So – if we are to “out market” the competition it makes sense to consider “what is Marketing?” – indeed I often get asked something similar. Although just as often people struggling to understand will tell me their own limited idea couched as ” well of course Marketing is …….” usually followed by “telesales”, “e-marketing”, “advertising”, “promotion”, “content marketing”, “sales promotion”, – now of course “social media” and even on one occassion “constantly repeating the corporate message ” or otherwise some similar quite specific technique that they have picked up from the marketeers toolbox.
Perhaps because I came into Marketing in the early 70′s when Marketing was developing as a philosophy of business I see all of these aspects and more as part of Marketing. A good definition I have heard is that “Marketing is everything that a company does that does not involve personal contact with the customer.”
However for me I would say that Marketing is an approach that encompasses everything a company does based on an understanding of the market and how the company can best opperate within the market.
So that far from leaving Sales people out in the cold I would say that Sales is part of Marketing and even the way that corporate finances are derived form part of the corporate Marketing philosophy. So promotion and sales and finance can be seen simply as ways of working to achieve the company’s overall marketing objectives.
This approach enables one to balance all the company resources, inputs and outgoings, so as to optimise performance – connecting the marketplace to financial results.
To Grandiose for an SME? Well little acorns and all that – we can start by considering where to put promotional spend – into a new product that has already had a lot of effort behind it or into re-enlivening a moribund cash cow?
Would your resources be better in stock or an exhibition? Staff morale or a new machine? Interest on a loan or investing in enquiries? Which will enable you to best surf the waves of the Marketplace and to optimise your financial results long term?
So to Out Market the Competition we first have to think differently – about how to connect our resources with our markets. This is not always possible within a small very pressured environment and in my experience industrial SMEs are run by either from an engineering or a sales perspective – which generally brings a specific focus and timescale – a Marketing approach tends to be wider and longer term – this added perspective can be extremely advantageous in developing a strategy to take a company forward over the long term. It focuses on growth in good times and out-marketing the competition in the down times. You may not need a marketing dept full time but you are likely to need access to one.
As a first step to “out Market the competition” contact us at ID-Marketing
PR integrates – a company PR program is at its best when used in an integrated way with other promotional activities. It is really a question of getting the balance right:
- without PR no balance
- with only PR no balance
- with PR, website, newsletters, advertising etc then a balance can be achieved that meets the information needs of potential customers and existing customers while enabling the client company to focus on its core business of supply. It is simply a matter of recognising that information transfer via its marketing activities forms a vital part of any customer service package.
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In considering the function of PR within marketing it is first worth considering “what is marketing?”. Personally I take the broad view – it is anything a company does which is directed toward its customers, so it comes into product specification, presentation, distribution, sales, etc etc. In which case PR is just a small part of that mix, lying alongside advertising, exhibitions, telesales, websites etc.
PR therefore can be considered in comparison with these and in value for many terms can offer tremendous promotional return per pound spent. In fact it is my experience it is the cheapest most cost effective promotion a company can do – I would say that of course but many others have found the same. By considering PR as one of a number of essential promotional steps, a company can then build more expensive activities on top of that.
So we can consider one appropriate structure for our marketing/promotion expressed simply as something like:
- In-house sales
- data sheets/photography
- PR
- website
- Advertising
- Sales engineers
- Exhibitions
In fact this is often experienced as a recurring loop with constant adjustments to accommodate resources, targets or market conditions. See how we can help you move through this process.
We had a brilliant example recently of just how a little knowledge and effort can have a huge effect. A company we know had done a deal with a website for an enhanced entry package about a year ago and had put the entry together themselves. The company people involved were bright, knowledgeable and conscientious – but they were not entirely impressed with the website through the year as their monthly page viewing figures typically languished between 50 to 110 pm. When the year was up the company was about to give up on this site, but the site rep was persuasive and the deal was done for another year – at which point we became involved – when the company asked us to look after this deal as part of a wider campaign. With a bit of time and care we made significant changes to the corporate entry working with the site personnel on category listings, links, corporate profile, product text, keywords and pictures. We finished this on the 10th of February. The Feb figures at the end of the month showed a better than six-fold increase to over 600 views pm.
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Doing the job properly – at the end of the day the whole industrial PR process – with or without search engines – is about getting genuine information to places where it can reach serious potential users/buyers. These are willing buyers – if they don’t buy then their business will not exist, but they must buy knowledgeably. Do that job right and it is worth doing from everybody’s perspective.
Search engines in their own way are only trying to facilitate the same process – so we are all working toward the same end – there is no need to try to manipulate the search engines – do the job properly and they will put an enquirer together with the information they are seeking. Although it does help to be able to think like a customer and to set up ones information and it’s distribution to fit that enquiry process i.e. understand the information that is important to a customer, how they may go about finding it, what form they may find it easiest to digest and how to make their life easy in progressing their enquiry. This is not “rocket science” but it does require a measure of knowledge, understanding, skill, experience, flexibility, balance and judgment – sound like any PR agency you know?
Interesting to hear over several years from a number of the media guys that their enquiry rates are maintained through the holiday periods ( December, July, August etc ) – and to see that this is supported by client’s own monthly web traffic stats. In-fact web-stats seem to confirm apocryphal stories of hard pressed engineers taking work home and searching online over the weekends. As for holiday periods – is it that these are really quiet times when customers can plan ahead and do some product research – or is it that with colleagues away on holiday those left are more pressured to find what they need? Whatever the explanation, it seems we do not have a holiday period in PR these days and that readership interest levels are not a mirror of business levels. Obviously they are linked, but they do not track each other directly and why should they – the drivers are different and the timing is different.
The creation of easily digested information regarding products and services. By presenting genuine information in a quickly assimilated way we are helping engineers to stay up-to date with developments and trends so that they can quickly solve problems in design or production. This presents a wider profile of possibilities and helps optimise the innovation cycle.
Dissemination to enable it to be easily found – build a better mousetrap and people will NOT beat a path to your door – unless they actually need a mousetrap and know about yours! This is a genuine need – by putting our information where it can easily be found we are serving that need. People sometimes need to be told that a) mousetraps exist, b) some mousetraps are different/better/cheaper than others and which is which. A whole range of media publications have grown up to serve this need on a wider basis from the national press to Google, to a plethora of very small but very targeted publications.
I read somewhere the other day that Manufacturing industry in the UK had it’s best month for 16 years in April 2010 – and all my clients tell me they have had very good months (even record months ) since Christmas. (and we are still the 6th largest manufacturing sector on the planet.) So is now the start of a new growth phase? Well we won’t know for sure until it is too late to really take advantage of it – but a little effort now could reap huge rewards later – and actually not much later either – I am thinking weeks to months here.
So potentially, a small promotional investment now could see increased business in the next few months and leverage growth into next year. An ongoing commitment to a promotional program could help pick up business released by the companies that did not survive and build market share over the next cycle.
ID-Marketing has already offered our clients some very special pricing to help them take advantage of this opportunity – we and others in the market can help promote your way back to prosperity – so “strike while the iron is hot!”
