Nic Windley

Far too many of todays businesses (and the principles on which they’re founded) base their foundations on what used to work, fixed plans around fixed ideas. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that things are very different from what they were 1000, 100 or even just 10 years ago.

Its moving fast, has become hyper dynamic and is forcing us review the balance between both the “big” (think country or company) and the “small” (think groups and people) and so as businesses or entrepreneurs we’ve got to reconsider our approach to developing and growing new companies and ideas when finding ourselves in these new evolving states.

One of the toughest challenges within marketing is dealing with others perception.

Considering you can study for a PhD in marketing, there are millions of books, webinars, websites, courses, associations and suppliers its unsurprisingly a very broad, complex and often misunderstood world that blends together art and science.

For the outsider, which in most cases is the start-up or established company looking to grow with little to no marketing experience or education, it’s even more misunderstood, as the way that most end up judging marketing will either be based on their own experiences, beliefs or what others tell them. Rightly or wrongly.

This creates a spectrum of view points from “it doesn’t work”, “marketing cheapens products”, “marketing is a waste of money”, “I won’t spend money on marketing”, “marketing is lying to people”, through to “marketing is what everybody else is doing”, “...

Marketing and sales have been separated for far too long. In fact things have gotten way out of hand and instead of an overlap where the two departments met in the middle, work together and exchanging ideas to support one another we have petty rivalry, misunderstandings and downright confusion.

Very similar to the problems many businesses are facing trying to connect with their market. It’s a serious problem for those big companies but an opportunity for the smarter SME who can evolve and develop smarter working practices.

Advertising And Marketing Is Selling In Words And Selling Is Advertising And Marketing

Marketing and advertising has only one purpose and that is to generate leads or make sales, and what generates leads and sales ? It’s the selling of ideas and concepts. So marketing is really selling in words, not some overly creative and colourful adventure.

If you were to look at your business and its marketing or advertising practices and you...

Are you marketing in a fantasy world ?

Or do your own beliefs and the recommendations of others come from the depths of fantasy land ?

With the economy shrinking by the day what are businesses going to do to maintain growth when the gradient of progress seems to be endlessly uphill, and budgets shrink back to the bare bones and things just don’t seem to be working like they did ?

There’s only one thing for it and that’s to find a way to increase the number of potential customers you come into contact with while reducing the costs of engaging them and doing the right things to...