Is your marketing working for you?

Do you find yourself having to invest more time each week looking for sales? 

When you take a well earned break, do your sales fall off? 

Then your marketing is probably not working for you.

The desire not to be left out, to keep up with the latest trends and technology, has meant many businesses are leaping into high-end advertising and marketing, without the preparation or grounding in the basics that support these techniques. Having invested a significant amount of effort in developing an online and social media presence, many businesses have forgotten about the basic building blocks that should be supporting and building their brand.

Business who have the courage to admit that their current marketing is not working for them, need to focus on the basics, their 5W’s. These basics have always worked, they still driving the content of all major advertising and marketing campaigns, no matter the platform they run on. 

Many marketing Guru’s hold up the large multi-nationals as the example to follow, highlighting some of the strategies and tactic's that they have used. Yes, these tactics have been proven to work, in big companies. Companies that have a major investment in the trained and experienced staff to make it work. Much of this advice is not exactly relevant to SME’s as they have neither the budgets, the experience nor the staff to run similar campaigns. 

Smaller businesses need a different way of thinking about advertising and marketing. They must make sure they are relevant and connect with their audience in an authentic way. They need to take a longer term strategy, building a self sustaining campaign that does not need to micromanaged to keep it relevant.  Think ahead, what other events are going on to which you can link your advertising? Let them do the promotional work and place your ad's within their material. To many SME's miss out on these fantastic opportunities to promote their business because they have to think and plan months, or even years ahead. Get this right and you can send more time on your business doing the things you set out to do, not working for your business as an unqualified, unpaid advertising sales and marketing manger.

Gavin Bryan-Tansley Owner Vid-FX+