The Big Marketing Secret

Everytime I hear the word Marketing I cringe!!! It is probably the most misused word in the English vocabularly. Everyone uses terms like Internet Marketing, Digital Marketing, and E-mail Marketing. But have you ever heard someone say TV Marketing, Cable Marketing, Newspaper Marketing, or Radio Marketing? Personally, I haven’t. Why not? Those are media channels, just like the Internet or email. Media is simply where you place your message that you believe your audience is gathering. That is called Promoting or Advertising. Whether you publish your message for free on social media or pay to run an ad on television, you are Promoting or Advertising.

Advertising is not Marketing!!! What is the difference between Marketing and Advertising? Marketing is the STRATEGY that you use to determine who, what, where, and why. Advertising is the tactic you employee to reach your who, what, where and why. Marketing comes FIRST. Advertising comes Last. Those that start with Advertising learn the hard way and end up wasting money. In the marketing world these are called advertising victims. Have you been an advertising victim? Maybe you have you payed some entity to make social media posts on your behalf or paid for ads and ended up with no sales. It is not your fault. This is because those that sold you the services don’t understand that you can’t build a house with no foundation. With the rise of the internet and social media, there are now lots of people selling services they do not understand. All they know is that there is Gold in them their hills. Thinking that running a “Marketing” agency takes no skills except on how to post or create a video. Unsuspecting buyers not knowing the difference between Advertising and Marketing end up as victims. If not for anything else that should be motivation enough to learn Marketing.

It takes time and effort to learn Marketing. It just doesn’t happen by accident. However, the reward of learning Marketing and implementing what you learn can be life changing. The difference between barely existing and thriving. There is a myth that you can shortcut your way to success. The false illusion that you can pay somebody to do your marketing. There are two things you can’t outsource in your business. One is the Checkbook and the other is your Marketing. Outsourcing your marketing is like outsourcing somebody to take over the steering wheel with out knowing where to go (Your vision of the company), what roads to take (If they do not have your vision how well they know where to start) how fast to go (what capacity does your company have to produce to deliver a service or product), how much gas to put in (do you have the money to spend) and last do you really want to chance somebody driving your car into a ditch and totaling your car (your economic being).

If you could outsource Marketing and it worked wouldn’t everybody be running to get their checkbooks to write big fat checks to those who could market for us? Wouldn’t we all have companies as big as Apple? In this Utopian world there would be no small business failures. In fact, there wouldn’t even be any Small Businesses. We would all be CEO’s of large corporations. Unfortunately, that is now how things work. We must all do the hard work of Learning Marketing and of implementing Marketing.

So where do we start? This may sound funny, but inaction may be the most important step you can take. Let me explain. There are so many people with Podcasts, Youtube Channels, Blogs etc. that claim to be Marketing Experts. What they are usually claiming is expertise in Advertising. Turn those people off for now. No need to fill your head with clutter and confusion. Think of yourself as a person training for the Olympics. You don’t want to put junk in your body. The same thing goes for your mind. There is lots of bad information floating around. Figuring out who to listen to can be confusing. In fact, you may be thinking, why should I be listenting to you? A Good Question. I don’t claim to be an expert or a GURU. What I do claim is that if you implement what you learn your Revenues will Rise. With everbody and their brother giving marketing advice here are a few tips I use to separate the Wheat from the Chat and figure out who to listen to.

1.) As I mentioned before there is no different types of marketing. Marketing is a Strategy. Social Media Marketing, Internet Marketing, Facebook Marketing, Tic Toc Marketing are all RED FLAGS.

2.) The person that uses Big Business as examples. A large business operates on different principles than you do. Emulating big Business is disastrous for Small Business.

3.) Branding – When somebody talks about building a brand to acquire customers run away. You don’t need Brand Awareness, you need customers.

How do you figure out what is real? A simple rule of thumb is take the internet out of the equation. Why? Marketing Principles cover all markets. If your Business Markets to other Businesses (B2B), to the Government (B2G) or to Consumers (B2C) the procees of determining your Position in the market is the same. If what your consuming cannot stand without having the internet stand behind it, then it is more likely a tactic and not strategic.

Let’s use SEO as an example. SEO is a tactic to drive traffic to a website. Because it cannot be done without the Internet it is not Marketing. If you get in your car and drive on the highway to the mall do we call the "CAR" Marketing or the "Highway" Marketing?? No, we do not and never have we ever called a plain old asphalt road or a Toyota Marketing.

When you do get to the mall and you notice a new dress or suite placed in the very front of the store with a price that attracts you, and you buy it that's Marketing. Though an oversimplified definition of Marketing using only two variables Price and Place. (In Marketing their are lots of variables (at the very least 7) that help you get a sale). The price has Positoned the product with you and the physical location also positioned the product with you. What Marketing really is Positioning your goods and services with the buyer.

If you get in the car and drive to the mall knowing that the mall does not sell cheap stuff nor super expensive stuff that is Marketing or Positioning. Hypothetically, you could be the mall’s ideal customer. A cost conscience consumer that will not buy expensive clothing. The internet is not needed to DETERMINE the Position the mall owners want to place in the customer’s mind.

So where do you learn about Marketing? It is hard to learn Marketing. There is so much misinformation floating around and myriads of bad books to read. The purpose of this site is to help you get correct information and get you pointed in the right direction. This is to help you build a strong, predictable business.

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