Seth Godin wrote a good piece today about one of the main excuses people give for not marketing – that they don’t have the time:
“Once an organization is up and running, it’s almost impossible to carve out the time to find the marketing vision that will make all the difference.”
Marketing is so often thought of as something you ‘tack on’ at the end. Back in college I took a class on business planning. The big project was to develop a plan and present it to potential investors. I remember the one thing that students consistently did in their proposals was treat marketing as an afterthought. Even then, the marketing plan consisted of the obligatory biased focus group (which of course always had a positive result) and a breakdown of the amount of money they were going to throw into various advertising channels.
The idea that you have a company, and that one of the company’s functions or departments is marketing is a flawed one. The marketing comes first, whether you realize it or not.
I’ve come to believe (and as usual, I’m probably wrong) that there are only two marketing ‘plans’ that work. One is to have a product that is revolutionary, appealing, perfect at meeting people’s needs or wants. If you have a product like that, the marketing will be built into every experience the customer has with it. Telling others about the product will be painless, because the story is compelling. Writing copy about what makes it different is cake, because it’s plainly obvious why it’s different and beneficial.
The other way, if you don’t have a product like that, is to build in systems and processes that let you deliver the product or service in an incredible way. By giving each customer a ‘wow’ experience every single time, you compel them to tell others without having to ask. And when the time comes for them to purchase again, you’ve demonstrated that you’re the only option for them.
Neither of these have to involve a cent of traditional advertising, although they can. Neither of these require the marketer to come up with some gimick of gargantuan proportions. Marketing becomes easy. Suddenly you have all the time in the world to market, because everything your company does is the plan.
