The View From Here

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

What is Marketing?

What is marketing? After 13 years in the business, I believe most people believe marketing is advertising and selling. In fact, those are just two pieces of marketing. Marketing is all about finding the one or two things you do and building your business around them. You need to consider the customer interaction, the design of the workspace, your signage, décor, advertising, message, brochures, website, press relations, even your name and pricing…all these are parts of marketing.

In my world, marketing is a holistic approach to business growth. Without the proper marketing plan, your business won’t succeed. The first step in developing a successful marketing plan is to identify what you really do.

Let’s take an example, my accounting firm. An accountant can say they provide tax returns, financial statements and such. They can build a brochure and website that touts all their knowledge and experience. However, is that what they really do? No, what they do is provide solutions. So, the marketing message is We provide solutions.

Everything the firm does is centered on providing solutions to clients. They incorporated this concept into the layout and design of their office, into their name…K2S…Knowledge to Solutions, etc. Marketing is not just about the ad. It’s so much more. In the future I’m going to discuss the individual pieces of a good marketing plan. I look forward to sharing my knowledge with you!