Marketing - The Facts!
In a recent survey of Devon and Cornwall Small Businesses only 13% of the businesses surveyed conduct Marketing Planning and yet 90% said that they see Marketing as important to the success of their business with 56% seeing it as critical to success*.
So what’s the problem? Why is there such a huge gap between those that do and those that don’t?
We believe it’s to do with 3 important factors:
• The Perception of Marketing and the belief that anyone can do it
• The Confusion about what’s out there and who to trust
• The Price of professional advice
The Perception of Marketing – a number of people who are great at what they do best also think that they can do marketing. Why is that? If you were looking for someone to repair your tooth would you go to a qualified dentist or a hygienist who knows about dentistry but has no formal training in dental surgery? To us the decision is blatantly obvious. Many people that engage with marketing and advertising that don’t have a plan in place will take a scatter-gun approach to the market place and then wonder why it hasn’t worked. Because of their disillusionment they then become highly sceptical of marketing because they’ve ‘been there and done it’ and it all went horribly wrong and was a complete waste of money.
The Confusion about what’s out there and who to trust – with the huge variety of marketing disciplines out there and everyone jumping on the bandwagon, it’s not surprising that people are worried about who they do business with and who to trust when it comes to advice. Everyone is trying to sell you everything and convince you that their way is best. Without a plan you haven’t got a cat’s chance in hell of knowing what’s appropriate to your focused objectives and what will help you achieve the desired results, thereby compounding the scatter-gun approach. Conversely, with a plan, you can make your decisions for the future of your company with confidence and eradicate time wasters. But you need to enlist professional help at the very outset to ensure that your plan will produce the right results for your company. So how do you do that?
The Price of professional advice – the most important thing to remember here is that a professional is someone who has invested time and money into training for their own career and who has the necessary experience to assist businesses to achieve the best results. In the words of Red Adair “If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.” Unfortunately there are just as many rogues out there giving marketing a bad name as there are cowboy builders so it’s really important to do your homework first. In many instances the costs of hiring a good marketer will be seriously outweighed by the increased income, cost efficiency and profitability that their activity produces. If you want something for nothing then you will at best get nothing and at worst get bad advice which could damage your business substantially.
In order to help, please contact us for our latest production ‘Marketing – The Facts’ which details the skills that you should expect from a marketing professional and the types of fees you should expect to pay. stephanie.walshe@theplumconsultancy.com
*Survey Source: http://www.ramemarketing.co.uk/results-of-devon-and-cornwall-small-business-marketing-survey/
Over 100 Companies took part in the survey
