What is Marketing?

Whenever prospects call me up, one of the first questions I ask is “What are you currently doing to market yourself?” Many tell me that they’ve tried advertising but mainly get new customers by referrals. They may have tried sending some postcards or creating a website, but nothing has been effective in generating new leads.

Does this sound familiar?

When most people think of marketing, they think of all the things they could be doing to tell people about their business. They think of advertising, websites, newsletters, postcards, or other various tactics. They also might think of sales techniques like cold calling. These each have their place in marketing, but marketing includes much more.

The Marketing Mindset
“Marketing” is an umbrella term that involves everything you do to attract clients and help them solve their problems. It includes:

• the types of services you offer
• how you position and package your services
• what you charge
• your marketing materials such as ads, websites, brochures, and newsletters
• how you present yourself in meetings
• how your staff treats clients through phone and email
• networking such as lunch, golf, or organizational events
• how you get referrals

As you can see, marketing is not just a set of tools to communicate with prospects and clients. Marketing is a mindset. It is more than the casual philosophy of “just do it” - just send out those postcards or newsletters and wait for the phone to start ringing. It’s about everything you do or say to customers and prospects through any type of medium - phone, email, brochure, website, etc.

And marketing isn’t limited to just the marketing department. It is something that every member of your staff must believe in and promote with passion and enthusiasm. It is the mindset that your services are so exceptional that they are worth talking about and communicating the value to anyone that might have a need for them. Not hype! You should never over-promise. But you must believe in what you offer because what you believe will effect what you say and do.

Also, marketing is an ongoing process. Rarely will one letter/postcard/newsletter close the deal. People don’t just wake up one day and decide that today, they’ll buy a home. They go through a painstaking process of gathering information before they buy or sell because they want to make sure they are well informed and are making the right decision. A home is one of the biggest financial investments an individual will make. It makes sense that this will be a very emotional and difficult decision for them.

Think of marketing in the same way you approach your company’s finances - you do the books and pay your bills on a routine basis. Marketing should be no different. What do you need to do every month, every week, every day to get your message out there? It can take upwards of 8 contacts with a person before they even remember who you are!

As management guru Peter Drucker has written, “Business has only two basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results. All the rest are costs.” Innovation is about tailoring your services creatively to fit your clients’ needs while marketing is about promoting your services to the people who need them most for a reasonable fee.