Marketing. We hear it all the time. What is “marketing”? Every company needs it. Every one of us are subjects or targets of at least one marketing campaign or effort. One of the basic lessons: 4Cs- teach us that marketing is mainly communicating with consumers sending costs effective messages and providing convenience. 

After years of being in this field, we have noticed 5 key issues: 

1. Who to work with? 

Having options and choices of vendors is always a happy problem. Or is it? Time is money. Having train, evaluate, building the relationship all equates to money and opportunity costs. Marketing vendors are the most difficult to pick- everyone says the right thing. A good marketing team is one that helps you communicate with your consumers/customers/clients. This relationship is build and worked on over years and years and is a continuous process. 

Work with a company and team you can see yourself and your business growing with. Employee or employer alike- a good team isn’t one that just delivers. A good team is one that understands. Becomes a part of your company. Exhibits realiable execution- not just ideas. 

2. What’s the best medium for me? 

“Traditional, digital, out of home… Which one works?” Every product, service and business is unique. Whether it is a novel product, or a personal service, the difference is that YOU know your customers/clients/consumers best. The best form of r&d works over a cuppa coffee, a piece of paper and 5 simple questions. 

Work with your marketing company/agency/team on truly understanding the needs and wants of your target audience and then evaluate the different platforms and mediums. 

3. Viral or not?

Viral is what gets everyone interested these days. But is this effective? Viral campaigns and efforts have worked well for consumer products and services. It bridges the gap of communication and with the growing use of mobile technology- it is replacing TV ads or affectionately know as TVCs. 

Downside of Viralness- while it spreads quickly and widely- it is not the same as “word of mouth”. Most “Viralness” come as idle distractions or entertainment. It doesn’t secure customer loyalty. It’s not lasting nor enforces anything. 

Evaluate pros and cons before investing in a viral campaign. By the way, some of the best campaigns has smal budgets but great teams. 

4. What are we measuring?

Big data, analytics, statistics, reports… What exactly are you measuring? Are you measuring brand value? Or customer loyalty? Are you measuring KPIs? Or effectiveness? Tools are great. Frameworks are even better but hold on… If every business is different then can we apply the same rule across the board? 

Let’s compare with similar competitors in your industry. What for? To copy? If you take your business seriously, back to basics, simply put- measure costs vs profitability. Both long term and short term. 

5. Content, content, content… 

Do we really have time to watch every ad, scrutinize every video, read every word on a brochure, read every blog posts? True, we can subscribe accordingly but these days everyone has more than 20 different sources they are linked up to or following. 

True value is sending the right message. It’s not about what you or the agency wants or prefers- it’s what your customers need and want to hear. 

Communication comes in many ways. Marketing is about communicating. Language, accents, tones, words- find the right one by truly understanding.