The Seven Deadly Sins of Marketing

While perceptions may be changing, Kylie Beaufoy says many businesses still fail to see the value of good marketing - Here she sets out to dispel some key misconceptions.

Lord William Heskith Lever, the founder of Lever Bros once said, "Half my advertising is wasted, the problem is which half". In today’s deregulated marketing environment, the question is not only which half is wasted, but how to make sure the other half breaks through the clutter to give a good return on our promotional investment.

It is very easy to put a toe in the water and test a one-off campaign. However, in most cases these tests fail, not because the pictures aren’t colourful enough or the snappy headline didn’t say enough about your firm, but because marketing is about establishing a relationship. And, as we all know, long-term partnerships take a while to nurture; some even survive despite our poor attempt at an opening line.

Most Australian businesses have seen more change in the last decade than in the previous five, so to compete successfully now and in the future, experts agree that marketing should be integrated with all other business processes. As important as governance and practice management, marketing, surprisingly, is still often seen as an add-on or an afterthought.

Business owners need to overcome the fallacy that marketing is selling, and the belief that this taints the image of their practice.

Marketing is the art of identifying and satisfying the needs of clients with services developed for that purpose. Successful marketing is a combination of a number of strategies including pro-active attention to corporate branding, advertising, public relations, client relationship management (CRM), and below-the-line promotional activities (including direct mail, online communications and sponsorship).

There are several more misconceptions that keep businesses from maximising their marketing opportunities. These include:

This is the wrong attitude. Clients assume a certain level of technical expertise from any firm. However, in an increasingly competitive marketplace, it’s the service quality that counts and firms should consider ways to differentiate their business in a crowded market. Complacency can lose you clients overnight.

Some of the questions you must ask yourself in order to determine what makes your firm different to your competitors include:

What is unique about the way we deliver our services?

Do we achieve better than average results? (Have we got successful case studies/statistics we can report?)

Do we provide specialist services for particular industries?

What services do we provide that our competitors don’t?

Do we have a well-recognised profile and reputation to leverage?

Have we won awards that enhance our image?