Welcome to the first of what I hope will be many articles, how to guides and helpful resources.
Let's start off with the fundamental question: what even is marketing anyway?
There are many corporate definitions of marketing around. Take this one for example from the Chartered Institute of Marketing:
"The management process responsible for
identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer
requirements profitably.”
All very technical. Not hugely understandable.
To me, marketing (and its sister discipline, communications) can basically be defined as tailoring your product or service, and the way you talk about it, with the aim of getting a certain group of people to do a specific thing.
You could be trying to get schoolkids to wash their hands before lunch. You could be trying to get the Finance Director of a global organisation to buy a new IT system from you. Believe it or not, fundamentally the theories you will use to achieve this are the same.
You'll need to take a number of important steps to achieve this, including identifying your target audience, understanding what motivates them, making sure your product or service meets their needs, tailoring messages so that they cut through the noise and get to the right ears, designing a plan of activity so that you spend your money most effectively, and measuring everything you do to continually improve your results.
Get these steps right and you'll achieve your business aims. Get them wrong and you'll waste money, cause confusion, and potentially even damage your reputation. Luckily, with expert support, marketing your business can be simple and straightforward. Can you afford not to have the right marketing and communications strategy in place?
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