It’s a bit scary to think about it but this month, BSA celebrates it’s 30th birthday. We are a very different business to what we were in May 1984 with a small rented office in Manchester City centre. PCs were in their infancy (anyone remember 8.5″ floppy disks?), there was no internet, Fax was the new kid on the block as it started to take over from Telex and Yellow Pages was the big source of business information! Even writing it down, it all feels a very long time ago! Over the years we have seen a quiet revolution as we embraced technology, putting it to work on behalf of clients – always focused on making sure the tools were driven within a solid marketing framework. Some things never change; Business marketing still has the same core principles:
- Have a clear business proposition
- Define and understand your target market
- Be sure your proposition delivers real benefit to your target market
- Communicate this benefit to your target audience
- Deliver your proposition profitably to both you and your customer
Get these five fundamentals right and you have a business. This was true in 1984 and is still true in 2014. The impact of technology has been on opportunity and tools rather than fundamentals. It is a shame that too often marketing technology is promoted as a fundamental rather than a set of tools. It isn’t surprising that this can leave people disappointed. Thinking that technology replaces the fundamentals is rarely likely to produce good results. Nevertheless, what technology has done in spades is open up real marketing to SMEs. In 1984 communication cost money:
- Stamps
- Yellow Pages Advertising
- Press Advertising
- Telephone Calls
You had to pay to use them all and the more you used, the more you paid. The internet has changed this with…
- Websites
- Search
- Email Marketing
- Social Media
- Blogging
You can set up a website, optimise it and run email marketing and social media programmes all for free (if you ignore the modest cost of your internet access). With email, the more you do, the more value you get. You can do full blown marketing for no money! Admittedly most people don’t, they choose to pay specialists to perform some or all of these tasks but at least the money is spent with the goal of delivering something rather than simply allowing access to the communication network. One problem is that as marketing becomes more accessible, there is increased expectation that the results will come quickly and easily – and let’s face it, if they did we’d all be putting our feet up in the sun! It is as true now as ever that…
Marketing is a process, not an event
… yet with so many businesses offering a dazzling array of marketing services, there is a danger that a service is offered as a ‘quick fix‘ to business success. Just as in 1984, good marketing takes time but invest that time in a well thought out programme of engagement with your target market and you will have valuable platform from which you can reap benefits for the next 30 years! That’s my plan and I’m sticking to it!