Marketing For Power Packed Business Growth

Peter Drucker famously described marketing in the context of the firm with:

"Marketing and innovation are the two chief functions of business. You get paid for creating a customer, which is marketing. And you get paid for creating a new dimension of performance, which is innovation. Everything else is a cost center."

He further defined marketing by saying:

“The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.”

Many SME firms approach to marketing is often one of “we can’t afford to spend money on marketing we need sales!”

And of course they’re right. And they’re also wrong.

They’re right because without the lifeblood of sales a company drops dead.

And they’re wrong because without the ability to get to the right customers that marketing can provide there is a lot of wasted effort in all areas of the business, not just sales.

Wasted Effort Without Marketing

These are examples of the many areas of a firm at risk or fail through the lack of a suitable marketing strategy:

• Customer prospecting
• Product or service development
• Sales
• Accounting
• Advertising
• After sales service
• Ad hoc marketing

Over the next few days I'll be elaborating on exactly how SMEs waste their efforts. And more importantly how they can eliminate or minimise the waste.