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.
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.
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.
Marketing a product successfully isn’t easy. But, it just got easier. Listen as Blog Talk Radio host, Liz Lynch, interviews John Follis about his effective Marketing Therapy program. John also discusses the value of “G-Cred”, guerrilla marketing, creating buzz, small business branding, and why working with a web, SEO or social media specialist can actually be detrimental to your business.
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.
It’s about having a great product or service and repeatedly convincing many people that you do. How you do that depends on your particular product or service, your target, your specific marketing goal, and your budget. It also depends on how visible, likable, informative, engaging, creative, memorable, and smart your message is.
