Are you focused on your business as a business? (category one) OR are you focused on marketing and ultimately driving sales? (category two)

The vast majority of business owners I meet fall into one or other category. In category one where the business owner focuses ONLY on the business as an entity, how it is run etc, will quickly or relatively quickly run into difficulty. WHY? As human beings our attention spans are poor, particularly in today’s digital world and with that in mind our customers attention spans will start to wander and they will find other businesses to supply them with what they need.

Where you need to be as a business owner is to focus on category two, which is all about yes running your business but also MARKETING your business on a consistent basis on the ‘right’ platforms. That is to say, the platforms where your potential customers are most likely to see your marketing message.

Having done a masters in marketing at University level, I will have to admit  during my course I sometimes switched off when I learned that businesses need to be marketing led! However having now worked with hundreds of businesses all over the world I have seen first hand that YES all of us business owners need to be marketing led.

So what does this mean. Here are some relevant questions to ask yourself:

1. What are you trying to achieve with your marketing?
2. Who is your customer?
3. Do you have different customer segments? (segmentation)
4. How are you marketing to your different customer segments?
5. Are you marketing on the platforms where your customers most spend time?
6. Do you have a comprehensive social media marketing plan?
7. Do you have a comprehensive traditional marketing plan?
8. Have you an integrated marketing plan?
9. What are your conversion rates? (how many customers are you getting with your marketing)
10. Do you know which of your marketing tactics brings in the most sales?
11. Do you know which of your marketing tactics brings in the least sales?
12. How much time every week are you spending on marketing?
13. How much money are you spending on marketing?
14. Do you advertise? is it effective?
15. Do you know what you are doing? (admit if you need help! It’s cheaper in the long run)

I hope this blog has got you thinking of the various aspects of whether your business is marketing led or not. If you are not sure, it absolutely should be marketing led.

If you have any comments or questions please leave them in the comment section below