Ron Heywood - New-Media Consultant.
What is Marketing?
Marketing is the oxygen that feeds your company. In the same way a human must breathe to remain conscious, so a business must market to remain solvent.
Many people turn to marketing when they recognise that turnover is falling and a drive for new customers is required to maintain previous business levels.
Sadly many businesses discover that at this point there is too much to be done and not enough time to do it.
Marketing must be a constant part of your business, and the amount of marketing you do needs to grow in keeping with the growth of your business. As a human must breathe harder to supply the demands of a body engaged in physical exertion, so must a business market harder to supply the demands of a business engaged in growth and expansion.
If your business grows faster than your marketing can maintain supply, you find that the greater costs associated with running a larger business greatly magnify the effects of many factors that can adversly affect your business.
Many businesses shy away from marketing because they feel it distracts them from the running of their business. Others shy away from Marketing because they secretly feel that they lack the ability to conduct a marketing campaign. Most neglect marketing because they are too busy working with the clients they already have to "seek new clients".
But the most successful businesses embrace marketing. They construct a clear and thorough plan, and what's more, they see this plan as a core foundation to their business. Not a dry document to be filed away, but a manual for consulted frequently to get answers to questions you may not have considered yet.