You know good marketing works but you just don’t have time…
Is it possible to be successful and thrive if you HATE marketing?
If there are elements of your business you actively detest, we need to tackle them and work out why. You need to achieve your personal and professional goals, so it’s time to get to the bottom of why you are ignoring (not prioritising), creative and rewarding parts of your business.
Remember this: MARKETING FIRST, SALES SECOND, SERVICE KEEPS YOUR CLIENT
1. Marketing isn’t a priority - Sales first right?
Historically, sales has been more face to face than marketing efforts and therefore has been prioritised as it involves a ‘real’ relationship. Marketing is hidden behind a phone or an article and generally just viewed differently.
Marketing relationships are far more on a par with sales these days and the majority of the NEW sales and marketing funnel for B2B has shifted to marketing. Marketing used to be just about awareness and interest but now spreads much further in to consideration and intent which are the vital areas for customer decision making.
There’s always been an ongoing battle with sales and marketing and I’ve been on both sides but in order to truly represent your company and therefore your customer you need both to be joined up. If your sales people ‘look down’ on and don’t see the value in your marketing people, you need to shift some expectations and analyse some expertise. You might have marketers in your team that are too junior for the role and they are not understanding the customer journey or you could have sales people who have always been a ‘lone wolf’ type and need to interact with internal departments. Whatever the issue if you are not ‘SMARKETING’ you are not putting the customer needs first.
2. Fear of impostor syndrome
There is a fear of not quite being up to scratch when you don’t come out from behind your brand. You wrote your USPs and values when you first started the business, along with your business plan and you haven’t revisited them since.
What if you aren’t the Number 1 manufacturer in the UK any more?
What if you aren’t one of the top suppliers to the NHS?
What if you don’t empower your staff to be the best they can be?
I honestly believe this is one of the main reasons some MDs and CEOs don’t prioritise marketing, fear of being ‘found out’. The funny thing is, once you refresh the outward offering and join it up with the customer (which can take some bravery), magic happens! Your staff get a boost as they always wondered why you were promoting values they didn’t feel and your customers have a newfound hunger and energy for your brand.
3. You don’t really know where to spend your money for the best return
Digital? Traditional? Advertising only? Consultants? Brochures?
What is best for your customer? How will you EVER KNOW?
Asking someone like me, that’s how. I’ve got the commercial experience that allows me to have commercial marketing night vision (yes, that’s a super power). I can see exactly what you need to do to get where you want to be, you just have to trust me on it – I’ve not failed yet (nor do I intend to).
4. You don’t have time to keep monitoring results
If you bought a lottery ticket and you didn’t check the results, how would you know if you had won?
Would you work towards a qualification and not find out how you did?
Would you do a track day in a Ferrari and not ask for your lap time?
Nope. Same goes for marketing – act and then monitor, you can convince yourself you don’t have time as much as you like but the fact is, you just don’t know how to make things easy on yourself so that the results are easy to see without effort.
5. You are worried that you won’t stack up
It’s personal isn’t it, when you own a company or manage a business? We get in to this mindset that takes all of our well-liked, key relationship and bundles them up in to the reasons we are successful. We are actually also unsuccessful because of the relationships that we haven’t made work too – those ones that we walked away from because we didn’t want to hear what wasn’t likeable about us or our company. These are the ones we really learn from. If you suffer from the perfection misconception you can fall in to this trap, if you don’t like being on video or talking about yourself, you need to get used to it.
You are you and nobody else. THAT IS YOUR SUPERPOWER.
Get in touch today, let's get your superpowers out there CLICK HERE