Marketing

1 of my experience doing this few small businesses. I realize that marketing is damn important. Without it, you might as well dead. Thousand of small company usually got wrong idea on their marketing scheme. They did mistake on how marketing actually work.

When my 1st and 2nd business, i focus on marketing as i know that when you do a business and nobody know is useless. So what i focus is hoping everyone can come in and know my stuff. That is my major mistake. What the reason, continue below.

I went to this SME solution expo in midvalley last Friday, and i can say is a fortune for those businessmen and women. There are many thing to learn about and many new online solution for small based company. While i was there, i listen to this talk given by founder of this Singapore based company, more to advertising company where focus on marketing. He shares about on how marketing actually work and most we do is not working.

Here a few of his idea :

When it comes to developing a marketing concept in small business marketing, most small business owners do not have a clear idea of what they want to achieve through marketing. They ended up spending a ton of money to roll out the marketing concept, and yet do not generate the return they desire.

There are three marketing misconceptions that often occur when it comes to marketing small businesses.

1. Monkey See, Monkey Do

Arising from the lack of good marketing advice, small businesses often look at what their competitors are doing, and simply do more of the same thing!

If the competitor is giving out flyers, they will give out more flyers. If the competitor advertises in newspapers, they will advertise more in newspapers.

But doing what everyone else is doing,

isn't going to get you very far ahead of your competitors!

And all this while, they will have no idea what is the return on investment for that competitor. Everyone just assumed that it works, and more often than not, the truth may just very well be the opposite.

To really get ahead, you need to get creative and leverage on alternative marketing channels such as social media marketing, that your competitors may not be utilizing.

2. Branding Vs Marketing

While Fortune 500 companies can put up 30-sec TV commercials to do branding, with no website addresses to visit or phone numbers to call, it would be suicidal for small businesses to do so.

Instead of just branding, small businesses should instead focus on Marketing-Driven Branding. Because marketing can be tested, measured and improved on. Marketing can deliver an immediate return on investment.

3. Drill bits Vs Holes

Have it ever occurred to you that, of the millions of people who bought a drill bit this year, none of them actually wanted a drill bit?

They wanted a HOLE!

The drill bit is just a means to an end. What people want is the benefit (a hole), not the product (the drill bit). If there is something else that does the same job, they'll probably consider buying that something else too!

My point here is, most small business are marketing their product's features and price. This can be ineffective because...

People are NOT looking for your product,

They are looking for a Solution to their Problems!

So, what you should do is, instead of describing the product features, describe the benefits the product can give to the customer. In other words,

Stop Marketing the Product,

Start Marketing its Benefits!

Hope those who doing business out there find this useful.

Good Day. :)

P.S: hope to share with you all a video i found in youtube that i think is rather interesting on how Marketing involve throughout the year. Awesome animation.