Where’s the silver bullet?! Why Marketing is not magic…
So the first two weeks in London have been a whirlwind of interesting people, tight deadlines, lessons learnt and marketing.
On my quest to better understand marketing and how to apply it to Publicate for certain world domination, I was lucky to meet with some really inspiring and experienced people; the team from 1000heads marketing agency, Jess In blue from Spring Board, and Bernie J Mitchell from Engaging People….
But there was one problem, I was looking for a silver bullet, I was looking for someone to say, “do this, then this, then this and every thing will be amazing”. Instead I got loads of great advice about whats important and what principles my marketing should be coming from;
- Focus on and nurture the community
- Ensure the product offers enough value
- Be opportunistic
- Be creative
- Play where your customers play, and bring the toys they want to play with (Research)
But no actionable steps to glory, which I now know is down to two key points about marketing. The first is that the winning marketing strategy is different by company, market, customer & solution, but the principles remain the same; provide something of value and a vision that people will believe in, look after and empower the customer, and be “cool” with the delivery, because people like creative marketing. So there is no one size fits all tick list (apart from the principles), rather, marketing is exactly the same as product development, create something that provides value and is in line with your vision, get it out there, test it, and refine it.
This realisation then got me thinking back to a presentation that I saw Bernie give at #OMNLDN – right there on page 6, “take the lazy out of marketing”. There is no quick fix, there is no silver bullet, there IS graft, there IS method, but like anything with starting a business, it comes down to working hard and smart, and evolving your processes to fit the situation.
Two things that really stood out for me;
- The customers voice is the only voice that matters
- Provide value
So this is what I am going to be orientating all efforts around from now, but I would love to hear if anyone else has any other advice?
You can also see some collections of marketing resources, here and here
Chris