Most business owners start their marketing from the wrong place.
This
is normally due to the 'follow the crowd' mentality. I don't want to
sound derogatory, but this normally stems from no knowledge of
how marketing is supposed to work and so many business owners make the mistake of simply copying what they see other businesses in their industry doing.
"if it works for them it must work for us. Right?"
Wrong!
"They've been around for years they must know what they are doing, right?"
Wrong again!
"The newspapers are experts at marketing businesses so what they tell me must be ok, right?"
Not even close!
"Now you can't tell me that Yellow pages doesn’t work, right?"
I have to be careful how I answer this and it is best discussed over a beer or over the phone. :)
If
you are going to invest all that money in starting or running a
business what you really need to understand is how marketing is
actually a system.
Marketing is a predefined process where you
know why your are doing it, what message you are getting to which
market segment and most importantly what you are likely to get in
return for your marketing investment.
Let me repeat that. Marketing Is An Investment!!
And like any investment you make you should get an exponential measurable return.
So let’s gets some basic principles understood first....ok.