Marketing Mistakes Can Cost You Your Company

There was a time when smaller companies did very well just by concentrating on making a better product or delivering a better service. There were fewer competitors and markets were limited, small companies could stake the futures on one or two loyal customers and barriers to entry were much higher. Customers even tolerated poor delivery or price increases now and then.

Now, there aren’t enough buyers and just plain good isn’t good enough. Great customer service, responsive lead-times and a superior product is where things start now. But, all that good important stuff is for nothing if your company is the best kept secret in your industry or community. The new adage, “value and the perception of value are equally important” must be embraced.

Communicating a meaningful value proposition and continually improving the offering are both marketing-led principles. But, so are the critically important components like tracking prospects, participating in industry events, finding new channels, running a great sales force, being interested and helpful on the telephone, participating in social media, anticipating coming trends and attracting better employees. Bringing all these marketing duties together is an important responsibility in every industry today.

Maybe it’s the term marketing that elicits confusion or push back from owners. We hear over and over from business leaders about their preparations for marketing but indecision about embracing the fundamentals. Marketing isn’t making up a story about a product, service or person, that’s lying.

Marketing is engineering the purchase experience. Figuring out why they buy, maintaining interest, managing prospects, keeping the offering fresh, the team engaged and the image leveraged, and, doing all these things well. If you don’t tell your story in the places where your prospects are listening then they are hearing what they need to hear from a competitor. This stuff should energize most leaders, its one part engineering one part problem solving.

In a recent ad hoc forum on the topic of small business marketing, several current and former executives provided some interesting insights. There was full agreement that smaller B2B manufacturers along with industrial service providers were the most vulnerable to competition while being the least prepared to embrace the marketing functions that could save their businesses. There was unanimous agreement that the non-retail small business category had the most to gain my integrating a formal marketing mechanism into their operations.

At one point a participant expressed distress for the clearly avoidable economic loss that will come from the lack of marketing based/customer centric functions in these legacy businesses. “With the range of skilled marketing operatives available finding a resource to match their needs would save a lot of unpleasantness,” she said.  

Never before has, “keep doing what you have been doing and expecting a different result,” been more provocative. Challenging hard and fast conclusions about the way things “are” have sent companies and industries in dynamic directions. With a little guidance, managing these companies from several clicks to either side of the current path might result in much more encouraging outcomes.