 | #FeelingFunkyOnFriday - Summertime and you got women on your mind.Come on, I couldn't leave Mungo Jerry out of this incredible summer extravaganza.
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Articles posted by "Martin Henley"
Da man himself
 | Where is the man?You would expect, and it has historically been the case that there is nothing like a disaster to turn up a leader, hence the phrase “cometh the hour, cometh the man.”
Now these people may not be your cup of tea, and they aren’t necessarily my cup of tea, but what they were is leaders - people who could see what was was going on, make a decision and act - and that is what we are lacking today. I would like for someone to stand up and say this is the way things are, this is what we are going to do about it and then do it.
Whilst the economy appears to be improving in a painstakingly slow fashion we have been suffering the current disaster for some time and I am starting to get the sense that no-one is coming to lead us out of it. It is kind of nice to have a new coalition politics going on but it would be nice if one of them would take the reigns and set an example.
The big concern is that if no-one arrives to lead us out of this economic situation, nobody leads celebration of the minor successes and gives us confidence the economy could get back to where it was previously and nobody would notice and we wouldn't actually feel the benefit of it.
I am a huge fan of Seth Godin and I really believe in the democratisation of leadership as afforded by the internet and social media and I feel that I am doing my bit with my marketing blog, marketing talks and marketing training and I urge you to do your bit also.
I just wish that someone who has the ear of the media and is paid really well out of the public purse would step up to the plate and start bossing things a little and make us all feel a little bit better, thats all. |
WWII gave us Winston Churchill, and the winter of discontent gave us Margaret Thatcher and the recession of 1991 eventually gave us Tony Blair. | If you haven't got a blogging clue about ... market research.Nothing too difficult here, I am sure we are all familiar with market research, but why is it important and how do you do it?
“a demand for a particular commodity or service”
Market research is defined by Wikipedia as
“any organised effort to gather information about markets”
So, a market is a group of people that want something and market research is about making the effort to understand those people.
Some of the things that you need to understand about your market are;
This may all sound blindingly obvious but actually the reason lots of businesses fail is because they don’t invest in understanding their market and actually the first question above is the most important and the most often overlooked. Businesses invest too much time and money in developing products and services in isolation and only discover very late in the day that actually nobody wants to buy them.
Market research, if you do it well, will make your sales and marketing really easy. If you want to be a successful fisherman you need to put your line where there are fish, and the same is true of sales and marketing. Smart businesses are constantly in the market identifying what is required, how it is required and what people might be prepared to pay for it.
In the old days, before the internet, market research was actually quite difficult and for a long time the best you could do was engage a big London advertising agency to do some blue sky thinking or a market research company to accost people in the street or on the phone.
In the age of the internet things have become much more transparent and using tools like Google’s Keyword Tool or Wordtracker and Social Media enables us to do market research in real time with tools like Monniter and Twitter Fall.
Sales and marketing is really easy if you can identify what it is that people want and that is what market research is all about, then all you need to do is develop it and give it to them.
I hope this has given you a better blogging clue about market research and how it is valuable.
Next week we will be covering your offering, so come back then if you haven’t got a clue about .... your offering.
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 | #HappyCustomers - Telemarketing & Sales Management TrainingSimon Birch of Solutions Inc. talking about the Telemarketing Training & Sales Management Training that we carried out with his team
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 | If you are looking for inspiration you may have just found it.This man is nothing short of incredible he spends his life talking to people about how incredible they are, and he is perhaps the most incredible of all of us.
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 | #FeelingFunkyOnFriday - Summertime, time to kick back and unwind.Number two in our summertime special, I wont be pushing it any further.
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 | Don't shoot the messenger!Did I fall into a popular marketing trap with last weeks post about why for some people marketing doesn’t work?
However you implement your marketing, however much you spend, however creative and inclusive you are, there is always the opportunity to increase its effectiveness.
Last week I spoke about some of the different marketing initiatives that people claim don’t work, like email, or web, or mail, or advertising, or networking, or telemarketing, or social media, or press, or whatever marketing it might be and that is where I fell into the trap. These marketing initiatives are just different ways of delivering messages and actually it is the message rather than the method of delivery that is the most important thing. I am not saying the method of delivery has no relevance at all because it clearly needs to be consistent, if you are marketing a quality product with a premium price tag then you really need to find a quality method of delivery.
Perhaps if we were to focus more on what we are saying rather than how we are delivering the message we would have more marketing success and that would give us all a better attitude to marketing.
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In my post last week I stated that marketing is 30% attitude and whilst I honestly believe that is the case perhaps it isn’t particularly useful to blame failed marketing entirely on attitude. | If you haven't got a blogging clue about ... situational analysis.It's taken six weeks but finally we have come up with something really meaty and unnecessarily complicated to get our teeth into ... situational analysis
So when marketing people talk about situational analysis what exactly is it that they mean? Wikipedia defines situational analysis as “a marketing term, and involves evaluating the situation and trends in a particular company's market” and that “when developing strategies, analysis of the organisation and its environment as it is at the moment and how it may develop in the future, is important.”
Now that makes perfect sense, if you think of your marketing as a journey that you are planning you need to know where you are starting before you can plot a course to wherever it is that you want to get to. Your statring point will not only dictate your first action it is, at this point in your planning, the thing that will most influence your end goal.
You are most likely creating a marketing strategy because you want to change things, and nobody plans to make things worse, so you are almost certainly planning for things to get better. You might be planning to be have better products or services, to generate more awareness of your business, to have more leads, more sales or happier customers or to increase your turnover and your profitability, maybe you are really ambitious and you are planning to increase the value of your business so that you can sell the entire thing at some point in the future. The simple point here is that you can only make things better, or increase things or make people happier or increase the value of something in relation to the way things are now, and to do that you need to analyse your current situation through situational analysis.
There is a danger here that this analysis could turn into navel gazing, so is it important that you focus on the things you really need to know about your situation that will really benefit you in your marketing planning?
For Effective Marketing the things that you really need to understand are:
And that is probably a natural order for you to understand them in so that will take care of the next six if you haven't got a blogging clue posts.
So I hope that you now have a better blogging clue about what situational analysis is and how you could be doing it to benefit your marketing efforts.
Tune in next week if you haven’t got a blogging clue about ... market analysis.
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We have now covered marketing, sales, leads, marketing strategy and creating a marketing plan and now finally we are on our way and defining something that is nothing other than pure, unadulterated, marketing jargon. | #HappyCustomers - Telemarketing TrainingHarvey Tuck from Kyoto Commercial Kitchens talking about the benefits of the Telemarketing Training that we did with his team. |
 | Why does Bill Hicks hate marketing so much?Bill Hicks is a huge, late giant of comedy, he clearly didn't like marketing.I can only imagine his indignation if he knew that he was featuring on this marketing website, but actually Bill Hicks did indignation better than anyone else in the world ever. Is there something to learn here? If there is I haven't worked it out. In case you don't know Bill Hicks swears and offends a lot, don't push the play button if you are easily offended.
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 | #FellingFunkyOnFriday If this doesn't brighten your day I honestly don't know what will.it's summer time and if you aren't on holiday give yourself five minutes of sheer, unadulterated brightness.
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 | Why is it that for some people marketing just doesn't work?Wow this is a big question and the person that can answer it will probably make a lot of money, watch my back I am going in!
The only thing that could have possibly made this crazy endeavour more challenging is if I had started my marketing consultancy with no experience of having worked in a marketing consultancy, or even a marketing department - and I didn’t have that experience.
Mercifully, almost five years later The Effective Marketing Company is still here and actually has done rather well, attracting almost 500 customers who are all pretty happy with the service that we have provided to them. At this point I should point out that this post isn’t supposed to be an exhibition of own trumpet blowing because I don’t believe in that and I am not particularly good at it.
You see I know the reason that I am still here and that is purely because I have given myself entirely to marketing and it has worked for me. I have had to duck and dive, I have had to bend to the will of the global economy, who hasn’t? I have had to get close to my market and deliver what it was that they wanted and do a lot of marketing. And that is what has worked for me, marketing.
So I may have been lucky, but it’s funny that the more marketing I do, the luckier I get.
There are a whole raft of people that marketing doesn’t work for and I meet them all the time. Internet marketing doesn’t work; telemarketing doesn’t work; email marketing doesn’t work; social media doesn’t work in fact you can insert ‘here’ any form of marketing because for some people it doesn’t matter what it is, it doesn’t work.
So here is the secret, all marketing works. There is no trick, ias long as you understand that marketing is 30% attitude, 30% action, 30% commitment, 1% aptitude and 9% measurement. Next time you launch into some marketing invest in it and give it a reasonable period of time and you might be surprised at the results.
Marketing works for everybody, go on do some.
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I realised quite early on that I was putting myself under pressure calling my business The Effective Marketing Company. That there would never be an excuse and I couldn’t be seen to be struggling for customers, ever. The onset of the worst recession in recent history wouldn’t be a good enough reason to fail, not once I called my business The Effective Marketing Company. | If you haven't got a blogging clue about .... creating a marketing plan.There are some fantastic stats that demonstrate that having a marketing plan is inextricably linked to business success. So why don't we all have one?
As simple as that, a marketing plan is the marketing strategy in a documented form, and we know all about marketing strategy from last week. So there is absolutely no difficulty there then, only it rather begs the question why don't we all have a marketing plan?
And that is only the first of several questions including:
Why is it necessary to document your marketing strategy in a marketing plan?
What should you include in your marketing plan?
How do you go about creating a marketing plan in an efficient and effective way?
So to answer question number two first; why is it necessary to document your marketing strategy in a marketing plan? There are two really good reasons to document your marketing strategy.
Firstly, enlisting the support of others. You are likely to need some help to achieve your marketing objectives so whether it's the bank manager, your team or your boss, having a document is a good way of convincing people of, and directing them in how, they can be helping you.
Secondly, staying on track and marking progress. When you are creating a marketing plan there is always a danger that you could get dragged off course and a documented point of reference is always useful in case you are off course or just rather sensibly marking your progress.
Question three, what should you include in your marketing plan?
Your marketing plan should include some information about where you are currently, an idea of what it is that you hope to achieve, how you are looking to position yourself in the marketplace, which proactive marketing initiatives you intend to implement, how you are going to get the very best value out of the leads that you generate and how you are going to measure the effectiveness of your marketing activity. Ideally you want to do all of that on a single page of A4 because anything more than that will take an age to produce and will never be read by anyone.
And that answers question number four. Developing a marketing plan is a bit like taking the lid of the spaghetti jar, or letting go of the kite strings on a particularly windy day, it can get messy. So if you want a plan that see's the light of day and gets implemented it is important not to get too carried away, keep it simple and don't try and document everything. If there is demand I will put together a template of a one page marketing plan.
OK, so the only question that we haven't answered is question number one, why don't we all have a marketing plan?
The answer is probably that we donít really understand why it is necessary, what it should include or how to do it. Hopefully this post will have helped you with those questions in some way, but keep coming back because we will have more for you. As stated above the first thing you need to understand when creating your marketing plain is where you are currently, what marketing people very grandly call "situational analysis." That will be the topic of next week's post so come back next Wednesday of you haven't got a blogging clue about .... situational analysis. |
Let's get the definition out of the way right at the beginning because that clearly isn't the challenge here, so thanks to Wikipedia we know that a marketing plan is simply "a written document that details the necessary actions to achieve one or more marketing objectives." | #Happy Customers - Sales Recruitment & ManagementHere is the fantastic Mr Wilf Charles talking about the sales & marketing recruitment that we did for him and the ongoing sales management service we are providing. |
 | If it's about getting attention this ad might be the best ever.I absolutely love this which is surprising because it's not really my thing, I am not big on advertising but this ad definitely does the job.
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 | #FeelingFunkyOnFriday - I got something on my mind.This is too funky to be current, isn't it? |
 | Thank you Seth Godin.Somebody recently put a book in my hand and said to me, "well done, you have just discovered your new favourite author."
I have since bought all of Seth’s books and have been inspired by them all. Seth is an incredible leader with an abundance of generosity, insight, vision, conviction and energy - and that is exactly what I aspire to be to be and thanks to Seth’s incredible thinking I now understand that is the opportunity that is available to us all.
Thank you Mr Godin for setting the example.
If you are wondering what all of the fuss is about, here are links to all of Seth Godins’ books so that you can discover Seth Godin for yourself.
I hope you take as much inspiration and enjoyment from Seth's books as I have.
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Now that may seem a little bit presumptuous, maybe even arrogant, but this guy is a Liverpool fan and isn’t backward in coming forward, so I wasn’t surprised. What surprised me was the book and the author, the book was Purple Cow, and the author is Seth Godin. | If you haven't got a blogging clue about .... marketing strategy.We all know that we need a marketing strategy but I recently discovered that even people who turn up for a marketing strategy workshop aren't very confident about what marketing strategy means.
So that seems simple enough, marketing is about generating leads and strategy is the plan of action designed to achieve that. A successful marketing strategy will generate the required number of leads and a really successful marketing strategy will be concerned with the quality of those leads. If you have the right quantity and quality of leads the sales will follow and if you have sales of the right quantity and quality you will be in charge of your business and your business will rock. So that couldn’t be more simple, all you need to take charge of your business is a fantastic marketing strategy but we need to remember that our businesses exist in the real world and right now we are trading through particularly challenging times with resources in short supply. By resources I don’t just mean money, I mean all of the resources that we need to be successful in our sales and marketing including energy, confidence, skills, time, motivation, creativity and support. So a good marketing strategy will take account of your starting point, what it is that you want to achieve, the opportunities available to you and the resources that you have to get you there. Resources are key because there are legions of advertising, search marketing, exhibition and marketing sales people all desperate to help themselves to your limited resources with fantastic offers, promises and last minute deals. Quite simply, if you don’t have a strategy for keeping your resources you will lose them. The greatest challenge in developing a marketing strategy is that it requires you to step away from the daily grind of bringing in the cash, which is the life blood of your business, and invest time and energy in looking at the bigger picture, which is terrifying at the best of times. Once you have a marketing strategy it needs to be documented into a marketing plan. Next week we will be looking at why a marketing plan is necessary, what a marketing plan should contain and how to go about taking the lid off the spaghetti jar without getting into a horrible mess. So next week, if you haven’t got a blogging clue about ..... creating a marketing plan. |
If you are following this thread then you will know that we have already provided a definition of marketing, which is the investment that you make in generating leads, which we have also defined. So perhaps it is the strategy part that is so confusing? the dictionary provides this definition; | #HappyCustomers - Inhouse Social Media TrainingHere is Lee Gold of Peewee's talking about the Social Media Seminar that he attended and the subsequent in-house training that we carried out with his team.
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 | If sales is a performance sales managers are the lead.Here is a great example of how you own a sales team. I am not advocating you treat your sales team quite like this, HR may object, but this is a great performance. Includes offensive language.
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 | #FeelingFunkyOnFriday - EnjoyNot much to say this Funky Friday, this is nice and funky in a kind of relaxed way. |
 | Whatever happened to good grace & manners in marketing?I don't often think of myself as old but I remember a time when sales and marketing people had to have a bit of graciousness.
But it would appear times have changed and good grace appears to have been confined to the history books.
Recently I have recieved a couple of interesting emails. The first was about a subject that is very close to my heart, Social Media. It offered links to videos that would transform my marketing over night, like they all do. I am very interested in this subject so I followed the links, watched a video of a man in his fifties in his garden talking about the overnight transformation of my buiness using his programme, followed some more links and then I got to the point, and the point was $2,000. $2000 for more videos of his incredible success formula which I am guessing will be about sending emails asking people for $2,000. So I emailed, questioing his sanity and asking that he stop emailing me. But he didn't, so four days, and four emails later I responded again stating that this was the second request. His response was "oh well, must have missed it, you can unsubscribe at the bottom of this mail." Which didn't strike me as the most gracious of exits, why expect me to do something else when I have already asked twice.
The second event happened only yesterday. I along with around 100 other contacts received a marketing email about networking events in Kent. How do I know there were 100 of us, because the person who sent it had open cc'ed all of us. That's right, he was broadcasting his customer and prospects email addresses. I am a generous sort so I emailed him back to say that there might be people on the list that wouldn't be happy for him to be broadcasting their email addresses and that if he were to use a tool like Mail Chimp he could avoid this indiscretion in the future and get some great feedback that would enable him to improve his email marketing. He emailed me back stating this is the way they have always done it and no-one had complained before and he had taken me off the list. I felt that he had missed the point so I called him to let him know that I wasn't objecting to him sending me the email but then he hung up on me. So I emailed him again letting him know how he had left him exposed, and he called me threatening legal action and I had better have a good lawyer. So there it is from incredibly bad email marketing to legal action in three emails and two telephone conversations, that can't have been what he hoped to achieve, can it?
Whilst there are laws that are inteneded to protect us from this extraordinarily bad and lazy marketing but actually the most effective law there ever was is the law of sensibility that states when you are marketing you are looking to make friends not enemies. When people email me to unsubscribe from my lists I drop them a mail that says "I am sorry if my mails have caused you any annoyance or inconvenience, I have now unsubscribed you and if you need anything else from me here is my mobile number." And the reponse is always positive. You see a little bit of grace is all that is required to make friends with people, maybe they just want to know that you are human, that you respect them and that you are interested in them, so that they can be friends with you. |
I was in sales and marketing before the interent, email, new media, social media and spam and whilst I am a huge advocate of email marketing it seems to have got people behaving very strangely. | If you haven't got a blogging clue about ... leads.Sometimes you just can't buy a lead, or convert a lead, sometimes the leads are good, sometimes they are bad but actually, what the hell is a lead?
And of course there is varying opinion about what constitutes a lead. Clearly marketing who are producing the leads will think that they are fantastic and sales, if they are failing to convert the leads they will think that they are terrible.
"A sales lead is the identity of a human or entity potentially interested in purchasing a product or service, and represents the first stage of a sales process."
And whilst I am not sure why they want to distinguish between humans and "entitys", surely there is a human behind all expressions of interest, I think that this is a good definition of a lead and certainly concur that a lead is the first step in a sales process.
So is it really as simple as that? The answer is yes and if you think a sales lead is anything less than an expression of interest you are wrong. For example when we source data for people there typically comes a point when they stop talking about data or lists and start talking about leads. No I am not able to source lists of 15,000 people who have expressed an interest in you, your products or your services, if 15,000 people were interested in buying from you you probably wouldn't need the list, or me.
The only way this can be confused is when you start to think about what constitutes a good or bad lead. There is the enigma that salespeople don't seem to respect a lead, and invest enough in converting a lead unless they have generated it for themselves. When you consider that the only lead generation available to most sales people is cold calling or knocking on doors that makes lead generation incredibly arduous and expensive. I would argue that there is no such thing as a bad lead as long as they have expressed an interest, they may not have the money, or the right specification or the urgency to buy something as quickly as you might like, but having expressed an interest it should be the sales persons responsibility to satisfy that prospective customers interest.
So if you are sharp you will probably be ready with the next question which is where do leads come from? The answer is that leads come from marketing: marketing research, product development, branding, messaging, internet marketing, telemarketing, email marketing, social media, advertising, direct mail, pr - in fact leads come from all of the stuff that marketing does.
To understand the opportunity for each of these activities, to prioritise them and action them you will need a marketing strategy, and that is the subject of next week's if you haven't got a blogging clue.
Next week, if you haven't got a blogging clue about .... marketing strategy. |
If you have been following this thread you will now know that marketing is about generating leads and that sales is about making the very best of leads, which will lead you to wonder what constitutes a lead. | #HappyCustomers - Social Media TrainingSome more happy Effective Marketing Customers talking about their experience at one of our Social Media Workshops. |
 | What is it about American Football & Inspiration?Here is a great example of what can be achieved if you can forget what's going on around you and really do your best.
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 | #FeelingFunkyOnFriday - No Matter Where You RoamNot exactly a blast from the past, more a gentle breeze. |
 | Customers only really like easy things.I have recently had two sales experiences that have highlighted an all too common sales mistake.
The first supplier had me quite excited about some new technology, the functionality, the cost savings, the opportunity the whole thing - and I really was quite excited. I asked some really good questions - when can I have it? how much does it cost? and the answers, we don’t really know and its going to hurt. And that hurt. The idea that these people had invited me to get excited about something that they can’t reliably deliver and they don’t think I can afford. What a monumental waste of everyones time and energy.
The second is much simpler, I was looking for solutions and the supplier was telling me about the problems I was going to have. I, like most people, select my suppliers on their ability to solve my problems, not create them.
No sales were closed and no solutions were provided in either of these instances, just time and energy wasted.
Do yourself a favour, if people come to you for a solution it is because they don’t know how to do it themselves, they believe you have experience of doing it and that getting you to do it for them is going to be the easiest and most cost effective way forward. Let them continue to believe that, they don’t need to know what a great salesman or how clever you are, how difficult the stuff you do is, or how "expensive" it’s going to be. This approach will win you more sales, more customers, more experience, more solutions, more credibility and the things you do will get easier for you and for your customers.
Remember, customers only really like easy things, make it really easy for them.
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 | If you haven' got a blogging clue about ... sales.This one is easy, there can be no jargon or confusion whatsoever, absolutely everybody knows what sales is.
For the record here is the definition courtesy of Wikipedia, the noun sales is simply, "the exchange of a commodity for money, the action of selling something."
So that is simple then, except of course this isn't our experience of sales, a noun, a doing word, the act of selling and and anyway what is there to dislike in that? Actually if you talk to successful sales people they will tell you that there is nothing better than the act of selling, the glory of closing the deal, bringing the lifeblood of customers and cash into the business and in fact successful sales people are most likely to become Managing Directors and Chairman. On this basis sales people should be recognised as the most important people in any business, only they are not.
This is not the reality that we recognise because successful sale people are like hens teeth, extraordinarily rare. The sales people that we encounter aren't successful and aren't involved in the activity of sales at all, they are involved in something else altogether. What they are busy with is the most arduous and ineffective marketing of all; knocking on doors and cold calling and trying to foist there wares on any poor soul that they can get hold of, and that is what we hate them for.
For effective marketing sales is actually quite different, for us sales is about:
And that is it, that doesn't sound very terrible does it?
But there is that word again that you will recognise from last week, leads, and what on earth is that. Suffice to say for now that leads are the work of sales people, if you have too many leads you need sales people, if you don't have enough leads you need marketing.
So next week, if you haven't got a blogging clue about ... leads.
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Yep, absolutely everyone knows what sales is and absolutely everybody hates it. | #HappyCustomers - How effective is Effective Marketing?Have you ever wondered exactly how effective Effective Marketing actually are? Well wonder no more because the answer is right here.
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 | What do a 15 year old and salesmen have in common?Here is a great example of what could happen if Dale Carnegie dynamite gets into the wrong hands. |
 | #FeelingFunkyOnFriday - stand yourself next to a mountainGet yourself some Jimi Hendrix on this fine Friday. |
 | Sticking your head above the parapet.The markets haven't been kind for the last two or three years but actually that may not be too bad a thing.Effective Marketing works with lost and lts and lots of small businesses and is for that reason that the recession landed on us a good while before it became the international phenomenon that we are very aware of now. because economies are confidence games, quite simply when it works we all have confidence and when we are told it's not working we pack up our toys and sit it out, or do we?
A couple of weeks ago I took a day out from the daily work of looking for and winning customers to spend a day at the Marketing Week exhibition. And I have to say I was surprised at what I found because like most businesses I seem to spend a lot of my time and energy fire fighting and managing cash flow and all of the stuff you don't imagine yourself doing when you start your own business. My expectation was that the whole world was doing the same thing but what the show demonstrated is that while we all face the same challenges some businesses are busy innovating and evolving. It put me in mind of the famous Orson Wells quote:
"in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."
Which is a reminder that it is in the face of adversity that humanity thrives and it is in recession that businesses evolve quickest and as we know there were more millionaires created in the last recession than in any time in history.
For me economic cycles are like off road bicycle competitions with the recessions being the hills that seem to take up most of the time and energy, slow everybody down and cause some to stop altogether. It is the people with their eye on the bigger picture that win through, perhaps I will see you at the top of this one. Here are some of the cool things I took pictures of with my new iPhone.
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 | If you haven't got a blogging clue about ... marketing.You are thinking this must be a joke right, how can marketing, a word that has been in use since the 1560's, be jargon,surely everyone knows what marketing is.
To give you a for instance, if you run a search in Yell.com for marketing in Brighton you will get 101 results including a large number of Media, PR Agents, Graphic Designers and Web Developers. Are they all really marketing? If you Google the phrase "what is marketing" you get 153,000,000 results.
If you think about this for any period of time you have to conclude that marketing is more art than science and is therefore open to definition but that will only add to the confusion and the purpose of this post is to demystify marketing.
So what I will do instead is offer you the very best definition that I have found, and here it is courtesy of Wikipedia:
"Marketing is the process by which companies determine what products or services may be of interest to customers, and the strategy to use in sales, communication and business development.
It is an integrated process through which companies create value for customers and build strong customer relationships in order to capture value from customers in return.
Marketing is used to identify the customer, to keep the customer, with the customer as the focus of its activities."
And now I am worried that may be too complicated, but is the very best definition that I have found.
For me marketing is the activity of identifying groups of people that you could sell to and what they want or need to buy, it is the process of developing products and services to meet those needs and wants, of communicating that you can meet their needs and wants and giving them a fantastic experience when they buy so that they think of you whenever they need or want something in the future and most importantly rave about you to anyone that will listen.
Marketing is all of the activity, the research, the strategising and planning, the product design and development, the packaging, the corporate identity, the messaging, the websites, the calling, emailing, social media, advertising, door knocking, exhibiting, leafleting, networking, PR and referral that leads to somebody putting their hand up and saying "I am interested in what you are doing and I'd like to talk to you more about it" and that is a lead and that is where sales comes in.
I was hoping to get this done in 250 words but I am already at 575 so I am going to stop now. If you have a better blogging clue what marketing is you are welcome to comment.
Next week we will be helping if you haven't got a blogging clue about ... sales.
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 | #HappyCustomers - Internet Marketing TrainingHere are some more happy Effective Marketing customers talking about their experience of one of our Internet Marketing Workshops. |
 | Telesales in full effect from the amazing FonejackerHere is an amazing example of how telemarketing works, if you have a great offer, you get their attention and you use open questions. |
 | #FeelingFunkyOnFriday - Walk on with Hope...You'll Never Walk Alone if you are walking with Elvis Presley. |
 | Do you have to be unique to be successful?USP's are just part of a whole raft of propaganda around marketing and starting your own business that I believe exists only to keep the majority of people down.
Now lets be honest, there are now more than 6 billion of us on the planet, there are more than 60 million of us and more than 4 million businesses in the UK alone - so finding unique is going to be a challenge. The second thing is that when you are marketing something that is truly original and unique no-one is going to see it coming, or be looking for it which means you are going to have to educate the market from scratch. Educaters, famously, don’t make much money.
I accept that if you can identify an original and unique opportunity that fills a gaping whole in the market that everyone will identify with immediately and rush out to buy then that is certainly desirable, fantastic, miraculous - a bit like winning the lottery. We love Apple for example, for their innovation, but that isn’t the preserve of the majority of us and Apple have spent 32 years and millions of dollars developing the opportunity and the right to innovate.
For Effective Marketing sales and marketing is really quite simple, all you have to do is identify what people want to buy and then make it really easy for them to buy it from you and give them an incredible experience so that they continue to come back and rave about you to their friends. If someone is already doing it, roll your sleeves up and do it a little bit better. If you are ambitious you can do it a lot better. Now that may sound a little too easy, too simple, too accessible, too achievable but it is absolutely true.
Anyone can run there own business and everyone should have a go at it.
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At the core of this propaganda is the idea that to be successful in business you need to be completely original and unique. These ideas are perpetuated in popular business programmes like The Apprentice and Dragons Den and well established marketing ideas like Unique Selling Points and Gaps in the Market. | If you haven't got a blogging clue.How could you have a blogging clue, marketing is developing new words, phrases and activities like its going out of fashion.
Every industry does it, whether you sweep the streets, pass judgment on the prosecuted or talk for the despatch box there will be a language that develops amongst people who spend all day talking to each other about the same things.
Marketing, especially with the evolution of internet marketing, has become increasingly technical and this has resulted in the creation of brand new terms, brand new activities and in fact brand new job titles. Ten years ago nobody googled, browsing only ever happened in the African Veld or Library’s, link building took place only in chain factories and I don’t know anyone that was employed as a Webmaster, Blogger or Reputation Manager. So it is clear internet marketing has emerged as a completely brand new industry and has developed a language of it’s own, that makes sense. What makes the problem worse in marketing is marketing’s own famously terrible habit of talking absolute rubbish at the best of times.
I have been aware of this for a longtime which is why I once translated my 60 seconds at a BNI into Spanish, to make the point that your marketing people shouldn't be hiding behind a foreign language, or jargon. What I wasn't aware of is that I am as guilty as anyone else, that is until it was pointed out to me recently.
So I have decided to do something about it. What I have decided to do is create a glossary of all the jargonistic terms and provide definitions that will make sense to the whole population. So why not come back next week if you haven’t got a blogging clue about MARKETING.
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 | #HappyCustomers - Sales Recruitment ServicesHere is another happy Effective Marketing Company customer talking about the benefits that they have taken from working with Effective Marketing, this time it was Sales recruitment that we were able to help with.
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What if Al Pacino were to take your sales meetings?Is it pushing the point too far to compare sales with American Football? For Effective Marketing it's the same, two silly games that mean nothing unless you take it really seriously. Check out Al Pacino and take a lesson in motivation.
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 | #FeelingFunkyOnFriday You will be, push the button.Here's a little bit of Al green to put you in the mood on this beautiful Friday. |
 | A great example of great closing from Mr. DieselClosing is often considered to be the most difficult, and therefore, the most respected skill amongst sales people.With the deal at stake its takes cojones of steel to move things on. Here is perhaps the best example ever from Vin Diesel, another potentially great salesman lost to Hollywood.
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 | Back to School with Young EnterpriseOf all the things that Effective Marketing have been involved in Young Enterprise has to be the most rewarding and the most beneficial.
Young Enterprise is a fantastic organisation that takes business volunteers into schools to run programmes including Personal Economics, Learn to Earn, Project Business & Sell for Success which have benefited me enormously.
The programmes are practical learning opportunities for school children to learn through engaging games, discussions and exercises that give pupils the opportunity to learn by doing whilst giving them an insight into a whole host of issues and challenges that they are going to face in their personal lives and in their careers.
I have completed five of these programmes and have volunteered around 10 days in the last four years.
When I started volunteering I was really excited about spending time with the kids and having a huge positive impact on their lives with these amazing programmes. What I have learnt since then is that it is incredibly hard work winning the attention of a classroom full of kids and actually if you get some of this stuff through to them and make it stick then you have done incredibly well.
Which has got me thinking about why I do it and I have come to the conclusion that my motives aren't entirely selfless. There is absolutely no question that these programmes have improved my presentation skills, my confidence and my ability to engage a room full of people; that they have filled holes in my education, there was certainly nothing like these programmes available when I was at school; and that they have put me in touch with some great local business people who recognise the valuing of investing in themselves and the following generations, the networking is phenomenal; the programmes have also given me a healthy respect for teachers and the young people that I may well be employing in the future.
Of course, you can also use use these programmes to collect development points for whichever professional organisations you may be a member of like the CIPD or CIM.
Whilst I was very pleased when I read the classes feedback yesterday and recognised the maturity of the students and how much of the programme they had taken in, I have also realised that the benefits to me are huge and that there simply isn't anywhere else to get personal development quite like this.
Young Enterprise are always looking for volunteers so if you think you or your staff could benefit, I promise that you will, you should get in touch with Georgina Angele, or check out their Website.
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 | That Mail Chimp just gets cheekier and cheekier!It’s actually quite hard to explain how fond effective marketing have become of that cheeky little Mail Chimp.
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It sounds weird and it is actually weird when I hear myself telling people that Mail Chimp is the daddy when it comes to email marketing and that Mail Chimp makes email marketing fun. | Motivation, that's what you need.You will love this incredibly creative and engaging presentation of some really important research into what motivates.If you are hoping to manage people effectively and have them invest themselves in your business in constantly changing workplaces this video is a must see. |
 | You absolutely have to love Basecamp and 37 SignalsNot only have 37 Signals developed a fantastic tool for managing collaborative projects which is massively intuitive and simple to use, they also set the standard in how to do internet business.Most of these online services rely on the gym membership principle to make money. That is, sign up and share your credit card details while it is all very exciting, get bored quite quickly because its a second rate solution but continue to take money from your account until you run out of money or die. 37 Signals however, write to remind you before they even start taking the money and make it easy for you to cancel if you haven’t managed to use it or find it useful, see below.
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 | Effective Marketing loves an award winning customerWe absolutely love it when people who win awards decide that they want to be working with Effective Marketing. This award is particularly rewarding for Jackie Keddy as the selection and voting was carried out by her peers, other coaches who are doing the job right now.
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Jackie Keddy has won Coaching at Work Coaching/Mentoring Person of the Year 2009 Award. | Social Media Training FeedbackWe are justifiably smug about the feedback that we have had after last weeks Social Media Seminar.
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The truth about Effective Marketing Training Events is that they have always been more about the attendees and what they bring rather than the Effective Marketing Company and what we have to share. 
 | Effective Web Marketing SeminarMore than 27 attendees and over 18 companies were represented in pursuit of web marketing legend status at An Introduction to Effective Web Marketing.
It was a fantastic evening full of energy and idea sharing which continuing well into the networking following the seminar. Attendees’ comments included: |
More than 27 attendees and over 18 companies were represented in pursuit of web marketing legend status at  | Effective Telemarketing SeminarMore than 30 attendees and over 20 companies were represented in pursuit of telemarketing legend status at An Introduction to Effective Telemarketing Seminar.
The energy of the presentation kept everyone on their toes with each person leaving at the end full of motivation to put into action everything learnt. Attendees’ comments included:
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More than 30 attendees and over 20 companies were represented in pursuit of telemarketing legend status at An Introduction to Effective Telemarketing Seminar. | Is it any wonder The All Blacks win Rugby matches?If you have spent anytime with Effective Marketing you will know that we are big on getting in the mood, perhaps not quite on the scale of The All Blacks but you get the gist. |
 | Not sure about Social Media?Still not sure about Social Media, you had better make your mind up because it isn't waiting for you. |
 | What a week!Martin has had a good week, check it out in pictures...Its not every week that Fred Dineage, the Fred Dineage of How and Meridian Tonite, describes you as one of the best speakers he has ever heard and a hell of a speaker; have a bit of a chat with a Lord and the only Minister never to join the party of government and get blown away at a seminar held by the business master - Brad Sugars - it has all happened to me this week and its onlyThursday, Stamati you will have to go some tomorrow to top all of that.
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 | Summertime and the living is easy....Martin talking about the seasonal nature of businesses and the effect that the recession is having on the seasonal performance of Effective Marketing.
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A customer sat us down about 18 months ago and went through the entire calendar and explained "the excuses" that prevent sales people performing.Smoking Kills
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I was actually overwhelmed recently whilst I was shopping for my lunch at a supermarket kiosk by the health warnings on the hundreds of packets of cigarettes - SMOKING KILLS. Once you go Mac
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I honestly thought that I had exorcised all evil from my life; drink, drugs, caffeine, nicotine, salt, sugar, carbohydrates, toxins, - the whole lot, gone. I would have argued that my life was pure, that there was nothing left to give up. | 2009 Brighton Festival FringeNew advertisers for the 2009 Brighton Festival Fringe
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Here at The Effective Marketing Company, we've been busy searching for local and national advertisers for the 2009 Brighton Festival Fringe. | Well Done DadWe are delighted to announce the birth of a baby girl to The Effective Marketing Company's very own Keith Fowler and his wife Catherine
Weighing a healthy 7lb 8oz, her name is still to be decided. Both Mum and baby are doing well. |
 | Martin Henley in the NewsMartin Henley explains why the bankruptcies of businesses may have a positive effect on companies
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"Martin Henley opened a lot of downcast eyes with the stark statement that the bankruptcies of businesses in the new recession represented a massive opportunity for those still with their heads above water." | Don't let me downMartin sky-diving
Martin took a leap of faith and did a tandom sky-dive in aid of the Make a Wish Foundation. |
No bad time to do good business.Well another eight months has passed and here is our third post, at The Effective Marketing Company we are nothing if not regular.In the last eight months we have all felt the full effect of the credit crunch which we are now calling the recession.
You will see beloew a picture of a very happy John Chambers, the reason John is so happy is that he managed to secure the notes from our recession busting When the Going Gets Tough The Tough Get Marketing workshop that we ran with Worthing Chamber. John paid £5 for those notes and was fully expecting to be paid £10 for the idea of selling them. We only hope he was as happy when he got home and read the notes and realised exactly what he had paid for. At some point in the distant future we may be incredibly famous and the notes might actually be worth a lot of money, realistically though they are likely to remain big sheets of paper with words on them with no material value whatsoever. Thanks for the £5 John. |
 | Proactive StyleProactive Style target HR and Training Managers with a proven process for evaluating training and calculating the return on investment of training and other people investments.
In the beginning of the year we kicked off an integrated marketing campaign including web marketing, email and telemarketing. The reaction has been fantastic with HR and Training Managers responding well to the evaluating training messages that we have been delivering to them. |
Proactive Style target HR and Training Managers with a proven process for  | OACGOACG provide consultation, design and outsourced services to companies developing embedded software products.
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This could include a wide range of products including saftey critical applications for businesses like Yokogawa, AAB, Windriver and MTL. | 2009 Brighton Festival FringeFollowing the monumental success of The Brighton Festival Fringe 2008 The Effective Marketing Company have been engaged once again to assist in the search for local and national advertisers and sponsors for the Fringe Guide and Fringe City for 2009.
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Following a productive first few weeks The Effective Marketing Company have come up trumps for The Brighton Festival Fringe by securing a number of major brands to support the events.The trouble with blogging …Of course there is no trouble with blogging other than the fact that it is a very public commitment and when you dont keep it up it’s a public embarressment. Then people very graciously post comments, and then you can’t delete it and before you know where you are 8 months have passed and there has been no action, and everyone can see there has been no action.The problem is only made worse if the only post you ever submitted was a negative comment about what you do, of course marketing isnt a waste of time, energy and money provided that you follow through and commit to what you are doing. Marketing fails because business owners dont invest enough in getting it right in the first place and pull it before it has a chance to deliver results, which is how I was feeling about our website back in October. The website now is the corner stone of our marketing and does everything we wanted including generating leads and sales, which explains to a small degree why we havent updated the blog. In the future we will steer clear of irony or trying to trigger a clever debate and use the blog to keep you updated with whats keeping us busy, what we are learning that may be useful in your marketing campaigns and things that make us laugh. The new comitment is to update the blog every two weeks. If you are reading this in October 2010 and nothing has changed please email me on mart@effectivemarketingcompany.co.uk and remind me that I am not woth of a place in the blogosphere. In the meantime you may not have seen our marketing videos or our video testimonials, we hope you enjoy those. |
 | The Argus AppealThe Argus Appeal is the charity of the Argus newspaper which in 2007 will be celebrating its 50th year of giving to those most in need in Sussex.
The Argus Appeal pledges to relieve sickness, poverty, hardship and in particular to provide funds for benefits of sorts, in cash and in kind, particularly at Christmas, to lonely and needy old people and underprivileged children. |
 | The Business Community Partnership (BCP)BCP introduces businesses to community groups, voluntary organisations and social enterprises that will benefit most from professional support.
BCP have ten years experience of helping multi-national corporations, family businesses, SMEs and sole traders implement CSR programmes. |
 | Young EnterpriseYoung Enterprise is the UK’s leading business and enterprise education charity.
Young Enterprise offers a range of programmes, based on the principle of Learning by Doing, which brings volunteers from business into the classroom to work with teachers and students. Some Young Enterprise programmes enable students to work together to run their own real company. Others use games, hands on activities and role play to develop skills and capabilities for business and enterprise.
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 | Goodwood RentalGoodwood Rental have a unique offering in the corporate car rental market.
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The systems designed by Goodwood Rental allow businesses to leverage their buying power whilst reducing the time, hassle and cost associated with a diverse vehicle rental requirement. | On a run2008 will be the 100 year anniversary since the 1908 Olympics came to London where the distance for the modern marathon was set.
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2008 will also be the first year  | Welcome Lisa StoneWe are extremely pleased to welcome Lisa Stone to the role of Telemarketing Manager.
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Lisa brings more than 12 years sales experience, including field sales, and account management in industries as diverse as IT and Media. | Certain SopsCertain Shops provides an online source of vetted professionals who are exclusively recommended, and maintain their position on the Certain Shops website only ba maintaining positive client feedback.
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So thats professionals you can trust, because they have been recommended, and constantly vetted to ensure they provide the very best levels of service. And for professionals the site provides a platform to attract new customers and demonstrate the excellence of the service you provide.Marketing is an enormous waste of time, energy and money. Discuss.It has taken an enormous amount of time and energy to produce this website - almost 11 months.It has been a distraction, it has caused a log jam behind which all of our marketing initiatives have been held up. It has been embarrassing, we have told people about it, we have been telling people that it will be launched in the next two weeks for about 9 months. |
 | Welcome Keith FowlerWe are extremely pleased to welcome Keith Fowler to The Effective Marketing Company.
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 | Brighton Festival FringeThe Fringe Festival happens alongside the Brighton Festival throughout May, running more than 150 of the more intersting and high profile events attracting around 150 000 visitors.
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The Fringe have engaged The Effective Marketing Company to assist in the search for local and national advertisers and sponsors for the Fringe Guides and to market corporate hospitality at the various events. | Welcome Em StenningWe are extremely pleased to welcome Em Stenning to our telemarketing team.
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Em brings nine years retail experience and customer service qualifications to the role along with her infectious, competitive personality and talent for making people smile and hair. | SKF Services LtdSKF Services provide rehabilitation supplies and equipment to sports therapists, osteopaths and clinics across the UK.
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SKF Services are celebrating their 20 years in business by raising their game. The challenge for SKF Services, like many successful businesses, is finding the time to be pro-active when their referrals and response to their marketing keep increasing. | LingualearnLingualearn provide extraordinarily high quality language learning courses and translation services to businesses and individuals through class room teaching, CD's, DVD's and via the web.
As part of their ambitious growth plans have engaged The Effective Marketing Company to target international businesses operating across the south east. |
 | On a rollThere are a number of ways of enjoying the South Downs, there are plenty of ways getting down a hill. Orb 360, however, have come up with a way of combining the two to create a whole new experience.
The Effective Marketing Company enjoyed a fantastic morning with Orb 360, just rolling down the hills in inflatable balls and taking out anything that got in our way, trailers, 4x4's, marquees and Orb 360's staff. |
 | Effective Marketing DayPlatinum Finace's entire staff of 10 spent the day at The Effective Marketing Company's offices to increase team cohesion, set goals, develop marketing messages and strategies and assign tasks ahead of their move to theor impressive new offices.
We had a fantastic day full of energy and ideas and received some incredible feedback including: "I thought the day was fantastic, especially given that we were cramming so much into one day! No improvement needed!" |
