Adding Value

How do you know if marketing activities are helping a company to grow? Simple test: Look at your client list and think about how you met each person, whether or not you know them, and why they bought something from you. Chances are, you’ll start to see the light.

As a member of the American Marketing Association, I try to keep up with what’s happening in my biz by perusing ezines, articles and the Marketing Power website once in awhile. Sometimes I miss something – like the “new” definition of marketing that was agreed to by the AMA in August of this year:
”Marketing is an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders.”

That’s kind of, well, a marketing phrase. Full of lots of words trying to pack in meaning. The one that seems most important is almost smack in the middle: VALUE.

All the research, communication, clever campaigns and search engine marketing in the world won’t matter if it doesn’t cause something to happen, which would be to create value or increase business.

Short story: It so happens I was looking at a list of contacts – or leads you might call them – for a current client of ours just last night, in preparation for an email blast. Since they have used other marketing services prior to ours, the contacts were generated from many sources over time. But the important part to me was that they WERE generated. By marketing activities. Sometimes by purchasing access to information, but still sorted, filtered and massaged by a marketer. What was conspicously absent was ‘just happened to come looking for us and signed a big contract’.

Yes, yes, yes. I know that can happen – but usually AFTER marketing your brand. Even if you ‘do it yourself’. It’s still marketing. Even a sales person cold calling or writing intro letters is acting in a marketing capacity – setting a first impression and expressing value to potential customers. ¶It’s a good thing to remember, at least for me.

Now I have to get back to adding value.

Donna