Have Your Very Own Marketing Database
The answer to that is YES and NO. NO - it's not that important if you are content to shuffle along, picking up business piecemeal, hoping that the big upturn is just around the corner. Hoping this upturn will bring in new business.
This is fine if everyone else is has the same outlook. But what if your competitors believe that marketing their business is important? And what if companies that you haven't dealt with before start looking for the goods and services that your company is more than capable of providing. Who's going to get their business? A company who hides its light under a bushel? Or one who goes out into the marketplace shouting about its goods and services?
However, that's not really a true senario, is it? It's most likely that your company already does a bit of marketing - and has done so ever since its inception. But is it a structured approach? Or a wee bit hotch-potch? With some bits kept in filing cabinets, some on office computers and vital information stored in one, or several, brains.
Forget all the jargon and mystique about marketing. The sole aim of marketing is very simple. It is trying to get as many businesses out there as possible to include their companys' goods or services in every buying decision they make. You think crisps - who's smiling face immediately flashes into your mind. That's marketing in a nutshell. However, most companies don't have the resources to market like that, but then, they are not selling to the 66 million consumers throughout the UK, they are selling to other companies. And not to all two million or so of them in the UK, but only to a portion. To enable you to do that, the two million or so companies out there have to be categorised and the ones that need your products or services identified. This enables you to target your sales efforts directly to where you will get the best results and be most cost effective.