If you’re a business owner or manager with a serious business you’ll eventually get to the point where the question changes from, “Do I need marketing help?” to “How do I find the best marketing help?” Problem is, finding the best marketing help isn’t so easy.

This will help.

1) See the Work. Many marketing “experts” tend to be great talkers. That’s because they’re often trained sales people vs true marketing pros with the objective perspective, talent, and credentials to do what’s truly best for your business. So, after you hear the sales pitch, analyze the work and invest the necessary time to do that. It’s the best starting point to finding the best marketing help. But, you can’t stop there.

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Marketing experts claim it’s easier than ever to market your business. So, why is it so confusing? I address that question and discuss the best marketing solutions to grow your business now and in the months to come.

Facebook now has 650 million members who use it regularly. You can’t ignore Facebook as a place to market your business.

Listen to the short talk from John Follis.

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Listen to John Follis and other top marketing thought leaders discuss the most relevant topics of the day. http://themarketingshow.net

With the explosion of online marketing and social media traditional advertising — or the “A-word” as I call it — has become quite unfashionable. Additionally, many small businesses have dabbled with it, with questionable results. As a result, more and more people are asking if advertising really works. If you listen to Internet Marketing gurus like Gary Vaynerchuk (who I’m a big fan of btw), the answer is pretty clear. “No.” They say that if businesses want to be smart they should stop pissing away their precious dollars on traditional advertising (TV, radio, print, outdoor) and start using Twitter, Facebook and Blogs.

Well, that kinda depends.

There’s a company called GEICO — maybe you’ve heard of it — and they seem pretty happy with their advertising — maybe you’ve seen it. GEICO spent 483 million on (mostly TV) advertising in 2006. I can’t find their ’07 — ’09 numbers, but considering that I see their ads everywhere I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s more than 483 million now. So, if advertising doesn’t work you have to ask why GEICO would be throwing away that kind of money year after year.

Another company you may have heard of, Apple, is also big believer in advertising. They continue to run heavy print, TV and outdoor ads with great success.

And, it’s not just major national brands that benefit from advertising. I’m about to begin the 12th consecutive year of an ad campaign for a small client with a limited budget — a New York City church. We’ve run ads on the NYC city subways for 12 years, and it’s not inexpensive for a small client. So, last year because of the economy they told me that they (reluctantly) had to stop advertising after a successful 11-year run. But, after doing some research, they learned that the ad campaign — which has been covered in The New Times, USAToday and TIME — was more effective in attracting people than all their other marketing initiatives combined. They cut spending in other areas and continued the successful advertising with a good ROI.

Is the world (and world of commerce) rapidly moving more online? Yes. Should you be leveraging social media as part of your marketing plan? Definitely. But, to broadly claim that traditional advertising doesn’t work, or isn’t as cost-effective as social media, simply isn’t true. It really depends on what you’re selling and who you’re selling to. And, any advertising effort that isn’t as effective as it could be probably has more to do with product, client, or agency, that’s doing it.

Contrary to popular belief, traditional advertising (print, TV, direct mail, etc) is still a highly effective way to sell products and services if it’s done right.

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From your prospects’ POV, Perception is Reality. Your prospects’ perception of you (company, product, or service) is what they’ll be basing their buying decision on — regardless of the truth. Therefore, it’s critical to make sure that every prospect touch-point clearly and convincingly convey the right brand message and product benefit. That involves your branding (company/product name, logo, tagline, design and tone), online presence (website, blog, videos, articles, G-cred), off-line presentations, and all your marketing and advertising initiatives.

The past decade saw a seismic shift in marketing communications as blogs, podcasts, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter led the media evolution. It’s an exciting time. Yet, with this cool evolution the focus on a clear, compelling company or product message has often been devalued. In many cases the over-reliance on media and technology has shifted the focus away from the resolving the key (and usually tough) marketing issues necessary for growing a successful business.

The most successful companies and organizations (Apple, Google, Team Obama, etc) work with top, independent marketing firms and experts to help them develop and maintain a strong brand message realizing that the media and technology is only a tool to help them get their message out.

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