August 28: Your Marketing Strategy

On August 28, Kasie and Shennice took on Your Marketing Strategy according to The E Myth Revisited, the book of the month. Here are the show notes:

Brought to you by the Women’s Business Center of South Carolina at Columbia College

Theme for the day:

This month we’re reading The E Myth Revisited and today’s topic is Your Marketing Strategy, the second-to-last chapter of the book.

Agenda review:

• Hear from the 1MC Presenter for tomorrow
• Your Marketing Strategy
• Talk about The E Myth and this topic
• Review upcoming events for this week

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Segment 1:

Tomorrow’s 1MC presenter is Jay Torgeson of Read, Write, Communicate, a service that provides real-time data to students, parents, teachers, and administrators on written work.

Segment 2:

What marketing is and what marketing is NOT

According to Heidi Cohen (and a survey she did with fellow marketers):

• Marketing is not Sales — while many big marketing departments support sales, marketing’s scope is much broader.
• Marketing is not creative — it’s actually more about customer insight that comes through data, research, and analysis. It’s nerd stuff.
• Marketing is not hard — it’s complex, but not difficult.

Marketing is:

• Communications
• Advertising
• Branding
• Image
• Voice

Jay Conrad Levinson, writing for entrepreneur.com says Marketing is selling. It’s “every point of contact your company has with someone who is not part of your business.”

He lists direct mail, advertising, and brochures as “not marketing” –which is to say they are tactics, but they’re part of a larger whole.

He also says marketing is not a miracle worker — it’s good investment if it’s done right, but it takes planning and execution and yes, time, to get it right.

7 Ways Marketing is Different from Selling (bloggers and their lists, man)

1. The goal of marketing is to make the sale easier, but the goal of sales is to make the sale.
2. Marketing focuses on the brand first and the product second, sales focuses on the product and meeting a specific need for a customer.
3. Marketing is a about a strategy to be the best, sales is about a transaction.
4. Marketing starts before contacting customers, sales starts at contact.
5. Creating brand relevance is marketing.
6. Influencing buyers’ decisions through education is marketing.
7. Marketing wants to create prospects, sales wants to create customers.

Tanya Dale puts it this way:

Identifying what people need and are prepared to pay for.

Promoting the solution so people are aware of it.

Working out details like how the service will be delivered and are you charging the right price for it.

Carol Roth says “Everything is Marketing, but Marketing is not Everything.”

• your facility
• your vehicles
• your letterhead
• your invoices
• your ads
• your e-mails
• your voice message
• your business card
• the clothes you wear
• your appearance
• how you answer your phone
• how you greet people in person

Then she used the word “literally” and I quit reading — Kasie.

Marketing is not about your company’s values. It’s about your customers’ values.

It’s about how your customers’ values translate into aspirations and desires.

Customers want to know what your company stands for as it relates back to them.

Before you start marketing:

• Identify your target market
• Test Your audience
• Consider what strategies you’ll deploy
• Evaluate those strategies for effectiveness

Segment 3:

How to categorize marketing behaviors

Here are 8 Types but there are blogs for 10 and 7 and 52 and 159

1. Paid Advertising: print media and advertising
2. Cause marketing: attaching your brand to a cause
3. Relationship marketing: enhancing customer relationships (think Starbucks language)
4. Undercover marketing: also known as stealth, customers remain unaware of the marketing while fully award of the product
5. Word of mouth marketing: relies on the impression you leave on people
6. Internet marketing: happens over the internet and on social platforms
7. Transactional marketing: encouraging buying habits with coupons, memberships, and discounts
8. Diversity marketing: covers multiple aspects of customer affiliations including beliefs, culture, attitudes, etc.

35 Marketing Tactics that Work

1. Advertorial
2. Influencer
3. Testimonial
4. Case study
5. Crowdsource — gather ideas from your customers; think Lego
6. Live streaming
7. Content curation — gathering content from sources not your own (like, ahem, this show notes post on our Start Something, Columbia blog)

How to build a marketing practice (habit)

• Stop planning and start acting.
• Start Small and expand later.
• Create a system — an editorial calendar? To achieve your goals
• Be persistent and patient

8 Habits for Online Marketing (lists! Yay!)

1. Write 1000 words a day
2. Observe what works for others (consistency, quality of content)
3. Tweak your sales engine weekly
4. Send a weekly newsletter
5. Write down 3-5 marketing ideas
6. Post relevant content to your social channels

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