Chris West - Professional Writer

There are two dangerous myths about marketing.  One is that it’s something that only big businesses do.  The other is that it’s somehow dishonest, an exercise in pulling wool over customers’ eyes.  This book aims to debunk these myths.  Small business can and must do marketing, and they can and must do so with integrity.  Yes, of course, there are phoney, con-the-customer marketing campaigns out there, but they are not ‘Beermat’, not the kind I  shall talk about in this book.

One of the reasons why people get misconceptions about marketing is that it is a many-faceted thing.

“Marketing is - what?  Designing brochures?  Long meetings discussing strategy?  Walking up Romford High Street dressed as a chicken to publicize your new restaurant?  Graphs showing demand curves and price elasticities?  Turning out on a rainy Tuesday evening to attend a networking event?  Search engine optimization?  The answer is, of course, all of them.”

A key point is that as a small business you don’t have to do all of the above.  Different types of marketing suit different businesses - so I tell the story of six model businesses in this book, all of whom use marketing in very diverse ways.  These businesses are:

• two providers of services to other businesses (one aiming to grow, the other a consultant happy to stay a one-person band)
• a high-tech start-up
• someone offering a service to the general public
• a retail outlet
• an internet business.

I also have a section for inventors.

The book takes the reader, and these model businesses, through the ‘story’ of marketing.  This begins with basic research techniques, not just looking up numbers in surveys, but the whole, slow, essential process of become an expert on your market.  While you are doing this, the business must develop.  Strategic decisions need to be made: what products are you going to create for whom?  (By ‘product’ I mean any ‘bundle of benefits’ someone or some company can buy from you, which can just as easily be services as ‘things’).  How will you get these products in front of your potential customers (‘route to market’)?

Marketing is often confused with marketing communication - ads, PR etc.  The latter is only a subset of the former.  It is very important, of course.  The book discusses all the traditional ways of talking to your market.  There is a chapter on getting free or cheap PR (for which I was very ably assisted by small biz PR guru Louise Third).  There is material on networking and ‘informal marketing’.  Then finally the book looks at the uses of new technology, especially the internet.

If there is a theme running through this book, it is the importance of retaining customer focus - real customer focus, not the kind of bull many large corporates come up with.  I call this the ‘marketing mindset’.  As I say in the book…

“The marketing mindset is one that puts the customer at the centre of your business activity. 

I can imagine yawning breaking out at this point - doesn’t every business say this nowadays?  Well, yes, they do, but sadly many of them don’t mean it.  

‘Your call is valuable to us, so we’re going to stick you in a queue and not tell you how long you’ll be waiting, keep you waiting for ages, then finally put you through to someone in a call centre reading from a script, who’s poorly paid and also works for three other companies at the same time so naturally isn’t very interested in you or your problem.’

All the good marketing people I know feel real anger at this kind of stuff.  Real anger, because they (the marketers) have the marketing mindset.  Non-marketing people might feel aggrieved, but at the same time they’ll mutter something about having to keep costs down, globalization or ‘shareholder value’.  But to a true marketer, a golden rule has been broken.”

A final thought: many business people tell me they ‘don’t do marketing’.  Always, if they are successful, I find that they actually do do marketing, they just don’t call it that.  They are actually very good marketers.  I have tried to include as many of their skills and tips in this book, to make you as successful as them.