Back to Basics Marketing Blog: Introduction and Welcome!

There are so many of us out there… marketing blog writers. Some of us are working to boost the visibility of a particular website, some to help a particular business grow. In my search for a marketing blog that goes back to the basics, I ended up eventually deciding to write my own. Why? While online marketing resources are abundant, most are specific to an industry, and information that appears to be more general at first glance tends to be geared towards the marketing industry itself. I see a need for a blog that shares marketing tips and ideas that are applicable across many industries, and that is useful to a wide range of marketers, from the most experienced to entry level.

That said, this blog will focus on what I consider to be the three most important tenets of good, results-driven marketing:

1. Marketing as a company-wide responsibility and process which drives to meet company-wide goals.
2. Marketing that focuses on Return On Investment (ROI).
3. Marketing that focuses on the customer via careful, intricate development of Value Propositions.

I consider these three components to be the central guiding principles by which any marketing campaign should be designed and evaluated. We will deeply explore the reasons as to why these are so important in future blog posts, but I will give you the Evelyn Wood version here. Marketing must be a company-wide effort with many inputs—rather than just the baby of a handful of people from the Marketing department—because even the best marketing team in the world is not as close to customers as people in sales; is not as forward-looking as people in Business Development or R&D; is not as knowledgeable about product features or applications as people in Engineering, etc. More on this later.

It may seem completely obvious that marketing should be ROI-driven, and that ROI data should be meticulously collected and analyzed for every marketing dollar spent. Sadly, this basic idea seems to fall to the wayside rather often. I’ve been unpleasantly surprised more times than I care to think about while consulting for marketing departments in a variety of industries. Most recently, in a conversation with the Director of Marketing for a large company that manufacturers a B2B product, I was dismayed to find out that the way this company evaluates tradeshows is by the raw number of leads generated at each one. What’s wrong with that? It does not actually track ROI! The percentage of leads from a tradeshow that actually convert, and the actual profit generated from leads from that tradeshow are sets of data that are actually relevant to ROI calculations for a tradeshow. 500 leads are worth nothing if not a single one becomes a sale. Two leads are worth a great deal if they both close within three months

Last but not least, developing a clear, on-target value proposition is the most direct way of getting and keeping the attention of your client, prospect, or customer. Value proposition simply means that marketing materials focus on how a certain product or service adds value to the life/work of the person using it. Instead of focusing on product features, ads and collateral focus on what the product or service can do for the customer in a way that lets the customer know immediately that their problem or desire is understood, and that you’re already figured out how to solve it.

Read More…

• You Are Here Back to Basics Marketing
• Marketing as Company Wide Responsibility
• Mobilization: Reaching Outside the Marketing Department
• Advanced Lead Qualification: Sales and Marketing Work Together
• Sales’ Feedback into Marketing: Profiling Prospects and Their Problems
• “Inside Marketing”: Marketing to Your Own Sales Organization
• Developing Unique, Customer-Focused Value Propositions
• How to Train an Entry-Level Marketing Employee
• When Return on Investment Doesn’t Paint a Full Picture
• Defining and Presenting Value Propositions in a Competitive Market
• Logos and Promotional Product Designs for “Difficult” Subjects
• Defining and Refining Value Propositions for Luxury Items
• Evaluating Return-On-Investment (ROI) for Tradeshow Activities
• Management Mistake in Small Business: No Investment during Trying Times
• Marketing and Sales of Gold, Silver, and Precious Metals
• Defining and Perfecting Value Propositions for Personal Financial Products and Services