Expert Marketing Blog - Page 66

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.