What follows is courtesy of Dan York of Stellar-eMarketing ……
Hey guys when you start a new business, a huge, huge majority of your push should be marketing and advertising. If you're only doing it like 3-5 hours per week, you're killing yourself. It should be at least half of the time you spend. You'd better feel like you've worked on it when your done.
With all the marketing data and “gurus” out there now its almost as if you’re sifting through grains of sand at the beach to find the seashells that you’re really looking for. So let me give you a couple of pointers on the house:
As marketing has changed in the digital age, with its pluses and minuses, the underlying rules of engagement are still the same. So let's look at a basic:
Let’s define marketing:
marketing [mahr-ki-ting] –noun
1. the act of buying or selling in a market.
2. the total of activities involved in the transfer of goods from the producer or seller to the consumer or buyer, including advertising, shipping, storing, and selling.
Origin:
1555–65; market + -ing1
So as you can see there, marketing encompasses quite a bit. It’s not simply “getting the good word out”. When you look at Def #2 above, it should quickly become apparent that things like advertising or product delivery are just one of the many legs of your marketing relay-race.
So you need some real basics under your belt. Without those basics, all the marketing techniques out there can be fruitless. Case in point: remember a time when you met someone that you were attracted to. The package was good – nice hair, fit, well-dressed, maybe even a nice car and a giant wallet. But then…they opened their mouth. Out spewed the verbal vomit of their repulsive personality. You knew right then and there, without another second’s thought…they could never win you over. Not with all the sales jargon in the world. And so on with marketing. Forget "buzzwords", the market is immune to them now.
Here is what works - honesty, integrity, delivering a great product or service. Only then can you sell and market with conviction. Look at a used car salesman, he has to eat, and he knows he's selling junk half the time. And you perceive his lies a mile away.