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My first post
Well, here we go, let's talk about marketing then. It's a mystery that needs to be understood and unravelled by all micro and small business operators. Micro and small business is my area of expertise and my main interest, so if you're in business for yourself or with a few partners and other employees, let's exchange a few ideas on the subject. I'd like to help if I can.
For example, what's the difference between marketing and selling? Does the difference matter? I'm not going to give you a guru type answer to this, but a more down to earth explanation - marketing is about grabbing attention and selling is about converting attention into orders/money.
I could talk about the mechanics and critical importance of selling, (I will say one thing nothing happens in any business until something gets sold) but prefer instead to focus on marketing, aka, attention grabbing. The reason for this is that for micro and small businesses with variable expertise and tight budgets, marketing regularly gets left behind in the day to day battle for business survival, and as a result is one of the least understood areas of business. No practice, no expertise.
Before I rattle on any further, just a word on what I mean by micro and small business. A micro business has sales turnover of between £0m - £1m. It probably employs just you and maybe a few others. A small business has revenues of between £1m - £10m and could easily employ 10, 30 or even 100 people. The vast majority of businesses in the UK fall into one or other of these two categories. It's these two groups I would like to talk to, and help in any way I can. It doesn't have to be about just marketing, because I have other categories on this blog too, all of which ought to be of interest to the micro/small business operator.
My first thought on the subject of marketing then is this: bring it the top of your agenda, quickly. Don't say you haven't got time, too may other pressing things to do, got to pack the next order off, Mary in accounts is pestering for copy invoices etc. just refocus tonight on the whole issue of marketing and start asking yourself what you ought to be doing about it. That's the first step, you're commitment to do more marketing than you've ever done.
We'll talk again soon.
