggling to do any task at all from an administrative perspective. She didn’t write anything, had no contact at all with design or branding but was excellent at organizing my dinner appointments, assisting me with my wardrobe and in general being a great personal assistant, albeit one that could not write on an email on my behalf because of the poor English factor. She worked for me for a few months only which I did it as a favour for her boyfriend who was a good friend at the time. In the end, I had to tell him, that her English was so bad, I couldn’t afford the luxury of her impeccable taste in clothing, makeup and picking restaurants at that stage of my life.

Instragram, the billion dollar acquisition of Facebook, is finally paying dividends. Just weeks after the launch of a new feature, Instagram video, the social media platform has exploded overtaking its main competitor in short frame video, Vine. 

While Vine has been a novelty to many, its 6 second video application has gone from 2.5 million Vine links on Twitter on June 19 to a massive dip of 900,000 links shared on Twitter, an alarming 64 percent drop, just one week later.

The first disclaimer I have is that I am not a parent. In fact, I am nowhere close. I have a dog, whom I love dearly, nieces and nephews – but that is it.

It seems odd that I would choose to write this blog, given my situation, but as odd as it may be, I think there is some relevance.

On Wednesday, I was flying from Chicago to Denver and there was an African-American woman with two children under 2-years of age who were crying. As I watched the situaiton, I heard snickers around this lady getting louder and louder with people complaining “just my luck to sit next to screaming kids” and “I have a headache already”. 

A simple conversation can lead to anything. Literally, anything.

Like many entrepreneurs, gravitating to other entrepreneurs or business people is natural. Talking to a Neurosurgeon is not.

"It's not brain surgery" is one of my favorite sayings. The other, "it's not rocket science". It seems quite apt that I find myself in conversation with a neurosurgeon, whose gene pool is only bolstered by the fact his father is a rocket scientist.  Was I intimidated. Hell yes! But how impressed I was to be having such an intriguing and relevant conversation with a neurosurgeon, was only interrupted by moments of wanting to be opportunistic. I had to literally stop myself asking if a sperm donation was a point I could include in the discussion. Now, what single woman wouldn't want to have a child with this gene pool?

Nevertheless, when I pulled myself together, I realized the synergies between business and neurosurgery isn't actually poles apart and much closer than one would think. As a marketer, we have certainly learnt a lot from neuroscience and consumer behaviour, but the outlook of how a surgeon views what they do, was what struck me as being something every entrepreneur can learn from.

Today I met with a woman who had worked in experiential marketing and it occured to me that so many experiential marketing companies are out of date with new marketing techniques. Only 18 months ago, I remember speaking to a local experiential marketing company and showing them how to incorporate social media into the mix. Really? Had they been sleeping under a rock? 

Fortunately for them, they were not alone, but I have noticed they have been using that free advice and have spruced up their efforts - big time! The old-fashion event gals and guys who started experiential marketing firms are being overtaken by more creative outfits like buzzer.nl who have taken experiential marketing to a whole new level.

Yesterday I learnt that my reference to Hot Atlanta is actually not meant to be Hot Atlanta but in fact, Hotlanta. 

Here I am going around thinking I am uber cool using Hot Atlanta as reference to the city that I have come to love, all while everyone else desperately wants to correct me, but don't. Possibly because they feel sorry for my constant need to become more familiar with American terms and sayings to help me fit in a bit better and feel like I am really part of the crowd.

Unfortunately, that's not my only failed attempt at "when in Rome, do as the Romans do". At a launch party for Hublot and Ferrari last night at Buckhead's hottest bar, Yebo, I remember walking outside at 9pm and thinking how amazing it was that it was still light, after totally missing an entire thunderstorm with lightning as I was having a fabulous time. Everyone in sync began to tell me how "nasty" the weather had been. Really nasty!!!! I laughed and repeated it to them trying desperately to mimmick their accents.