“Irony is OK in movies, but it’s no way to run a business.” – Charles Clutter’s Mom
Ironic — isn’t it?
Marketing is the single most important part of the business equation.
Yet marketing is the one area that is most often ignored. And when the going gets tough, marketing is the first budget to get hacked.
The real irony is that even when organizations cut marketing budgets or disregard it entirely, they cannot kill the beast. Without internal support, marketing still survives. NO MARKETING is still marketing.
Have I lost you yet?
There are hundreds of definitions of “marketing.” Most of them focus on the selling of products or satisfaction of customer needs. But business thinker/consultant/guru/”social ecologist” Peter Drucker had it right when he said:
“Marketing is not only much broader than selling. It is not a specialized activity at all. Marketing encompasses the entire business. It is the whole business, seen from the point of view of the final result, that is, from the customer’s point of view.”
With the uncertainty of financial uncertainty, a looming recession, global conflict escalation, companies respond to these threats by cutting expenditures. But smart, savvy businesses take the opposite approach – they invest in strengthening their brands in anticipation of better days ahead.
Get it now?
It’s really quite simple. The easiest, lowest cost way to strengthen your brand today is to have a carefully crafted content marketing strategy. Retain the loyalty of your existing customers. And go beyond that. Build an audience among those who will become loyal customers in the future.