You're In The MARKETING Business...

Whatever you sell...product or service...B2B or B2C...whether you're in manufacturing, or retail, or distributing, or reselling....you're in the marketing business.

Marketing is the engine on which your business runs. Without a good marketing plan that will consistently deliver customers to you and keep them coming back, your business is worthless. You need customers to make your business worth something.

When you switch your thinking to realize you're really in the marketing business, that's when breakthroughs can happen.

That's when your entire organization becomes focused around obtaining and keeping customers. That's when you realize that good customer service is good marketing and great customer service is great marketing.

It's when you realize that every customer interaction, even delivering an invoice, is a marketing opportunity. (See Seth's post on this.)

It's when you realize that industry conventions ("that's the way things are done in this industry") are made to be broken, as long as it serves the customer.

It's when you realize that you need solid marketing systems in place to increase the number of inquiries, optimize your conversion rate, and maximize your total customer value.

It's when you realize that you need to do an excellent job of communicating all the benefits of doing business with you to prospective customers.

Dan Kennedy defines marketing like this: "Delivering the right message to the right people in the right way, using the right media." I would add "such that you obtain and keep them as a customer or client for the longest possible duration of time." (And I know Dan Kennedy would agree with that!)

Makes you look at your business a little differently, doesn't it?