The more we talk to business owners, the more we see the level of confusion that exists around marketing.
In fact, we’ve been working with business owners for close to twenty five years, and I’ve never seen the level of confusion about marketing that exists right now.
The cause?
Fake expertise. False Promises.
Harsh I know, but there are too many so called ‘experts’ out there in marketing who promise the world, and deliver donuts (donuts being slang for zero). Surely the definition of genuine expertise has to be a track record of actually getting results, not just promising them.
In one survey we did recently, the average confidence level of business owners in their marketing was 4 out of 10!
What went wrong?
Business Owners used to know a lot more about their customers and where they came from.
What happened?
A little thing called technology.
Which like moths to a flame, has attracted too many people to the bright lights of marketing tactics.
The lure of a gold rush from a global online audience on google, on social, on websites.
But here’s some hard facts for you.
For the majority of business owners, there is too much focus on tactics, and nowhere near enough focus on strategy. In fact, thinking and acting strategically, some businesses need not go anywhere near an online marketing strategy because for them, other marketing methods work far better, and at less cost. Word of Mouth, community sponsorship, local advertising, existing client promotions.
Business owners are hoping a social post, or a website, or an online ad campaign is going to be their saviour. But they forgot to ask the customer, they forgot to research their market, they forgot to understand their strengths and weaknesses, they forgot to check out what the competition was doing.
In the past twenty years we’ve helped over 500 clients deliver more than $2billion in revenue growth. We’ve done this by understanding customers, markets, competitors and importantly helping our clients understand themselves. And time after time, plan after plan we've proven that doing this leads to workable marketing that gets results.
This is a strategic approach built on genuine expertise. Not on false promises of a gold coloured waterfall of customers and profit from ‘cracking the social code’.
To be blunt, most of these golden promises coming from Google, and Facebook and all the so called experts out there is complete and utter BS.
Only a genuine strategic focus, with a proven marketing model will deliver results for the many, not the few. So stop gambling and invest in strategic knowledge and plans and you will grow your business. I can guarantee it.
