Tweet

Does Marketing Work?

Written by: Helen Dowling

Article Overview: I was at a networking event the other day, explaining to someone what we did. In response, I received a smile back and the comment “well, marketing doesn’t really work anyway does it?” Interesting question! And I can completely understand why he said that. For a lot of small business owners, that’s exactly what they find – that marketing doesn’t work. The result is that many business owners feel frustrated with marketing and give up on the process, choosing to rely instead on referrals and word of mouth.

Does Marketing Work?

I was at a networking event the other day, explaining to someone what we did. In response, I received a smile back and the comment "well, marketing doesn't really work anyway does it?"

Interesting question! And I can completely understand why he said that. For a lot of small business owners, that's exactly what they find - that marketing doesn't work. The result is that many business owners feel frustrated with marketing and give up on the process, choosing to rely instead on referrals and word of mouth.

But actually the answer to the question "Does marketing work?" is yes, absolutely. In order to make it work for you though, it's important to understand why marketing doesn't work.

There are three main reasons why marketing doesn't work for small businesses:

• 1. Whenever you do some marketing, it's important to understand that not everything you do will get you business. What I mean by this is that most of the marketing methods you use will be great a making people aware of what you do and will also be good for building your reputation as an expert. However, there are very few marketing activities that are just good at getting you customers. There's something else you need to do to accomplish this which I'll come onto in a minute.

• 2. The second reason is that most business owners don't follow up with people. They do a marketing activity just once and when they don't get the results they're looking for, they just drop that and move onto something else. Marketing though requires persistence and once you have contacted someone, you must follow-up in order to properly see results.

• 3. The final reason is just not doing marketing. Marketing can be very frustrating especially if you're not seeing results. As a result, after a while, most small business owners just give up and rely on word of mouth and referrals so not doing marketing is another big reason why marketing doesn't work.

So what do you do about these three reasons? Well, here's how to make marketing work for you.

The first thing we need to do is turn marketing activities into customers. To do this, whatever marketing activity you choose, you MUST find a way to capture the contact details of people. The easiest way to do this is to offer them something that's free and of value to them. If people give you their contact details, what they're telling you is that they're interested in what you do. It's now up to you to find out how interested they are.

How we do this is to follow up with people. I'm not talking about hassling people here. I'm talking about building a relationship with them so that they feel comfortable buying from you. As they say, we do business with people that we know, like and trust, so the more people know you, the easier they will find it to work with you.

Once you understand this basic principle of marketing and find that it does work for you, hopefully you'll be more motivated to do marketing. This is absolutely vital if you want to get business from your marketing. Especially in these turbulent times, it's not enough to sit back and wait for business to knock on your door. You have to go out there and generate it.

So, marketing does work. You just have to know how to work the system to your advantage. Have a go and see if this difference works for you.

If you want a copy of 50 ways to promote your business for free, just contact me using the links in my profile.

Related Articles
  Geek Marketing 101
  Future Marketing kicks out the ancient marketing
  Real Estate Marketing Strategies - Tips for Creating Success
  Is PR Marketing? Is Marketing PR?
  How to fix sputtering marketing

Article Tags: marketing marketing, marketing methods, nbsp, networking event, persistence, referrals, reputation, small business owners, small businesses, smile, ul, word of mouth



Related Forum Posts
Re: What is your Business? - We are running a Online Marketing Firm and we have some good clients to which we are offering a complete Digital Marketing strategy like Search, Mobile Marketing, Branding and Design. I think in Online Marketing company online presence can be a wining factor for the success of the company.
Re: Let’s talk about the ways of marketing your products, servic - I agree with some of the others who responded it depends on what your selling... but to answer your questions here are some of the methods I use. Forum Marketing Yahoo Answers (I need to use more of) SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Bum Marketing or Article marketing P-P-C (Pay Per Click) Marketing Online Directories Hope this helps.
Re: Should Evan add a "Social Media Marketing" category to the f - Hi, Online Marketing would be a great title, and having sub categories would make it even better, there would plenty of categories to choose from, Social Media, SEO, Article Marketing and yes even Affiliate Marketing to name just a few, great looking site btw Jeff, take care, Carol
Kevin's Case Study #11 - A New Forum Category? - Hi Everyone, 2009 is a new year and I'd like to create a new forum category to jazz things up! In the past, there's been some interest voiced about adding a "Social Media Marketing", "Online Marketing", "Internet Marketing" or "Online Promotion" category. I'll implement [u:1g2tv6tf]ONE[/u:1g2tv6tf] of those new categories, but can someone first tell me what the difference would be between the existing "Marketing" section and one of those new options mentioned above? Thanks
Online Sales and Marketing vs Traditional - Hi Evan, I am noticing that many of the posts in the Sales/Marketing section deal with online marketing, SEM and and SEO and Affiliates. I was wondering if it might be a good idea to separate that section into two; 1) Online Sales and Marketing; 2) Traditional Sales and Marketing


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Tweet

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

LISTENING SKILLS IN COACHING

Adapting to Technology and the Internet

The Death of the Sales Magazine

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.